First on that largest claim. There are certainly a lot of trade stands here - over 200. But visitors are pretty thin on the ground - and talking to other exhibitors - buyers are even harder to find. Most people are going around - sniffing out the competition.

So what do the products look like? Much the same is the answer - much the same as each other and much the same as last year. True there are some beautiful large display screens with all sorts of fancy interactive gadgets. But the e-learning software looks much the same as ever - endless learning management systems, quite a few CMS systems and a good lot of coms programmes.

Nothing pedagogically exciting. Not a blog application in sight. Little talk about interoperability or standards. Not a whisper on informal learning. I was talking about this in the pub last night and someone said - if they all go for informal learning how is anyone going to make any money out of it? And there is the rub. All these stands are here to attract the corporate buyers - the big companies. Germany is in recession and training is one of the first areas to suffer. Hence the lack of buyers. But if I am right in my feeling that e-learning will find its feet as an application promarily for self driven informal learning - then we are going to have to think very hard about the financial models which will underpin it.