I went to the UAE pavillion which was hard to get into:

renewable energy was cool:

lots of solar panels

Some countries showed how they could help improve the word, others how cool they were, and others had just displays on future things they were hoping to do (i.e. vaporware ;) )

Got to visit the Emirates (airline) pavillion, pretty cool:

virtual flight of the future

China was supposed to have a drone show, but did not on sunday, the day I came, they had interesting displays, but also showed how much of a surveillance society they were (I'm sure it wasn't their intent, but I guess I can't even tell):

Things got nice a night:

I made it to France just before closing time (22:00 on sunday instead of 00:00)

yum

and that was it, by 22:00 everything was closed. Spent about 10H there, and even with being efficient, definitely needed 3 days or more, but I feel I got a good overview. This was not what I was in Dubai for to start with, and spent more time there than any other place I had been to, so I think it was a reasonable tradeoff (actually that same day was also the start of dubai aviation expo, but I just couldn't be everywhere).