The CEBIT 2018 digital festival featured new content, format and venue

From 11-15 June Europe’s biggest platform and festival for digital technology, innovation and business development – CEBIT, was held in a new format and with new content. For the first time the event took place in a June timeslot at a new venue. CEBIT comprised of four main elements – d!conomy, d!tec, d!talk, and d!campus.

The d!conomy element was the platform for showcases dedicated to the digitization of business and government. International companies from the digital economy presented the real-world solutions and technologies that industrial users need in order to successfully digitize their operations. The d!conomy element emphasized on new business development, and in terms of content had a strong lineup of themes including digital office, process and data management, security, communication, devices and infrastructure.

The second element, d!tec, focused on the digital future in general.

By exploring emerging technologies poised for market launch, disruptive business models and new value-creation networks, it provided a valuable glimpse of what the future may hold. d!tec also presented the latest research and profiles startups with the courage and creativity to challenge last year’s givens and create new business models using inspired technology.

The third element of the new CEBIT was d!talk – a conference format for discourse on the myriad economic, political and social issues arising from and revolving around the digitization trend. With a central stage for keynotes and more than 10 smaller stages embedded in the d!conomy and d!tec parts of the show, d!talk was CEBIT’s hub for digitization dialogue, and as such a prime source of know-how and inspirational visions for the future.

Finally, the fourth main element of the new CEBIT was the d!campus. Located beneath the iconic EXPO canopy on the open-air site, the d!campus was the beating heart of the show with a captivating array of performances and happenings. The organizers from Deutsche Messe emphasized that the purpose of d!campus was to put a special spin on the fruits of digitization while at the same time offering rich opportunities for casual, one-on-one interaction throughout the day and right on into the evening hours.

Spotlight on data security

A major spotlight of the whole event was IT and data security. Considering that in a recent report on the state of IT security in Germany, the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) described data security as “the cornerstone of successful digitization”, CEBIT decided to educate, inform and help with the implementation of suitable security measures.

The event offered an opportunity to learn what tools and strategies are needed in order to detect cyberattacks and what support is available for setting up IT security systems. The IT Security display was even bigger in this year’s iteration of the digital event, occupying two halls (12 and 13) for the first time. It featured several speaking stages where, every day of the show, experts discussed key issues in IT security from multiple perspectives, ranging from hands-on practical to out-of-the-box visionary.

Debut of the “SME 4.0 IT Expertise Center

The relaunched CEBIT also featured more showcases and events for small and mid-sized companies (SMEs) than ever before. The SME 4.0 IT Expertise Center, which opened in March in Berlin, had a presence at this year’s CEBIT. The Center is a development initiative under the German government’s “SME 4.0” program which helps small and mid-sized IT companies find partners and create innovative digitization solutions. During the last day of the exhibition was held a comprehensive program of events for SMEs dubbed “Practical approaches to digitization for SMEs”.