IdeenExpo is all about arousing pupils' enthusiasm for technical and scientific professions. Launched in 2007, it is now Europe's largest youth event and is held every two years. We have been on board providing equipment and know-how since the event premiered at the German Pavilion on the Expo site. The success story was continued with the seventh IdeenExpo in 2019. 395,000 visitors were full of enthusiasm for over 670 exhibits and over 730 workshops. The event space at the Hannover Messe site has been enlarged to 110,000 square metres. A total of 270 companies, research institutions, universities and schools presented the young people with opportunities for a career in STEM professions.

With the setting for the event growing so rapidly, there is a clear need for N&M information and communications technology's (ICT) multi-layered expertise – from planning, set-up and commissioning right through to support for temporary installations. Starting in the planning phase, we collated all the requirements of the services involved. We were then able to determine the physical size of the network across the entire exhibition site as well the network capacity. This also included the decision to implement the network with complete redundancy.

This was realised with a data network consisting of over 70 switches and several kilometres of fibre optic cables to enable audio, video and control signals to be transmitted throughout the entire exhibition site on a flexible basis. It was made available to the users as a Managed Network Service. We provided permanent support for the installation throughout the entire week-long duration of IdeenExpo, with our experts at N&M's own “Network Operations Centre” (NOC) in Hanover taking on the task of monitoring.

Photos: Ralph Larmann for N&M