Tag Archive for 'italy'

Milan Burst

This week I’m circling on the Milan orbit.
My headquarters until friday will be the newly opened and very white Cowo, a coworking space in the forever up and coming Lambrate area. Monday actually started exploring the neighbourhood and ended up with an introductory coffee for Alberto to the place.
Milan these days is bursting with the usual plethora of activities, events, gallery openings and performances that accompanies the Salone del Mobile. Usually the sensation at the end of the week is that you ran around for days, missing one shiny event after the other, and getting drunk in the process.
Tonight I’ve been very briefly at the Fabbrica del Vapore, an interesting, totally cool, ex industrial space now converted to creative studios, galleries and performance spaces. Conversation and the usual nice conversation with Vanz.
Among the many, I’m looking forward tomorrow to go and have a peek at Lago’s new space, and absolutely visit the Peter Greenaway installation at Palazzo Reale.
On Friday I’m looking forward to aggregate some Openspime and Arduino crowd, let there be dork.

wee-e-e-e-e-e-eek

True, I said one week out :)

I’ve been spending a couple of weeks (almost non stop) kindly hosted by a client’s office in order to facilitate the launch of their new project.
Apparently there’ll be more (support, documentation, handover, other than the fun bug-squashing) so until the end of the month you’ll find me in the Fleet Street area more than in SE1.
Interesting discovering of the past week: the Leon Gobi.

I also realized that I didn’t write a word about the week spent in Italy.
I was at a Barcamp in Turin where I did a presentation about webdesign-meet-gamedesign (here my slides, in Italian), and at the girlgeekdinner in Milan (where I wasn’t the only UK based guest, as Sarah Blow, Maz Hardey and Amanda Lorenzani were also there).

The other surprise from my trip I wanted to write about is OpenSpime: almost by chance, stepping by Leandro’s, I had the chance to see a live preview of the first prototype, amazing. Good luck with the tour now, and call me in for the next brainstorm :P

To understand OpenSpime in a nutshell, watch this interview to David Orban on YDN:


One week out

Another intense week is over. Apparently.
Tomorrow morning I’ll jump on a plain, waste some carbon and go back to Italy for a week, where I plan to attend the Barcamp in Turin and (if I can find a way to sneak in) the girlgeekdinner in Milan (oh there will be other international guests this time!). After last year’s barcamp boom, eventually Italy seems to be discovering alternative meetup formats, as the aforementioned geekdinner and the minibar (first one held in Milan last week), and I’d like to keep up with the buzz.

About the barcamp, I’ll probably do a presentation together with Kurai about where game design meets web design. If it turns out well I’ll try to translate the slides and write about it.
Another option could be an overview of the social graph conversation (with openID, OAuth, DiSO as the main buzzwords).

I’ll be back in March and looking forward the Arduino workshop by Tinker.it

Italian newspaper apologizes for missing links to UGC source (yay!)

In this post on the newspaper blog, Marco Pratellesi, chief editor at Corriere della Sera, apologizes for having published the gallery of the mysterious digital artist Paulthewineguy without link nor references. Babysteps, yet steps they are.

Bikes business

Saw already twice (Joi’s and Matt Jones’s) this morning a link to Mission Bicycles, an interesting project just started where you can design your own bike, that starts as a “light steel frame fixed gear bike with high quality components, a custom paint job, no visible branding”.

That reminded me of Stefano and SlyWay, an Italian bike design studio I’ve been involved with in their early stages of, a few years ago. I went to check the website and I’m glad to see it now features several videos and models.
They still focus on the recumbent concept but apparently have several different “interpretations” of it. Quite cool!

I need to nag them though for the absence of microformats and whatsoever form of interaction on the website (well, there is a network, but pretty static). However on youtube you can find a few videos… enjoy! :)

PiuBlogCamp, once upon a time…

So next sunday in Rome there’ll be the PiuBlogCamp that is supposed to be summa of the experience of Barcamps in Italy since the BzaarCamp of September 2007 to today.The idea is more than interesting. However, the wiki looks quite full of participants but quite poor in ideas and proposals for conversations. Also asking a little bit around to the people who’ll be there lead to many “hmmm not really sure what I’ll be speaking about” answers”.Is the BarCamp phenomena in Italy coming to a dead end? What can still be learned, what shuold be changed and what needs to stay? I hope the people in Rome will discuss these topics too.As for myself, I think the things we never experimented in Italy and would definitely make a difference are:

  • opening up to international audience (i.e. supporting english speaking participants ) 
  • experiment with a full two-day (and night in between) event.

I may not be able to attend, but in case, one potential presentation, badly needed in my opinion, would be on free hugs

A lazy day in hometown

Finally managed to take a break from the City, jumped on an easyjet and safely landed this side of the Alps.
Spent the first day with the family, and the second essentially sleeping and “decompressing” (which means that I’ve been in constant touch with London but not taking any commitment): I just can’t take a sudden break, I know only too well.
While I was there, I took the chance to have a few walks around town to progressively get in touch with the old (most) and the new (very little).
I also took note of the different perceptions, main one being related to amplitude vs. definition: London is bigger, faster, louder than here; colours, sounds, smells… they travel fast and are all-encompassing, while at the same time blending and mixing in a multidimensional smoothie. And leaving gaps behind, gaps much wider than those you can find on the shores of river Po, for instance: there’s a discontinuous thread that connects the social, cultural and architectural fabric and if you look carefully enough you’ll be able to see the difference in texture.
In the modest perfection of the elders dressed up for their monday walk through the village.
In the forsaken ground floor windows of ex shops on the south of the Thames.
In the orange rusty spots of a worn out corkscrew laid on the counter of the loco winery, permeated by the smell of laugh and salt and the regular ticks of a large, round wall clock.
Even in the

crowd assembled outside of a pub, consuming the after work pint.

Then you can start speculating on what can cause or be caused by this different texture. Suit yourself.

Me? I’ll be walking through Milan tomorrow. I have an exhibition to see and a few friends to meet. If you want to have a drink or coffee together, drop me an email, tweet, pidgeon by tomorrow morning.

iAble video out in the wild :)

Good old Babele posted a video (in Italian) of the iAble, the office suite totally controlled through eye tracking developed at SRLabs (the last Italian company I worked with before moving to the UK).