Blogging
It’s now a year since I switched the blog to the English language and - even if I expected a more vertical growth in RSS subscribers - I nearly doubled my BlogLines subscribers (or, staying with Feedburner, I’m having a media of 35 subscribers: whom I’d really like to thank).
I never blog as much as I’d like, mostly for time constraints; but - counting my 2006 posts - I reach the quote of 64: which means something more then 1 per week. not good, not bad, just ok for me as I use my blog as a life diares for when I’ll grow up (now: when?

Eyetracking
i’ve done a lot of eyetracking in the last 3+ years. most of my activities were centred on RnD (I’ve filed a couple of patents on it) but I’m mostly known for my eyetracking analysises published by UXmatters. I’m really honoured of the results, the last one - published back in June - got more than 40 comments to the article. Further more then any other article published by UXmatters.
The future? Well I’m still in the eyetracking business working with the University of Rome (ciao Francesco) but I don’t feel eyetracking is going to be a 2007 life tag. Making the wheel turning.

Family
I realy enjoyed family life this year. A lot of readings, vacations and time to spend with family. Things are going to change in 2007: during week days I’m able to see my wife and baby just a couple of hours a day. Coming home too late from work: things need to be done.

Flickr
Still enhancing my love for Flickr after 3 more years: got a pro account since 2005 and part of our Christmas present to my sister was a PRO Flickr account. It’s definbitely the killer application for digital photography (and I’m still waiting for GPS wi-fi/UMTS enabled digital cameras)

Francesca
She’s our life. Growing up at the fastest pace. If you’re a friend of mine you can take a look at the Flickr photoset (just the best shots, I’m counting approximately 500 of them). Drop me a line if you’re a friend of mine but have no access to the set.

Gabetti
I’m really honoured to work for this company. A lot of innovation is going on but it’s too early to talk about it. Let’s say we have an appointment late in January 07 and another one late in February 07. But the most groundbreaking one is coming up more or less near April 07. Stay tuned.

Mobup
If you regularly read this blog you couldn’t have missed it. It’s open source, it’s free, it uploads your cameraphones shots to Flickr. Originally born in July 2005 in Consultechnology it’s now available to every developer or cameraphone lover. We now have a top of the notch CTO (Thomas Landspurg) and a dedicated team of developers. We’re improving but we still need your support and suggestions.

Public speaking
I think 2006 has been the most crowded with speaking opportunities year in my life: I featured international conferencies, nation wide ones, universities, and small but innovative ones. I wa sborn for standing on a stage since I enjoied myself being an MC back in early 90s.
2007 coming up with other great seminars!

Second life
I discovered it at the Interaction Frontiers 2006 thanks to Andrea Benassi *see his presentation here). I now say that Second Life is today what the web was in 1995 a great opportunity for trend setters and first movers. I count myself in. more on this coming really soon.

Writing articles
I count more than 50+ articles in the last 4 years published on the web (Idearium, UXmatters and Flashability mainly). I prefere writing in english due to the broader audience I can reach.
A book is oin the air for 2007 but I’m really not sure whether it’s going to see the light or not. At the moment I’m really to busy with Gabetti (see proper life tag) to think about writing.

Have a great 2007!

The Interaction Frontiers has been a wonderful event packed with great speeches from bright minded speakers. I expected something like 90 people but we largerly exceeded 100s! (with a pick of 120 people in the same room during a working day!!).

This is a short video of the atmosphere we had:

Flickr is plenty with photos of the event, just to let all you know the mood we breathed last Friday: this was probably the first Innovation related event with great deejaying live (I scratched too!), we had great speakers (too many to be named) and robots walking among us and interacting (break dancing too!)

We had bloggers who blogged their feedback (Italian readers might find a very nice report at Intense Minimalism) and - given this was the first time we tried such an innovative format - I’m very very VERY happy with the results. I’m really proud of being one of the conference producers (and Leandro, my partner in crime, is really proud too).

My thanks goes to all the speaker who provided such high quality content, to our sponsor Kallideas who made the event possible and - last but not least - to the University of Milano-Bicocca which confirms itself the most innovative place in Milan (even if they have creepy wi-fi policies

Just a quick note: posts are going rarefy in the next days since I’m down learning the real estate market (I’d say I’m really enjoining my first Gabetti days: a lot of cuttin edge project one after the other; and the meetings with the people deputed to make this real-estate-idiot mind become shining are simply inspiring)

Update
The national press gave us some real cool attention:

But I’m digressing. While in Mantova I passionately told the ongoing efforts we (I and Leeander) are putting in the organization of this year Interaction Frontiers event: press relationships, speakers accomodation, the venue, the registrants, etc. etc.
One morning my mom questioned me about the money I was raising from the event organization and she was completely stuck when I told her that NO MONEY was coming in mine or Leeander’s pocket at all: we had expenses that were covered by the sponsors or the great help of friends that were doing this for free but the event was free for all.

And then she dropped THE QUESTION: “So, why are you doing this?”

