DUEPUNTPOZERO live blogging

Posted on 05/10/2006 by admin

10.30
Here I am at the Web 2.0 conference in a wonderful castle near turin. Leeander just finished his introduction on the Web 2.0 phenomenon and I’m now listening to the series of talk related to Semantic Web.

11.00
The first talk is by Andrea Marchesini, kinda basic stuff or – better to say – introductory concepts to the semantic web. The audience is very business related (even if I can recognize some geeks among it) so this is probably the reason for the basic content of the talk.

11.15
Valentina Pressutti starts her talk with a Semantic application example based on Mediawiki where some German folks developed a semantic notation plugin.
Her example is based on an semantic based intelligent system that can perform suggestions based on the best user to perform the desired action.
Her VERY interesting talk then introduced the NEON project (CNR) which studies how to create and collaboratively maintain an onthology so to suggest the user the notaqtion to be used.

17.00
I was on the stage till now and – btw – the wi-fi connection had some creepy problems that made it mostly unreliable for most of the time (Murphy’s law in action my dear).
The topics were really cuttin’ edge and I enjoied most of them unfortunately I was only able to take notes on my mind manager, so that you won’t find them blogged but just on the mind map (note: Italian only, sorry).

23.05
Finally some relax on my coach. Some post-portem thoughts on the conference:

The place was great: a medieval castle with modern art installments all around and a breathless natural scenasio all around
The organization was great: wi-fi (when working ) open to all, a lot of microphones, seats for all, and a great control room that managed both the videos and audios.
The speaker choice was great: I’d say that nearly 85% of the speakers really got my attention. (just to give you some more parameters: in the average conference this percentage barely reaches 50%)
The catering was great: good Piedmont products well cooked and served directly to your dish with a nice choice of cheeses and wine.

Bonus content

My photos
All the photos
My notes (PDF file)
My slides (on Slideshare)

Marvin Minsky in Italy

Posted on 29/09/2006 by admin

This evening – after a 3+ hrs trip to Bergamo (while it usually takes no more that 45mins) – I enjoyed together with my colleagues Marco (who’s also my office pal) and Flavio Minsky’s conference as I previously blogged (Leeander was at the conference too but unfortunately we haven’t managed to meet).

Minsky is a genious. He can be defined as one of the inventors of Artifical Intelligence but – GOSH – he’s definitely crap at creating slides and managing them in a conference (back and forth, back and forth, back and forth…).

I’ve wrote down a mind map (warning mixed Italian + English inside) for my loyal readers.

Forthcoming speaking appointments

Posted on 28/09/2006 by admin

I’m starting my autumn season for seminars next week, and I’d say that yours truly has been invited as a speaker to pretty interesting and high level seminars this year.

We’ll start on Monday 3 October with a so trendy Web 2.0 closed group seminar in Torino (yes, where we had Olimpic Games early this year) in a medieval castle. The stage should be pretty interesting based on what the organizers told me. But just the fact to talk about innovative technologies inside a castle is really amazing.
What am I gonna to talk about? Mobup my friends. And how we managed to have a multi-level mash-up between the phisical and the digital worlds.

On October 10th I’ll daily commute to Rome (Trenitalia PLEASE stay stick to your timetable!) for a talk at the Tor Vergata University organised uber-cool Interfacce06 Conference speaking about the international User Experience group I’m representing in Milan: UXnet.

This year I’m also actively participating as Regional Liason for the organization at a European level of the UPA organized World Usability Day 2006 acting as a link between all the european event organizers and the central comitee (pretty interesting job though). I’ll also have a small speech at the Milan WUD event at the Bicocca University with a UXnet based speech, again.

Tomorrow I’ll be in Bergamo to listen to a seminar by Marvin Minsky (Genious and MIT AI Lab founder) on emotional robots. I’m not speaking, but will be a nice chance to chat with some old friends in the innovation business.