CeBIT Australia 2008, the region’s largest business technology trade fair, has launched the most advanced digital media platform ever used to support a major exhibition event in this country.

Created locally by organiser Hannover Fairs Australia, the GoCeBIT.com.au platform is based on Enterprise 2.0 practices and includes multimedia news, podcasts, video content and blog postings from a broad range of sources - visitors, conference speakers, organisers, exhibitors and media partners.

Hannover Fairs Australia Managing Director Jackie Taranto calls GoCeBIT a gamechanging resource for the exhibition, putting news coverage, event updates, conference resources, and exhibitor information in one place.

“GoCeBIT is an incredibly powerful resource, for both our exhibitor partners and for visitors to the CeBIT Australia exhibition and conference program,” Ms Taranto said.

“We’re a business technology event, so it is natural that we would push the available technology as hard as we do. This is a smart and powerful platform, built using open source components to incorporate the very latest 2.0 features - and we’re happy to lead the event industry in creating such a powerful solution,” she said.

Created in Australia, the GoCeBIT platform has generated interest within HFA’s parent company Deutsche Messe AG, which will assess the platform with the view to incorporating the technology into the giant CeBIT Hannover event in Germany, the largest business fair of any kind in the world.

CeBIT Australia 2008 is open from May 20-22 at the Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre at Darling Harbour. The event, which will attract 35,000 business buyers, features more than 750 exhibitors and six specialist business technology and innovation conferences – all under one roof.

In addition to providing a valuable aggregation resource for multimedia news and blog posting about CeBIT Australia, the GoCeBIT platform is also a high-value marketing tool for exhibitors, as well as a practical information delivery service for event information and keynote speaker presentations.

GoCeBIT is the brain-child of HFA’s director of IT, Gilad Greenbaum and builds on a series of digital platform advances launched by HFA at CeBIT Australia events over the past three years.

“In 2006 we pioneered the first multimedia blog from the showfloor of an exhibition in Australia, and in 2007 we created the CeBIT BloggerZone and CeBIT TV, running the first online broadcasting from an Australian event,” Mr Greenbaum said.

“GoCeBIT is a more advanced digital platform that aggregates the achievements of past years, and packages beautifully an incredibly rich and deep variety of information.”

Hannover Fairs Australia has been one of the most innovative users of new communications strategies in the industry, and is a pioneer in developing and using digital channels to reach its target audience of exhibitors and visitors to CeBIT Australia. The company has been consistently among the earliest adopters of new media platforms, open source and software as a service models, and eMarketing and Search Engine Optimisation techniques.

“As CeBIT Australia has been showcasing the latest trends of the ICT industry and some of the most innovative companies and solutions, it is natural for us to keep up with the latest technologies ourselves,” Mr Greenbaum said.