CeBIT 2010 Post mortem

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Background info

Mozilla participated at CeBIT, the world's largest ICT tradeshow with more than 400,000, from March 2nd to March 6th 2010,. This year, Mozilla was co-sponsor of the Open Source Project Lounge in collaboration with Linux New Media and had a 12m2 booth manned by Mozilla employees and contributors, for a total sponsorship fee of 10,000 EUR.

Staff and Community who attended

  • March 2-6  : Chris Hoffman (Mozilla Dir. Special Projects)
  • March 2-6  : Carsten Book (Mozilla QA)
  • March 2-6  : William Quiviger (Mozilla European Marketing Team)
  • March 2-5  : Tobias Leingruber (Mozilla JetPack Ambassador)
  • March 2-4  : Kev Needham (Mozilla Channel I/O)
  • March 2  : Patrick Finch (Mozilla European Marketing Team)
  • March 2  : Barbara Hueppe (Mozilla European Marketing Team)
  • March 4  : Wladimir Palant (Add-on developer - Mozilla contributor)
  • March 5-6  : Kadir Topal (Mozilla SUMO)
  • March 5-6  : Irina Sandu (Mozilla European Marketing)
  • March 5-6  : Paul Rouget (Mozilla Evangelism)
  • March 6  : Kai Engert (Security Expert - Mozilla contributor)

Some quick facts

  • 5 talks were given by staff and community at the Open Source Forum (streamed live here)
  • an estimated 60,000 people stopped by at the Mozilla booth over 5 days (1300 people/hour or 22 people/min)
  • 30,000 standard Mozilla buttons were distributed
  • 6,000 OTC buttons distributed
  • 1,500 OTC postcards distributed
  • 200 "5 years of Firefox" tshirts distributed

Press

Individual Feedback

William Quiviger

- WHAT WORKED:
  • excellent booth location in high-traffic zone, very close to main CeBIT entrance
  • huge traffic at booth, thousands of happy Firefox users came to thank us and opportunity for us to thank them
  • huge amount of feedback received from active daily Firefox users (lots of support questions; bugs filed; many suggestions both for Firefox and Thunderbird)
  • talks given were very well received by Open Source Forum organizers (will be available shortly online) - good follow-up discussions afterwards
  • Mozilla swag was very popular
  • many new potential contributors in touch with us and keen on getting involved in the project (most notably from Estonia, Romania, Faroe Islands, Germany, Poland, Russia)
  • excellent participation from community contributors 
- WHAT DIDN'T:
  • trouble defining/respecting booth rotation schedule
  • booth looked disorganized and messy (boxes and empty water bottles lying around) on the first day
  • continuous WiFi trouble - almost impossible to have a stable connection for more than 15 minutes
  • Patrick Finch's talk on first day was without slides due to PDF conversion problem
  • lukewarm reception to OTC campaign - difficult to articulate the aim of the campaign
  • OTC postcards were barely picked up
  • CeBIT accommodation service very disappointing - various problems with the house we rented and it was impossible to contact anybody to report problems.
  • there were many Thunderbird-related questions we could not answer
  • on Friday, some missed their bus connection and arrived late at the booth
- SUGGESTIONS FOR IMPROVEMENT:
  • some have suggested that if we do participate next time, that our focus on "product-marketing" marketing must be much stronger and less focused on community building or even not at all. If that's the case, it would make more sense that someone from Product Marketing and from Business Development lead our participation next year.
  • before the fair begins, we should be very clear about the "Do's and Don'ts" when manning the booth, particularly with regards to doing email, eating and drinking at the booth. The booth was not always "tidy" and tidiness and being attentive with our visitors is essential.
  • we should define more clearly what our objective is at CeBIT and what we specifically want out of our participation, with a more detailed set of metrics. If we see CeBIT as a corporate event where the focus is mainly to discuss potential partnerships and distribution deals, then we need to be very clear about this when communicating our participation at CeBIT to the community and expect to alienate some contributors keen to help us at the booth. I think our booth can be both community-focused and corporate focused but finding the right balance will be a challenge.
  • we should have a larger booth very similar to the booth OpenOffice.org had, with dedicated "pods" by theme (eg. Support, Partnerships, Developer/Labs space) and a small presentation are with plasma screen with scheduled presentations - of course, that would entail a sponsorship fee 2 or 3 times higher.
  • make sure that we have a SUMO and Thunderbird expert at all times at the booth to be able to answer questions
  • devise a way to process feedback more systematically (eg. dedicated note-taker at the booth inputting feedback and suggestions from visitors on a wiki)
  • more and larger demo screens

