Tuesday 3 December 2013

Mauritius 2 The Return - Infotech Launch Party and the Show itself

The Launch Party

Right, cufflinks purchased and many mosquito bites later I was picked up at Mon Choix by Riad and off we went to attend the INFOTECH Launch party in the presence of the Minister of ICT, the Chair of the NCB and the Executive Director, plus around 300 various company directors, staff and other notables including my good self.
I won't bore you with the details of each speech, but each of the 3 began with the usual introductions and pleasantries that went on for about 5 minutes finally culminating with "Ladies and Gentlemen" and then to the main thrust of the speech.
I was very pleasantly surprised that Green IT was given a high priority with mention of myself and the companies we were representing and even more surprised and taken aback that the media wanted to interview me for both print and TV (I'm a bit of a celebrity on Mauritian TV don't you know ;o)

After the hour long opening ceremony, we were shown two short videos detailing the rise of ICT as a mainstay of the economy and in such a short time, and a history of the event itself, it was the 20th Edition!
Then, it was time for the Minister to visit each stand, after about 25 mins he came around to our stand and I gave him a briefing on ICEOTOPE, the liquid cooled server solution, re-iterated that the technology was well suited to hot and humid environments and that we would probably....oh sorry cant tell you the rest, its classified!
Anyway, now that the minister has visited the stand we were able to go and enjoy a few drinks and nibbles.

The Show

The show included a number of shops with show discounts, the NCB with their huge stand, advising about things such as the Green IT strategy, the jobs fair, a number of companies looking for staff for BPO and call centre operations, and of course ourselves.
We had a lot of visitors over the duration of the show, the biggest draw was the liquid cooled server solution as of course this will lead to lower capex costs in construction of the data centre and because there is no mechanical cooling, lower opex cost because you dont have to pay for the energy used by the mechanical cooling solution, win win.
The show became extremely busy over the weekend, when more people come with their families, this is when we had our most visitors as some of the main IT people on the island cant make it during the week due to work commitments, but can at the weekend.

Overall we had about 30 direct inquires regarding ICEOTOPE and we have now followed up with the majority of them (if you attended the event. but have not had an email from us with the ICEOTOPE information, please drop me a line and I'll get it to you within 24 hours (we're like that you see, we like to communicate!))

Our plans

If some of our plans come to fruition, i.e. regarding our island base, we'll be back in March or April, and we'll definitely be back in May as we have another event to attend. We obviously cant reveal our plans as yet, but as always you'll hear about them here and our social media feeds first.

Next time we'll be talking about the rains and the floods in the Vallee Des Pretes last week.

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