When one goes to Systems, one always gets asked that after. "Worth it ?" is evaluated in total time & money consumed away from one's work desk, & health risks encountered. A free visitor ticket or sponsored stand, doesn't guarantee it's "Worth It", think of lost work time & damaged health - do you want to be coughing still the next day ? With heavily reduced numbers of both visitors & exhibitors the last few years, clearly many think Systems is not worth it. Systems is also damaging to passive smoker's health, just read the health warnings printed on the Many cigarette packs consumed inside Smokey Systems !

21.10.2003 I went to Systems, approx 14:00 to 17:00 leaving an hour before the close, all done ! I rushed through seeing everything of interest, being periodically assaulted with smoke both from bored exhibitors (not enough visitors to keep them busy, as usual at Systems the last few years) & more smoke from visitors polluting everywhere without restriction. Impossible to constantly observe all stands of interest & all smokers polluting, many in motion, so one inevitably ends up either not seeing stands, or acting paranoid, avoiding getting lungs periodically fulls of passing concentrated smoke.

I won't waste my time with a 2nd day's ticket, or a ticket (even if free) in future years, I don't want Systems' air poisoning my health for no business benefit. I do have product I need to buy, but I won't make contacts at Systems. Suppliers won't be led to support Smokey Systems in its present format, thinking the smoke pit they rented stand space in, brought them this non smoker's business.

Systems has been so dead the last few years, many/ most halls seem closed, & of the halls left open (7 out of 12+4=16), some have big empty spaces curtained off, many wide aisles, & more than the previous `good old economy' space percentage given to copious visitor seating, which might be nice, but that of course is largely to make the space look filled.

Part of each of those spaces is `decorated' with large ashtrays as [anti-] social gathering points, so that too is wasted unusable space for smoke averse customers, I saw nowhere to safely sit & read leaflets & plan which stands next to visit. Astounding that despite all that unused space, Systems planners provide no space I saw, safe for non smokers ! Perhaps they are so stupid they fear to designate any space as non smoking, for fear of upsetting the smoking minority, who pollute everywhere. So, the majority breath, & rub eyes from, & get partly deterred from doing business, by the legal drug addiction emission pollution of the minority.

A choice of who dies first ?
In the end smoke averse computer people such as I can perhaps only stay away, deny Systems our business, & hope Systems dies, goes bankrupt, or gets taken over by modern management, responsive to modern international clean air standards, before Systems, statistically speaking, instead kills it's share of visitors & exhibitors, by enforced exposure to smoke.

One learns to walk the far side of aisles, away from information stands along the side, because there always seem to be nicotine addicts emitting, next to the magazines, so one skips the magazines & leaflets too. - Not what the advertisers hoped for when they paid to exhibit, one presumes !

Visitors are positively encouraged to smoke, by locating large walking height ashtrays at most aisle crossings. No signs even politely ask people to smoke at the frequent easily accessible outside entrances (remember there's no crowds at Systems, it's half dead, you can walk Fast to an exit if you're a nicotine addict that needs to smoke & pollute !)

In 2001 I was an exhibitor at Systems for BIM, & ill for a month after with a chronic recurring cough I couldn't shake off, plus getting headaches each afternoon & evening of Systems exhibition from indiscriminate smoking everywhere, again both from exhibitors & visitors. That didn't do a lot for business after - try coughing Systems polluted lungs at a potential new customer on the phone, & having to divert to explain you'r not about to die before the project starts, & you haven't got anything contagious if we meet, it's just the normal result of Smoke Systems.

Systems provides a tobacco polluted exhibition area, that may or may not meet old fashioned German national standards, but fails to meet international standards of clean air. Modern computer English speaking standards of non smoke pollution are contravened by this dirty German pollution. Perhaps other cleaner exhibitions in USA, UK, Australia etc suffice ? Perhaps this dirty air exhibition is doomed to die, if it refuses to compete internationally, by providing proper modern international standards of clean air enforcement ? (After all, we have CeBit anyway in Germany, maybe more than one is superfluous, as manufacturing in the Western world is hollowing out, moving to Asia, maybe Systems is doomed to die regardless of smoke or no smoke ? ( Good riddance if it stays a smoker's haven!).

Keine Ahnung selbst, aber: Durch Änderung der Arbeitsstättenverordnung im Rahmen der Verordnung zur Rechtsvereinfachung im Bereich der Sicherheit und des Gesundheitsschutzes ..., veröffentlicht am 2. Oktober 2002 im Bundesgesetzblatt Jahrgang 2002 Teil 1 Nr. 70 Seite 3777-3816 hat der Nichtraucherschutz am Arbeitsplatz Gesetzeskraft erlangt. ......... Der Begriff Arbeitsstätten schließt auch Sozialräume wie Kantinen, Bereitschafts- und Liegeräume mit ein!
The legal protection doesn't include pubs & discos (Gaststatten etc) Is Systems, a smokey pub ? a place to drink, dance, play music, & pull members of the opposite sex ? Or do companies expect their employees to have a decent clean air environment, to minimise distraction from computer products under review ? Do business people have a right to a working environment including clean air, or to pay to be polluted by the smoke emission products of legal tobacco drug addicts.

