embedded world: a winning team for a cool industry

"The place to be for the entire embedded community"

 

The Executive Director  

 

Benedikt Weyerer found his way to the NürnbergMesse rather by chance. Before he joined the embedded world Exhibition&Conference, he worked in event management helping to shape the cultural and nightlife in Bavaria and Austria. Today the embedded community continues to benefit from this experience, for example at the legendary exhibitor parties held on the first day of the exhibition.

Trained as a business economist, Weyerer first had to find his feet in the embedded industry. "At the beginning, I knew very little about embedded systems. But I found a great mentor in Prof. Matthias Sturm, our former technical advisor, who imparted knowledge to me with an amazing calmness and serenity and answered all my questions," Weyerer says with a laugh. "Without him I would not have grown into this industry so quickly.”  Together with the event team, he has been organizing the embedded world Exhibition&Conference for ten years now.

The team

The event team is a colorful group that Benedikt Weyerer can absolutely rely on.

Brigitte Seipt has been the face of the embedded world sales team from the very beginning; she helped lay the foundation for today's event 20 years ago when it had around 8,000 m2 of exhibition space and has remained loyal to the industry ever since. "It's great to see how she is welcomed by exhibitors when you walk through the halls with her," reports Weyerer.  

With Anna-Maria Wengert, Lisa Kempf and Lena Skowronek, three former trainees of NürnbergMesse GmbH have now become members of the embedded team. Their tasks include sales and organization, the digital platform "talque", the start-up area and special projects such as the embedded world Student Day, exhibitor forums or the embedded award. "Strong proof of the good training we provide in-house," emphasizes Weyerer.

The core team also includes Michelle Eiser, Sales Manager for the USA, the United Kingdom, Ireland and Canada, as well as Svenja Hartmann, Doreen Wassermann and Jessica Kohler, who pull the strings from planning to organization.  

"The whole team has the trade show bug. That sounds odd in the meantime, but it’s the best way to describe it," says Weyerer. "Once you have it, you can't get rid of it all that easily. The last two years have proven that. Not to throw in the towel, you had to be firm in your conviction that you had a cool job. Our goal as a team during this difficult time was always to get embedded world back on its feet, and to do that we all pulled together and gave everything - no matter what new challenges we were confronted with," says Benedikt Weyerer appreciatively.  

However, in addition to the event team many others at NürnbergMesse work in the background to ensure that the embedded world Exhibition&Conference continues to be a success. This is particularly important to Benedikt Weyerer, which is why he lists them all here: colleagues from the marketing team, from the protocol department, from the event’s technical department, the logistics and security departments, from the internal organizing teams of the Ticketshop, for signage, visitor services, facility and finance departments. In total, more than 50 members of staff at NürnbergMesse are involved in the running of the event, at least part of the time...

"And then there are our service partners - from electricity, water etc. to marketing and catering to cleaning and waste disposal. Without these people, a trade show like embedded world could not function," emphasizes Weyerer.

The industry

With regard to technical competence, NürnbergMesse has a number of expert sparring partners in its corner. Together with the WEKA Fachmedien team, Prof. Dr.-Ing. Axel Sikora, Chairman of the embedded world Conference, Prof. Dr. Karlheinz Blankenbach, Chairman of the Conference Advisory Board of the electronic displays Conference, the members of the Steering Board and the Advisory Board, work is continuously carried out to ensure the high quality of the event and make it what it has always been: "THE magnet and meeting place for the entire embedded community".

"We post a motivational message for our co-workers on our company intranet at the start of every trade fair and this year I wrote: 'The embedded community is back in town'. I did that because it's a cool industry with even cooler people, for whom embedded world is the platform where everyone meets," Benedikt Weyerer tells us enthusiastically. "At embedded world young meets old, experience meets newcomer, national meets international, start-up meets global player, and everyone is focused on embedded systems - that's what makes this industry so appealing." Weyerer continues.

