The biggest European info technology fair went green that year. The problem was that there were not many humans around to notice.

CeBIT 2008 was a slimmed-down, serious affair, cut back to six days from seven. previously sprawling exhibits were corralled into order by theme and publicity stunts were banished to the weekend, which now comes at the end of the show, not the middle.

The concept was to turn dwindling exhibitor and visitor interest into a virtue by using the lack of gadgety distractions to create a business-like arena where managers could get on with meeting, greeting and checking out the competition.

The aftereffect was an atmosphere free of the chaos of previous years but additionally devoid of the excitement, casting a feeling of desertion by the huge trade-fair site in that northern German city.

Most exhibitors who still come to CeBIT — that year there are 5,845 of them, down 5 percent from last year — use the

show to explain unglamorous business-system products to potential clients.

Cisco was one of the few to bring up the problems that require these solutions as it introduced a new World Wide Web router to help manage with an anticipated increase in monthly documents sent by the World Wide Web by 2011, when it is expected to reach the equivalent of 144 times all the printed matter in the world.

CeBIT organizers declared the theme of that year’s show to be the environment and built a “green village” to house companies peddling products intended to increase corporate energy efficiency and reduce toxic waste.

“CeBIT Goes Green — Big Time” was the main headline of CeBIT News, the official publication of the fair, on Wednesday, which recognized that “green IT” was a trend that was impossible to disregard as both energy costs and climate-altering carbon emissions soar.

Steve Ballmer, the chief executive of Microsoft…

Orginal post by Top Tech News