Maybe Systems will Have to implement a clean air no smoking policy anyway, when some employees of Messe Muenchen or local & international Exhibitors start realising they're going to be smoke damaged, & start quoting German & other nations' legal requirements to protect the health of employees. Ref NID for German advice/info. Manning a stand/booth at exhibitions is often unpopular work, for numerous reasons, including being smoked at & around. The new German law may have given employees legal grounds to refuse to leave their clean offices, to have their health damaged at Smokey Systems.

With a rotten economy, & ever more international computer company employees having a legal right to clean air at work, increasingly, companies will find it easier not to book a stand at Smokey Systems, & instead find it easier to recruit employees to man the stand in other cleaner cities & countries.

If you want a cough, & the taste of smoke on your tongue & still up your nose next day, as a `souvenir' ? if you fancy a headache, & want your girl friend to tell you your shirt smells of smoke, even though you'r a non smoker ? If a shower after Systems is needed not because of sweat on a hot busy business days, but from excess smoke on a cold boring day with virtually no business leads as either customer or supplier; if you fancy the increased cancer risk from passive smoking ? ... But a smokey pub has no entry fee, no web application form, & you don't need to travel so far.

Were the exhibits worth seeing ? One was, But I could have found more products faster using a search engine. I wanted to find more product. I failed - not enough exhibitors, & no smoke free seating areas & halls to safely pause & plan next stands to visit.

Sales staff seemed resigned to getting little sales - again. Not enough customers !

I handed out just one business card to a potential buyer ! so seeking business was as barren a desert (admittedly I didn't try very hard: business climate is awful & the Systems halls have constant wafts of heavy duty smoke as you walk buy.

No - It Wasn't Worth Going

If Systems ever stops it tobacco stink, it might be worth going, one could stay longer, concentrate better, & maybe do more business, till then, not even worth getting in for free.

The staff say the `Systems' Messe is their worst polluted Messe, & that their other non computer exhibitions aren't so badly polluted. Sadly Systems management dinosaurs haven't realised this means Systems Stinks Worst.

I don't want an overdose of second hand smoke, & the irritation & health deficit, I won't go ! Won't buy a visitors ticket, Won't exhibit there, Won't damage the health of self or work associates there. If I need to exhibit, I'll visit a decent clean air site in UK, USA, or Australia, & not Smoke Systems. There's not exactly many visitors at Systems with money in their pockets anyway, the German economy's half dead at least with respect to planning new computer systems, & if it stinks, you get a cough & headache, & smokey clothes, why bother ? Easier faster cleaner, to surf the web & use a search engine, & do business by phone.

I informed many people Systems was on this year, & how to get promotional tickets (In 2003. Instead of buying a 23.20 Euro ticket, it was just necessary to tear out the coupon in the 3 Euro CT magazine & or get a free invite from a company, & fill in a web form: Presumably Systems was desperate for visitors, but there still weren't many visitors)... I foolishly contributed to raising awareness of Systems, & thus profit for Systems, (having temporarily forgotten how bad the Systems addiction to smoke is).
Such tickets presumably benefit Systems several ways:

• They can only keep selling exhibitors stand space while there are enough apparent visitors in the halls.
• Whether Systems also collects payments from promotional ticket distributors I don't know.
• Full price ticket purchasers are also more likely to visit again if the halls don't look too empty.
• It keeps visitors in the habit, even if next year there are no cheap tickets & they have to buy full price.
• Full price ticket purchasers are also likely to be drawn in, if accompanied by associates going anyway as they got a free ticket.
• Data willing given by web site applicants may be sold to 2nd &/or 3rd parties ?.

Just because someone will give you a ticket for `free' (actually in exchanging for your time & permission filing in your personal details on their web data collection form), doesn't necessarily mean it's worth accepting the offer. Think again !
Before accepting a ticket, (paid or free) do you accept you will be enveloped in smoke polluted air, for all the time you visit exhibition stands ?

I invite URL's from anyone who knows of computer exhibition centres world wide that do Not permit smoking:

• -
• -

(List opened 2003.10.21 so no entries yet.)
`Systems' is of course not eligible, until either they adopt modern standards of clean air at computer exhibitions as expected in the English speaking international computer world, or perhaps the event dies, or management get sacked or prosecuted for running an exhibition damaging to employee [& visitor] health.

• Nichtraucher-Initiative Deutschland e.V.
• Author Is Tobacco Smoke Allergic

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