What we learned at CeBIT
After a 6.5 hours train ride, from Zürich through Germany we arrived in Hannover to attend the CMS Garden at CeBIT 2013. CeBIT is the biggest Electronics and Information Technology Convention in Europe, and some say even worldwide.
Big crowd at CMS Garden
Patrick and Stefanie giving a presentation on the big screen
Open source CMS in friendly coexistence.
13 opensource cms systems, 5 days, 100sqm, > 100 volunteers, > 10.000 visitors, booth parties, interviews and not forgetting to mention a lunch with the Swiss ambassador. It was a crazy fun time we had.
Our aim from the event was to spread the word that there is a new kid on the block in the enterpise CMS market, and from the positive reactions to our demos, we hope we achieved this.
Everyday we were given the opportunity to provide a presentation on the big screen, this gave me the insight to all other systems during these demonstrations. Having on hand experience of these systems, I have to say that in my opinion, no system had any killer feature we need to copy (if you think otherwise, let me know in the comments).
In contrast some of the representatives from other systems were very impressed with our frontend-editing and the focal point feature in cmsplugin-filer for pictures.
What did we learn from it?
- We are young, very young. The other systems are all more then 10 years old.
- We don't have to be afraid of the other systems.
- Community is very important. Drupal has an awesome community system. The Drupal guys can also party harder then we can (We have to show them otherwise the next year!)
- For our young age we already got a very impressive portfolio of brandnames and big players using our system.
- We need to make the cms easier to install and remove the initial hurdles.
- We need more people helping out next year. Two was not enough.
Patrick and Stefanie at their desk
What kind of people came by?
We were visited by people from all walks of life: From CEOs of big companies that wanted to get informed about the CMS, to agencies looking for what the future holds, to journalists, students or teachers who wanted to teach their pupils some Python. Or preople who just wanted to create a website for their mom. We were always very happy when someone came by that was already using Django and didn't know that django CMS exists. We also had at least someone every day already using our system.
TV interview
Doing another demo
Press Tour
On the whole, visitors and other CMS were very impressed that such a young CMS is already in use by such big players and brand names, but unfortunately they haven't heard of us before. So we need to get the word out. Start your blogs, register a talk to a conference about the CMS or a local user group.
Next stop for us: Pycon US.
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