On Thursday I was allowed to go to Dubai and visit the Gitex Expo. Gitex celebrated its 3oth year as a technology conference / exhibition, with the theme around cloud computing, which in itself was interesting. In UAE they do things on a large scale and this was no different. 2 sites, one out by the airport and the other at the Trades Centre. I went into the more education based solutions, although education really didn't feature on the spectrum, it was more business technology. The area I chose covered 6 huge halls. ULearn is tiny in comparison, we really do big! I even saw a 152 inch TV screen. now hows that for size... really dominated the wall. There were so many overseas countries represented, Bahrain. Egypt, China, UK, India Japan, Middle East Telcos etc etc. I was way way out of my league on the techie side of things. Come back Warren and Pete all is forgiven. Many many companies were there with networking solutions. Many had lots of 3rd generation products including Apple with their 4G iPhone. I spent time talking with the guys at Google UK, and their branch in Dubai, talking to various Telcos about obtaining a solution or package to suit my needs. Nothing like doing some personal stuff on work time. There were some gimmicky things too of course. However one stand I spent time at was offering networked story phones. A bit like an individualised wireless listening post. There were fascinating dataprojectors for interactive whiteboards, but at 9,000 AED a projector a bit out of my budget. The one thing that surprised me most of all, VERY FEW sold anything, they just don't sell at these things. You take their cards and contact the local Middle East Company distributor.
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