Patrick Finch

- What worked:
  • good to have a booth uniform
  • lots of interest in Fx
  • Fx swag v popular, although should aim beyond swag distribution
  • Community volunteers brought energy to the booth
- What didn't:

Booth discipline

  • presentation
  • known talking points
  • clear rules of booth engagement, e.g. eating in booth, emailing in booth
  • a coverage schedule that people stick to
  • German language skills more important at Cebit than last year it seems

Marketing campaigns

  • need more relevance to the audience (Opentochoice not obvious to audience)


- Suggestions for improvement:

Product marketing game - in general

  • demos
  • product roadmaps
  • product related campaigns (security, privacy etc)

Community (i.e. Contributor) marketing

  • proper CTAs for getting involved w. L10N etc.
  • what are our on-ramps ?

Mobile / Services / Labs

  • any marcomms would be useful, demos better

Thunderbird knowledge

  • can MoMo help?

Barbara Hueppe

- What worked:

- What didn't:

- Suggestions for improvement:

Carsten Book

- What worked:
  • Hall 2 was great location
  • The Blue "Team" clothes were building a kind of corporate idenity
  • Our Talks - definitely worked - also a lot of people were listening on live streams
  • The Hotels in Wolfsburg - i really liked the train ride (again) and also the hotels were ok. (for the House in hanover, maybe considering back hotels next year would been maybe a idea :)
- What didn't:
  • in general i wonder if we took CeBIT Serious because a lot of No-Go's happened
    • Working at the Booth while people stand in front of you or sitting in the back of the booth checking mails, working on stuff is just a fail and looks like we ignoring people - IMHO the biggest point we need to fix - CeBIT is not a EU-CAMP or FOSDEM where this might be ok. Started when we got Internet Access again.
    • Plan ahead of being there ! During CeBIt 2009 the Crew was planning also with delays and to be ONTIME at the booth - being late 50 minutes after fair opening on a high visitors traffic day is in my view just inadmissible. Delays/missed connections can happen every time - but i wonder if planning ahead with transportation is so complicated - was never a issue during CeBIT 2009.
    • Eating at the booth - maybe something that we should move outside of the booth next time.
  • Wrong Focus for wrong Fair ?
    • CeBIT is/was/will not be a Community Event - CeBIT is a trade show (and our booth was in the business hall). The way we acted as "swag distributor" was (in my option) contrary to what CeBIt is and what we could reach here. Yes we had a lot of visitors at our booth - but i got the impression that a lot of this people only came to pick up swag (because we were the only booth at cebit doing this in this kind of ways with massive swag/badges on the frontdesk etc. In my thinking and experience we might have scared away people wanting to ask serious questions/business proposals etc. We just had a full frontdesk every time but that i think were the people already using and like Firefox - but for the people interested in knowing more about Firefox we might have been done a better job.
  • Putting Quantity over Quality ?
    • In General the same Result could you reach when you go to any various city in Germany - place a booth in the city center and distribute swag and you will also get a full booth. But is swag distributing really the goal of going of to CeBIT - i highly doubt it. See also the suggestions to improvement
  • Focus Group Wrong for CeBIT ?
    • As mentioned CeBIT is a business fair and in 2009 we had a lot of contact with business visitors (IT Pro's etc) and a lot of questions were around "why Mozilla Firefox/Thunderbird", "How can i use it in my Company", "I want to do customizations etc for my company/isp, what kind of ways/modells do you have. That conversations were 2010 way less and i think that one reason is that because of the way we handled cebit this year we scared away such people. Do you personally would go to booth who is always crowded (because of giving away things in such obvious ways).


  • One Demo Station ??
    • One Demo Station (my macbook) was way too less - especially on the last 2 days - thanks to Kai here to putting his computer as demo station on the last day.
- Suggestions for improvement:
  • Booth Schedule - but not in a way who is working when - more in a way when someone can take a break like Person x Break 11am -> 12pm and 3pm-4pm etc...
  • NO Work At the Booth Policy. Strict no work at the booth policy
  • Changing the way we do swag distribution. In my Eyes the way we did it this year turned to be more complicated and contra productive.
  • My Idea would be more:
    • Having Swag at the Booth but not showing them proactively on the desk or having like on Saturday a extra table outside of the booth with some badges. This would redirect people only looking for swag to this extra table (and away from the frontdesk section) or people just would have to ask at the frontdesk. And thats the chance to get in contact with them and to start a conversation with them - instead like this year only handing out swag and letting them go -
    • I personally prefer the way other boothes from little or big companies/projects going - to give away stuff to people you had really contacts with (like when you had a conversation with someone) or when someone is actively asking (and you have the chance to start a conversation) instead of this "Fire&Forgot" strategy we had this year.
    • Also a reduced (but more serious and deeper) conversations because of this would allow to get deeper in discussions and contacts.
    • Also reduced waiting lines are way more less daunting to business people to get in contact with them.
    • Also having more marketing employees on board (maybe the way more marketing instead of more community members) to get in contact with people interested in doing business

