Another change in my life

It’s something past 2 in the afternoon and I’m at home on the sofa quietly sipping my espresso coffee. You’re probably asking WHY I’m at home, right now, during a working day.

I think there is no other way to say it, so I’m gonna straight to the point: I quit from Consultechnology and yesterday was my last day in the office; I won’t be offiicially out since the first weeks of June but I’m going to spend these weeks as vacation time.

I had great times during these 2 and a half years (I started there in November 2003) and was fortunate enough to meet very bright minded people both among colleagues, clients and consultants.

I think I’ve been able to build a crew of professionals very near to the Leandro defined “dream team” (in Italian, sorry): we innovated a lot the production processes for web sites and applications and were also able to file some patents and produce bright product prototypes such as Mobup and Flash Voice. I’d say we were among the first to include Eye Tracking tests on interfaces in the production pipeline (for every interface we’ve built we tested each iteration starting from the paper prototype).

I also managed the internazionalization of the RnD team (helped also by the great Giuseppe Baroni at Innovazione+) raising interest from universities and labs in a lot of EU countries.

I had good years there and ejoyed a lot the projects I was involved in. But now (as Richard Florida says) is time to move to new experiences. And - after 10 years working in IT companies, I’ll completely change the scenario around me; but won’t say anything more till mid June.

If you like, we can meet at The Interaction Frontiers 2006 just to say ciao and listen to some cuttin edge talks.

aDAMS: l’eye tracking per la prevenzione del colpo di sonno

Latest on Mobup

In the next weeks we’ll deliver a series of speeches on the development of Mobup providing an analysis of both the user experience and the tecnical aspects of the application: a load of code will be displaied and explained by Vincenzo Lembo, the leading programmer of the Mobup project while I’ll take care of the delivering of high quality insights on Flickr, moblogging and the user experience behind Mobup.

The first event is going to be held on the 12th of January starting 6.30pm at the Mac@work shop in Milan (all the details could be found on the Java User Group site which has organized the event)

As an interesting side note I’ve been interviewed by Richard Giles for a sidebar to be included in his forthcoming book How to Use Flickr: The Digital Photography Revolution where I had a chance to talk a bit about Mobup; there’s a companion Flickr group which is definetely worth a look.

Tough December

Xmas eve is approaching (and so is the grand presents opening) I so can summarize this December. It’s been a really tough month, you could have a proof by watching at how my post frequency has decreased. I’d say: tough AND challenging. As you might have already read I’ve started with a trip to Budapest for a kick-off meeting on a cutting edge 3D, natural interaction based, TV set to be developed in the next 4/5 years.

My project part (natural interaction) then needed to be written down and properly documented in - ehm - no more then 3 days. I had to thank my wife Barbara for having helped me by leaving the whole house free from baby cries and huggies changes in one of the coldest Sundays of this early winter where 2/3 of the work were done (I previously spent a whole day researching on state-of-the-art algorithms and interaction tecniques).

After that I had to fastly re-focus on development since my team was about to deliver the biggest project we’ve worked on so far in 2005: the corporate site of the main European manufacturer of batteries, horns and antenna systems, FIAMM SPA. (you can take a look at their previous site here)

The site is standard based and fully driven by our own SimplyCT CMS (in Italian) which was deeply customized following client’s needs and requests; the UI was then integrated with both the CT .NET Framework (link in Italian only again, sorry) and the SimplyCT engine. You be the judge.

I’ll now be on vacation for a couple of days and then back to work to do some planning for a huge Euro wide interaction design project for a well known household-electric manufacturer (more on this in the weeks coming) and had a look to some other funded research project proposal for a Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research call.

Now it’s holiday time. Next post: 2005 presents.