Marvin Minsky in Italy

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.

Enjoy.

Next speaking appointments

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.

Gabetti Open Points

Or, as I’d like to say: starting the innovation of the real estate market; Gabetti Open Points are interactive windows we started spreading through italy. They’re a 24h/7 Gabetty agency where you can search for an house or office, simulate your loan, and leave your data to be contacted by an agent.

These interactive shop windows are built using a supercool fanless hush computer, a 32′’ Nec LCD screen and a touch-sensible ultrathin film that converts the existing glass window into an input device. Even if the technology isn’t so cutting edge I’ve never seen something similar applied to a shopping experience, moreover if we talk about real estate business.

There’s an interesting effect that we observed as more and more of this open points appear in our shops: the Observers or - as my boss likes to say - the “Broken Window effect“. When you use one of our Open Points immediately a huge crowd becomes visible on your back: curious people that have never ever seen something similar: a shop window that can be touched to interact with a monitor. WOW.

If you leave in Italy (or planning a trip to) be sure to leave a comment here below. We’re starting with a promotional initiative that involves the Open Points and a mass market distribution firm. you could try these machines and also win a 150.000 euros worth prize.