GITEX: The Good, the Bad, the Nasty

DUBAI, 18 September 2007 — GITEX Technology Week has come and gone, but it will be back for sure next year because many exhibitors have already paid a year in advance for the privilege of exhibiting at the trade show. Dates for next year have been announced as Oct. 19-23. The timing is better and the weather will be better, but there will also be lots of other activities on those dates, so an improved show is not guaranteed.

GITEX was a more serious event this year and that was fine. Unfortunately, the event still had elements of a boy’s club. At a show held throughout GITEX Week called the “Gadget Glam,” half-dressed women danced and strutted their stuff on a mini-stage while holding various pieces of hardware. The Gadget Glam attracted large crowds of hooting and whistling males and didn’t seem to have anything to do with technology. What that crowd wasn’t aware of was the scene in the nearby women’s restroom where the Gadget Glam models changed into their costumes in full view and did their make up sitting on top of the sinks. While I wish I could have sold tickets to the restroom sideshow, it’s not something that any businesswoman wants in her face. In the Gulf we are supposed to have a culture of respect for women, but it wasn’t evident at GITEX.

GITEX was trying to demonstrate that it is moving with the times by dividing the show into several parts, with the aim of grouping technologies together. The organizers produced a comprehensive catalog and floor guides but these only demonstrated how old fashioned they are in their thinking. There was no electronic version of the show catalog. No CD of the catalog that could be searched. Each catalog weighed more than a kilo and at the end of a long day it was a terrible thing to carry around — the space it took up in my luggage was also nasty.

Dubai is also positioning itself as a city of the world but I noticed that the sense of inclusiveness still isn’t manifest at GITEX. I spoke with Khaled, a young man confined to a wheelchair. As we made our way through the show floor he pointed out all the stands which weren’t wheelchair accessible. Even some stands that have small ramps aren’t accessible because those ramps were designed for cargo trolleys and are too narrow to accommodate a wheelchair. At some expos it is a show requirement that the stands must be accessible by the disabled. It seems that this should be the case at GITEX as well.

There is one last point which might not seem like much to some people, but there were many Saudis who mentioned it, so I went to have a look. In Hall 6 was the stand of Digital Identification Solutions (DIS), a company that offers secure credential solutions. They had a display of all their partners regionally. The display was made up of national flags. The Saudi flag with the Shahada, or testimony of a Muslim’s belief, was placed toward the bottom of the display. When the matter was mentioned to the DIS marketing representative on the stand, he became extremely defensive — although he was clueless as to the meaning of Shahada.

While I am not suggesting that Digital Identification Solutions put the Saudi flag in that placement with the intention to insult, the fact of the matter is that it was culturally insensitive. The Saudi flag doesn’t fly at half mast even on the death of our king. The GITEX organizers should have given guidelines to avoid such a situation and should step in when protocol has been breached.