james o'brien

I woke this morning and headed off to work with a spring in my step.

The week ahead looks reasonably interesting, work-wise, and there’s a few things on my social agenda, too.

Late this afternoon I combined a bit of work with pleasure by going along to CeBIT, the annual technology trade fair held at Darling Harbour.

There’s not a lot to interest you here if your bag is home technology. This is real nerd stuff: it’s cables, and wireless, and routers, and all of that kind of stuff, more than your latest popular consumable.

I’m a nerd, but not as nerdy as some of the guys you see as you walk around. We’re talking guys in mismatched clothing with leaking pens in their top pocket type of nerd.

A few of years ago wireless was the big new thing. I couldn’t, however, put my finger on what was this year’s big thing.

Instead, I found myself focussing on how they were selling some of the products. One company, selling internet domains, had employed a bunch of attractive women in skimpy outfits to promote their compny. Another company had giant cyber mascots walking around. I’ve been in one of those outfits once: they must have been really hot.

My favourite, though, was the company doing a demonstration where they got members of the audience to participate in a computer building competition that operated a bit like a tv game show.

“How many people here have built their own PC?”, he asked. Almost everyone in the crowd watching raised their hands. Of course they had…