The answer came to my mind in a blink: “Mom, I’m acting as an enabler for the transmission of cutting edge technology from bright minded people. I’m working to change the minds of the people who’re going to attend and hope they’ll be able to change the mind of their colleagues and friends. In other words: these are my two cents to create a better World.“

Here below you’ll find his own introduction to the speech:

Nathan will discuss and illuminate the connection between emotion, values, and meaning for customers and users and show a process for developing products, services, and interfaces directly configured around them.

Meaning is the most important part of any experience we create and offer to others and it’s only been recently recognized and analyzed.

Since we’re not planning to make this video publicly available the only way to see this is by subscribing (FOR FREE) at the event (seats are limited).

In this way we’re trying to make the life easier for all of you who’s going to join us but cannot learn Italian in 1 month.

We also created a small page in english containing the main informations on this year event, its philosophy and this year guidelines for content; you’ll also find more info on the services you’re getting for free (and, BTW, the entrance is free too but registration is mandatory) and on how to reach us at Bicocca University in Milan.

If you’re a bright-minded soul that has something to say about

• Softwares able to understand users’ moods
• Adaptive interfaces
• Ubiquitous computing
• Robots and automas
• Natural interfaces
• Augmented interfaces

Send - before May 25 - an email containing your position paper in PDF (no more than 4 pages) to interactionfrontiers@gmail.com; the four best are going to speak about their project against TIF06 public.

Are you ready?

The Interaction Frontiers organizing

After the Interaction Frontiers 2006 site has been launched we started getting confirmation from the potential speakers we have contacted: names like Pabini Gabriel-Petit (who’s gonna key-noting), Sebastiano Bagnara (Politecnico Design), Christian Peters (Fraunhofer Institute) and Antonio Rizzo (Siena University) are all onboard; but other big names are about to be added!

I’m really enjoining this year organizing: having a sponsor (Kallideas) behind us makes possible have speakers from abroad that otherwise would have been difficult to bring to Italy. I’m pretty confident this year Frontiers’re gonna be such a inspiting and wonderful event.

Writing on Eyetracking

The few days of vacation I had have made it possible to write down the analysis I made on label positioning in web forms. I started the whole lab setup from Luke Wroblesky article “Web application form design” and Luke himself who’s to kind to help me both during test prep and results analysis. Cannot wait to see your feedback on my results (quite interesting, I’d say )

Card sorting

In the last weeks we conduct some interviews at Regione Lombardia key people in order to design a site devoted to security and prevention. This interviews lead to a 140+ cards to be communitary sorted in a 12 people meeting.

The results were absolutely great and I’m sure that site info architecture will rocks (I’ll spend part of the next week analysing the card sorting results and merging them together in a wireframing prototype).

Family life

Tomorrow we’re having Francesca’s baptism: it’s been a tough week organizing the lunch for our friends and relatives, the small cadeaux and Francesca’s dress (Maurizio and Elena finally solved the situation with a present of a couple of wonderful dresses for our little princess).

The Interaction Frontiers 2006 site is live ]]> http://matteopenzo.hotmc.com/blog/2006/04/21/the-interaction-frontiers-2006-site-is-live/feed/ http://matteopenzo.hotmc.com/blog/2006/03/01/the-interaction-frontiers-2006/ http://matteopenzo.hotmc.com/blog/2006/03/01/the-interaction-frontiers-2006/#comments Wed, 01 Mar 2006 22:14:52 +0000 penzo Innovation UXnet User Experience Frontiers06 http://matteopenzo.hotmc.com/blog/2006/03/01/the-interaction-frontiers-2006/ I spent lunchtime with Leandro Agrò and Flavio de Paoli in a nice Oktoberfest resembling steak house in Bicocca, the uber-modern quarter built in the ex-Pirelli factory area, chatting about new-born babies and the lacks of modern digital compact cameras.

The last minute meeting was set up in order to evaluate the Milano-Bicocca University conference room that’s planned to host this year edition of “The Interaction Frontiers” (you can find the 2005 site, with speakers - including Dirk Knemeyer - bio, abstracts and slides here), which will be the main UXnet Italy event for the current year.

The event is planned to be held on June 16 from 9am to 4pm and will be about

The traditional GUI windows [that] are now enriched by simul-human symbolic representations (avatars), have input devices and sensors capable of collecting emotion rich informations and finally come out from their screens and walk on their own wheels and robot legs.

This year conference room will have seats for 150/200 people, Wi-Fi + plugs will be provided for free to all the attendees and bloggers, so remember to bring your laptop!
Learning from the LIFT06 experience the first 4 seat rows will be reserved to people without computer as the famous laptop free zone.

We plan to have a world renown geek as keynote speaker and a bright minded researcher specialised in emotion capable machines (I’m sorry but cannot be more precise at this stage) plus a top class panel of User Experience/HCI experts and a bunch of great speakers. We have some 15mins speaking slots still available and will open a call for papers once the conference site will be ready (a couple of weeks or so).

I’m really excited to be involved in the organization of such a cuttin edge event which - by the way - will be provided FOR FREE to all. If curious you can find photo details of the conference spaces on Leandro’s Flickr set.