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DUEPUNTPOZERO live blogging
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)
Sigurtà Garden: a bad example of italianity
Update: be sure to give a read to the comments below.
I spent last friday with my family in one of the least known and most spectacular gardens in Italy: the Sigurtà garden. it extends over 125 acres and was built in 1600; it hosted ancients VIPs such as Napoleon the 3rd and is open to the public since 1978.
It’s really a jewel and since a few years we visit it once per year to be astonished by its treasures. We like to rent a golf-kart to go through the garden since its quite huge (more then 6 kilometers of drivable paths): it’s a enjoiable experience and the best way to experience the various sights the garden offers.
The cost of the kart is 12€ per hour and it can hold a maximum of 4 people (don’t ask me why, this is the park law).
After this long intro let’s go directly to the reason for this post (with a subject so unusual here on Yellow Line . We took the cart at 3pm and enjoyed a wonderful visit to the park (they use electric power and have a pretty poor top speed, so it’s confortable for a man follow the kart by feet).
We were 5 + Francesca (Barbara, my mom and dad, my sister and yours truly) BUT – for the last 500m – my father reached us on the kart and once of the park patrol immediately stopped us asking for one people to leave.
When we left the kart (it was 5pm) at the rental office they asked us an extra amount of 3€ per hour for the extra people the patrol reported driving the kart (I don’t want to go against this decision, we made a mistake and it was ok for me to pay for this. I made the sum and lend 30€ to the officer, but then he asked for other euros since – he said – we took the kart at 14.35 (I was sure – as previously said – it was 3pm since I had a call frpm Barbara in the very moment they gave me the kart keys, and my phone took the call at 15.02pm).
So we had to pay the extra half-hour EVEN IF we didn’t ejnoied it. 37euros against the scheduled 24€ (+6€ of ticket for our error) with no receipt from the park officer. I complainded strongly about this but no money was refunded.
This is my first effort to keep everybody aware of this (the park is plenty with foreign tourtists): keep track of the time you take the kart and double check it’s the same time they write on the voucher.
I’ll then forward this post to the park director citing the name of the employee who asked for the money.
Thankyou for your attention. Now back to the usual topics on user experience, cameraphones and eyetracking.