Chris Hofmann (quoted from email)

- What worked:
  • made important enterprise contacts
  • effective community building, with Tomcat and Tobias Leingruber making very good contacts in particular
  • we raised brand and browser awareness. There are are 30,000+ firefox logos, posters, and other items circulating though the offices, coffee shops, and homes across Germany.
  • We gave 60,000 people the chance to say they like firefox, and encouraged us to keep making a good browser, or suggest improvements and ask questions on how they could solve problems. There isn't a single event for Mozilla where we make more of these kinds of contacts with our users and supporters. We also did a few interviews with press, and radio to get key messages out and improve awareness about security (the secunia zero day confusion), project status and plans, and community participation. This work alone was worth the trip for me.
  • Paul's demos were a new addition this year and an amazing success. The drew lots of interest from web developers attending CeBIT, and people interested in the open web platform. The talks I did on labs/innovation/german market share seemed to be well received and well attended. I'm hopeful that they were.
- What didn't:
  • think we suffered some growing pains and new learning experiences about how to manage accommodations, booth/traffic layout, network set up, and how to staff and manage the stations to focus on support, web developer demos/questions, and enterprise related deployment questions. 
- Suggestions for improvement:
  • We need to find ways to improve the areas mentioned above and keep people alert and rested during the long hours of working at the conference.

Kev Needham

While I did enjoy experiencing CeBIT, I'm not sure I'd return. CeBIT is a trade show, and the reduced marketing represenation past the first day was a little puzzling for me. It's not clear to me whether we consider CeBIT as a trade show or a community event, but my expectation had been that it was the former. It felt a lot more like the latter, and there was not a significant amount of interest (by visitor volume) from organizations, which was also not consistent with the expectations that had been set with me about it. It was a very good learning experience, but I'm not convinced it was an effective use of time for me in my role. I definitely think it was a successful community event with very high traffic, lots of fans (and a few detractors), and a high level of interest in the booth and the people working it.

From a technical/process perspective, we should probably devote some time and/or resources on a booth HowTo. There's a lot of lessons learned there that will apply elsewhere (and I suspect already have), and we could focus on booth layout, fit-up (promotional material, information systems, testing, etc.), personnel scheduling, dos & donts, messaging/delivery, pre and post show briefings, etc. I think that's separate from CeBIT specifically, but it's a good place to start.

  • What worked: Great visibility, brand recognition, and attendee interest. Good exposure to consumer and business groups/visitors, with lots of product related questions (most support related, but a good mix across many subjects). Engaged visitors and booth teams; lots of questions asked and answered. Firefox and T-Bird swag giveaways were successful.
  • What didn't: Language was at times a barrier, with the number of native speakers limited. My expectation had been that it was primarily a B2B show, but from the numbers/types of people, I found the visitors were overwhelmingly consumer, with a few businesses in there. No apparent messaging strategy/focus for the show. Booth discipline/presentation was (to me) lacking, and at times it appeared very disorganized and/or unkempt. No prepared messaging/pitches/demo limited effectiveness of our presence. Unilingual english opentochoice postcards caught a lot of eyeballs, but didn't deliver any message. The Open Source section of CeBIT was focused more on how to make money with Open Source than Open Source projects or philosophy. Technology fail (network, non-dedicated show minis, demos).
  • Suggestions for improvement: Stated goals of Mozilla's attendance at the show would be helpful in setting overall tone. If there are messages we want to promote (such as OTC), make sure everyone is briefed on the delivery. Clear guidelines on what's expected from participants staffing the booth, before anyone arrives. Ensure there is at least two native speakers at any time. Science-fair type demos and/or messaging displays would have made a little more effective use of the space (show people what we're doing/interested in, get them talking). Re-jigger booth configuration to deflect swag-seekers and invite people who want to learn about the project offerings and messages. Make sure there is SUMO team representation at events with large numbers of users. Invite Mozilla Messaging along, or have some way to direct users to the right person there.