The event

A personal highlight in the annual preparation process is, for the Executive Director, the end of the early bird discount: "After that, the planning phase begins in earnest - it's a big challenge and a huge puzzle every time!"

The countdown for the embedded world Exhibition&Conference starts with the build-up. "When 300 to 400 exhibitors set up at the same time, unique mechanisms interact. Almost like a huge ballet that partly choreographs itself and from then on it becomes real. ", reports Weyerer.  

The embedded award, the digital platform "talque", the exhibitor forums and the embedded world Student Day are all projects that help make the preparations for embedded exciting for the event manager and his entire team. "When, on the third day of embedded, in addition to the usual business activity in the halls, more than 1,000 students can be seen roaming the exhibition grounds, you can already get a glimpse of the future of this industry," says Weyerer enthusiastically.

Since 2019, there has also been an embedded world Start-up area for domestic and international start-ups from the embedded industry. One of the area's first participants was a software start-up from France, which actually won the embedded award in the start-up category that year. "Last year, the managing director of the company called me to say that embedded world is the most important trade fair for him, because he made his first business contacts with a future investor here, and his business is now ramping up," says Weyerer, "That's great feedback for us.”

Of course, there are hard facts, such as visitor numbers, exhibition space and numbers of new leads generated, by which the success of an event can be measured. But for Weyerer, success becomes much more tangible during the event in the halls: "If a customer doesn't have time for me during the show because he or she has so many meetings at the stand, then that's a good indicator of a successful exhibition."

Digital expansion

"The topic of hybrid exhibitions is still very complex at the moment because everyone understands it differently," explains Weyerer when asked about hybridizing events. "We were forced to create an alternative during the pandemic, which we implemented very well. However, the experience from 2022 shows that purely digital offerings are not a substitute for real face-to-face encounters, but that a digital extension can definitely be an enhancement."  

2023 will see the launch of the digital platform "talque"  which is an app with product and exhibitor directories, hall plans and supporting programme.  As a visitor tool it enables optimal preparation and follow-up of the embedded world Exhibition&Conference as well as a good orientation for a successful visit. The entire programme "which includes more than 200 hours of concentrated expert knowledge" - cannot be completely covered in the three days of the show. Digital extension thus allows participants to re-visit any selected part of the lecture programme as a recording after the event.

Topics of the future

With the claim "embedded. responsible. sustainable." the 2023 embedded world Exhibition&Conference will focus on two topics which are key for the future of the embedded industry. How do embedded systems help make the digital world more sustainable and how can embedded systems themselves be made more sustainable? These two sides of the sustainability coin will be explained in-depth at the exhibition and conference.  

But of course the NürnbergMesse also has to address the issue itself. Since 2016, for example, only green electricity has been used in the exhibition halls, the event already employs a high percentage of reusable system stands and from 2024 onwards sustainably certified exhibition stands will be introduced. Furthermore, the event team is currently looking into eco-certified carpeting and switching to recyclable paper for ticketing. "Looked at individually, these are all small steps, but taken together, they pave the way toward more sustainable event execution," emphasizes Executive Director Benedikt Weyerer, and adds "we constantly ask ourselves whether we can't use a more sustainable substitute product."

NürnbergMesse is also working on a company-wide sustainability strategy, of which only a few points can be commented on here: Hall 3C, for example, was built to the highest environmental standards. Almost all exhibition halls have now been converted to LED lighting. A large photovoltaic project with innovative storage facilities is planned at the exhibition center in Nuremberg in the next few years. With regard to catering, attention is always paid to the use of more sustainable packaging solutions and regional products.

The economic and social dimensions of sustainability quickly bring us to the second topic of the future, namely responsibility. In 2022, an expert panel and a keynote address were already dedicated to "Ethics and AI". In 2023, further aspects of this subject will be taken up and discussed at the embedded world Exhibition&Conference.  

The embedded community can once again look forward to three stimulating days at the exhibition and conferences from March 14-16, 2023. Or, to put it in the words of Benedikt Weyerer: "embedded world is the annual place to be for the entire embedded community!"