What a Messe

CEBIT 2012 will gather 4,200 vendors from 70 countries at the Messe facilities in Hannover, Germany.

Welcome to CEBIT 2012

Frank Porschmann, senior vice president of Deutsche Messe, the organizer of the CeBIT trade show, kicks off a media pre-event tour.

The silver glow of innovation

Hall 16 of the CEBIT exhibition grounds was created by architect Jurgen Mayer H. and artist Tobias Rehberger. There are no regular booths, just perforated walls that are supposed to suggest innovative ideas pouring through. The hall is home to the 50 finalists of Code_n12, a competition for startups.

The beautiful game with a chip inside

A company called RedFir used live soccer players to show how it is using an RFID-based chip inside a ball to help track player position, performance and speed of the ball during games. Already installed at the Nuremberg World Cup Stadium, the technology is intended for coaches as well as members of the media to better cover matches.

The choices around cloud computing, in sculpture

Hanging above the booth at the Karushe Institute of Technology is a tongue-in-cheek representation of a "hybrid" cloud, with public usage on one side and private on the other.

One for the road

The German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence will be showing this prototype car which replaces the usual engine with an electro-magnetic interface that could save on energy and fuelling costs.

Ladies and gentlemen, CEBIT!

The inside of the Hannover Congress Centre, where CEBIT Opening Ceremonies took place.

So you think you can trust

A pair of dancers performs their interpretation of the CEBIT 2012 team, "managing trust."

Schmidt takes the stage

Google chairman Eric Schmidt kicked off the CEBIT opening ceremonies with a speech about the potential future gaps in technology equality.

CEBIT . . . in . . . SPAAACE!

Following the opening ceremonies of CEBIT 2012, the keynote speakers are joined by a giant robot and a live video connection to a NASA astronaut as part of the Google YouTube Space Lab project.