Paul Rouget

- What worked:
  • All the event long, we had at least one or two people at the booth ready to answer public's question.
  • Different kind of people to answer different kind of question (community, marketing, tech, ...)
  • People love swags
- What didn't:
  • Too many "open to choice" swags.
  • People not attracted at all by this campaign.
  • T-Shirt distribution was too much chaotic
- Suggestions for improvement:
  • Have something to show: Firefox 4, HTML5
  • Show people we are here to meet them: let us notes (post-it), couch, ...

Irina Sandu

- What worked:


  • It was great to see so many enthuziast Firefox fans.
  • great location and traffic
  • increased awareness among the thousands of people at CeBIT
  • positioned Mozilla as a presence in trade fairs/interested in business partnerships
  • we stood out as a very popular booth
  • involved community members in evangelizing Mozilla once again; saw again how good and dedicated community members can be
  • we got a sense of what our users are saying
- What didn't and suggestions for improvement:
  • too small of a booth for the amount of people
  • only one computer for demos; next time we should have one for demos, one for support questions, one for showing people the newest Firefox features/campaigns
  • need different areas for different audiences: support questions, demos, partnerships etc.
  • Wifi wasn't working at CeBIT or in the accomodation facility
  • next time we need to have a clear list of what and how we want to communicate to booth visitors; a CTA for potential community members, a CTA for Firefox users (e.g. "Check out what's coming up in the next version of Firefox"), Thunderbird users; for potential partners (e.g. BYOB)

Tobias Leingruber

- What worked:

- What didn't:

- Suggestions for improvement:

Kadir Topal

- What worked:
  • Getting in touch with users: Because we don't have any shops, this is the only time for us to get in touch with our actual users. We did that rather well and should focus much more on that in the future. This is also because a lot of the visitors at the Cebit are not the business type, but private visitors, especially in the Open Source area.
  • Learning about users problems: Talking with real users about real problems turned out to be very fruitful. People take a lot more time and are more patient when they have a real person in front of them.
  • Letting people show that they like Firefox: We gave away a lot of swag and people really wanted it. I have seen lots of people with the Firefox badges on their jackets whereas they didn't use most of the other commercial swag. People are proud of using Firefox and we should encourage that. Next time we need much, much more swag.
  • Letting people tell us how much they like Firefox: Coming from support, most of the time I hear how bad Firefox is, this was a nice change. Next time we should have a "wall of postcards" or something along the lines, where people can be creative and tell us and others how they feel about Firefox


- What didn't AND Suggestions for improvement:
  • Letting people show their love for Firefox: next time we need swag that shows more than just the word mark or the icon. Something along the lines of "I <3 Firefox" etc.
  • We only had one computer to show Firefox demos and it was a Mac. Most of our users are on Windows, and showing them a solution for their problem on a Mac is sometimes not possible. Next time we need a more computers, with Windows, Linux and Mac OS.
  • We didn't show people much new Firefox stuff. Next time we should prepare nightlies of Firefox. Yes, almost all of our stuff is public, but people don't know about it. Showcasing the new Firefox 4.0 user interface would have been very nice.
  • We didn't get many people involved. While we did a pretty good job of reaffirming people they made the right choice with Firefox, we didn't provide people with an easy and clear way to tell us, that they want to get involved. Next time we should have one person with a badge or poster making it clear that we want people to get involved.
  • The accommodation was pretty bad. No internet access and a freezing cold room. I felt rather uncomfortable.

Kai Engert

- What worked:

- What didn't:
  • Booth layout and Computers: Our booth in 2009 was much smaller, but we managed to demo in parallel with 3 computers. This year there was only 1 computer. Given that I had heard "the booth in 2010 is much bigger than last year's" I was really surprised. I'm glad I brought a laptop and was able to do some additional demoing and helping people, looking up information etc.
  • Communication: There should have been an information email to us participants with details how the booth would look like, what's there and what's not.
  • Internet: There was only a single Ethernet cable for the whole booth. Why hasn't there been any hub or switch to share the Internet connection? These cost just 20€, and I've could easily brought one from home. Luckily I brought my own 3G wireless Internet stick, which allowed me to do some demoing.
- Suggestions for improvement:
  • Internet, switch, cables
  • Smaller main desk, optimize for demo stations.
  • I personally don't see a benefit in a purely random T-Shirt distribution within a random 2 minutes period. In my opinion the T-Shirt distribution should be tied to some action, like people who really show an interest to contribute to the project, make suggestions, etc. Those deserve a T-Shirt more than random visitors who happen to be strong enough to fight against 50 other people standing next to them.

General Conclusion

Download summary presentation (PDF)

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