Published on the 28/04/2015 | Written by Beverley Head

CeBIT 2015 will be formally opened on Tuesday by Prime Minister Tony Abbott – albeit by video rather than in the flesh. The fourteenth CeBIT to be held in Australia, the event is being held for the second year in a row at Olympic Park while Sydney’s central conference and exhibition spaces in Darling Harbour are being rebuilt.

Despite its location, which is well outside the CBD, CeBIT organisers claim around 400 exhibitors have signed up to show their wares. According to the NSW Government which is the major sponsor of the show, 20,000 delegates are expected to attend the three day event – which while impressive is only about a tenth of the number that make the annual pilgrimage to Hanover, Germany which has hosted the original CeBIT exhibition for almost 30 years.
The Sydney event has nevertheless attracted a slew of international keynote addresses from the likes of hacker pin-up Kevin Mitnick, former Apple evangelist turned Canva guru, Guy Kawasaki and Andrew Ng, Stanford University computing associate professor and co-founder of Coursera.

Specialist conference streams which run in tandem with the three day exhibition cover social business, mobile engagement, cloud computing, enterprise mobility, big data and analytics, internet of things, cyber security, e-government, and a data centre summit.

Campus events, intended to provide “how to” advice to participants are scheduled for marketing, sales and social media, and digital business transformation. A half day Open Stack summit will also be held on the final day of the event.

Also on the final day is a now sold-out event focused on Australia’s technology start-up scene which allows participants to pitch their idea to an audience of potential users and investors.

Full details, plus conference timetables are available at http://www.cebit.com.au/