IFA Berlin - Consumer Electronics Show

In September the annual  Berlin Consumer Electronics Show is staged  for several days. IFA (Internationale Funkausstellung - International Radio Exhibition) Berlin is a long running trade show and is now regarded as one of the premier events of its type in the world.

I had heard about the event beforehand but did not intend to go, that was until a friend that works at Sony (one of the exhibitors) was able to wangle us both some trade tickets.

So we went off the the exhibition which is held at the ICC Berlin (Internationales Congress Centrum). Inside the ICC, which was built in 1979, it looked like an airport and also what the architects must have thought the future would look like. The future looked pretty 70's.

It wasn't very busy in this airport looking part of the ICC, but we only had to get past this space to get lost in a confusing array of large exhibition halls that were bustling with people.

There was all kinds of things going on, like musical performances,

Lots of cooking demonstrations,

And a few live television 'tapings' in progress,

We were interested in seeing what free stuff we could get but with bad timing we managed to miss out on all of the free food stuff - either too early or too late. :(

What was easy to get was coffees. As many of these electronics and homewares companies make coffee machines there was a plethora of places to sample how their machine made the best cup.

We took it slow and tried not to be silly about it, but still had about four coffees each.

Buzzing off our chops from the coffee we zipped around the conference halls with a loose objective to find the Sony exhibition - which was supposed to be huge.

It took us a while as the layout was so confusing. We saw most of the exhibits and played around with a few things - I got to play with a camera that up until then had only just read about. I don't think it was available for sale at that point, like many of the products there.

Eventually we found the Sony exhibit, where I played with an unreleased computer / tablet thing that was pretty cool - with its flip around screen, solid state drives and fancy construction.

There was so much 'stuff' there, everything looks so slick and cool. Much of it you don't dare to ask the price tag or when you do you act as if you can afford it.

I'm not one for the constant turn around of technology, and posed the question to myself regarding everything I handled or admired of 'Do I need this?'. In all cases my answer was no. I don't need any of this super cool, chic, 'revolutionary', latest, can't live without devices.

It is fun to look at though!

We got another coffee before leaving.