drupa inside – a closer look from outside

by Andrea Köhn

This year I was not able to visit drupa, because I was expecting my second child at the end of April. Nonetheless, I was involved in drupa projects and management like the coordination of the drupa cube program as much as possible. But a few weeks before drupa started, I was only able to follow the developments and news from behind my computer at home.

So I was more than glad, that this year the Messe Düsseldorf team offered a lot of information from drupa via social media channels like Twitter and Facebook! In addition they also produced and published short videos and interviews, for example from the drupa cube-focus days, the red sofa interviews and news from several interesting booth directly from the trade halls.

I remember very well that I was already in hospital when the first press conferences started on 2nd may, and I was able to follow all tweets from my journalist colleagues. It was amazing to see for example on the fly pictures and short films from the first presentation of the new nanographic machines from Landa Inc.! I was surprised how many of the journalists were using Twitter and their links to LinkedIn to publish what they see. Some even commented already on the news they saw, so for me this was unique and very helpful.

On 3rd may, the first day of drupa 2012, my son was born, but until then, I followed the #drupa tweets providing me with an overview of the different events. Thanks to the digital media and my iPhone, I was in direct contact with my colleagues in Düsseldorf. I even virtually joined the first focus session in the drupa cube, which was great!

After a couple of days I was watching all the videos which gave me a very complete picture of what was happening in Düsseldorf. Also the social media interaction was a new, helpful and powerful experience. Re-tweets from Twitter accounts and comments on the Facebook profile were interesting and vivid.

This year's social media drupa visit was strange, but effective. It felt like I had been there personally, only missing the parties and the chats with business people and friends. The lack of sleep was the same though, because of the „drupa“-baby.

People from all over the world benefits from the information via the social media channels. I hope this will be used more and more and extended until drupa 2016.