Gabetti Real Estate map mash-up

We just released the brand new map search for Real Estate listings on the Gabetti site; it’s a .NET application mounted on top of ViaMichelin API that you could use to look for an house in a specific area in Italy. The geodata are collected from the huge Gabetti listings database and placed straight on the cartography.

We’re actually in semi-private (you should be a registered Gabetti site user; registration at the site is public and free) BETA and are collecting users feedback to improve the application.

Uh, as a side note Gabetti is the first real estate company in Italy to have such an application.

Frontiers of Interaction 4

This year the conference will talk about the more and more computerLESS World we’re living in. You can join us on Tuesday, July 1st from 9am to 5pm for a FREE DAY (lunch & breaks included) in Turin (Italy) (complete info on venue here).

My pal Leeander has really done a marvellous job for this year edition collecting a supa-dupa speakers frontline: Nicolas Nova, Bruno Giussani, Bruce Sterling, Elizabeth Churchill (Yahoo Inc.), and many more.

As said the conference is completely free but reistration is required; use your Yahoo id to subscribe on the Upcoming page.

UPDATE: the conference has been a huge success; you can see all the talks video and the photos; we’ve been featured on a major Italian innovation newspaper and on Wired too!

Conclusions

I really feel bad not to have updated the blog in the latest weeks, but I had the chance to store a nice amount of things to say and still need to have the calm time to fix some aspects of my private life; that’s why don’t expect to find me here too soon.

Call to action: take part at Frontiers of Interaction and give a try to the brand new Gabetti Map Search.

I received an invitation to the first edition of 2008, organized by Leeander and friends at the Bastard Headquarters in Milan to showcase the new idea they’re working on: an open source hardware technology to let spimes interact with data and people: the Open Spime project.
I’ve seen the early early stage of this technology, even before the first prototype, and I can say it really rocks!

The event is invitation based, but - as far as I know - you can join us here.

Update April 9: the event will be streamed live on the .

I miss that word so much in my last weeks life: we delivered the most complex release of the Oracle Enterprise One ERP at Gabetti early in December which kept us REALLY concentrated on making all the amount of old data take their right place in the new system (and also fixing some errors inserted in the old systems during years which made OE1 simply mad).

And then there’s the 2008 budget planning, Second Life, analysis to be made and data to be properly understood. And, wow, this is the end of an overwhelming year dude!

On the personal side of life we’re hitting the start of our new house renewal: discussions with the architect, choosing the right pool, planning the suite bathroom (I replicated it on Second Life to help my wife understanding my ideas better), choosing the doors, the windows, managing all the papers…

I’m tired. I’d like to have more time to manage all the things. Need to slow down. Just a little bit. And that’s also why posts lacked here in the last weeks.

Oh… and thank you writeroom for these 15 mins of distractionless writing.

UPDATE Alberto, while back linking this post, discovers a bond I sincerely have bypassed: the concentration feeling you experiment Writeroom donates you follows the same path Ev highlighted in his LeWeb3 speech: it really seems that innovation, more than from making software more complex, arise when you try to make it simpler. Thanks Alberto!

These few lines to say I’ll be at the presentation of “Community Management“, a cool book about enterprise 2.0, that will be held this evening at the SIAM 1838, Via Santa Marta18 in Milan starting at 6pm. See you there.

Live notes

FRANCO VILLANI (Commercial Director bTicino)

+400 sales men in Italy. They created the internal community because of their role in the market: they need innovation to preserve their leadership.
In their commercial area there’s a lot of old style sales style, but they try to differentiate from the rest of the arena: they have young engineers as salesmen who love their own job. They’re passionate about their business.

But as the company was growing both in its dimension and complexity the needed something to make simpler the communication between the centre and the sale network and vice-versa. They also needed an excuse to gain attention on this new opportunity.

The community was the answer.

In the meanwhile they bought two different companies that really brought a huge expansion in their sales network, and the tool was fundamental in the integration of the new colleagues.

6/7 months from idea to delivery. They’ve chosen a strongly mediated approach in order to have the people to exclusively speak about their business and avoid abuses of the software (such as complains about not having supa cool company cars .

GIUSEPPE SCARATTI (Università Cattolica)

Great potential: organizations need people that correctly interpret company philosphy and translate them in organizational methodologies that support company business. Practice bonds people, technologies and behaviours together.

Wenger says that people learn by entering as novices in practice communities.

EMANUELE QUINTARELLI (Web 2.0 expert)

Companies are already using knowledge management tools to aggregate peoples knowledge and help colleagues to have their work done. But technology seldom is successful (44% of people thinks that itranets really improve their works, IDC in 2006 found that 25% of our time looking for informations).

KM is the past.

Every company is a babel tower: multiple applications, silos, UIs; rigid central management and configurations; long change cycles by the IT department.

Enterprise 2.0 is the usage of social software platforms within companies, or between companies and their customers/partners.

Interaction between people stands visible and durable as time goes by. Enterpise 2.0 change our intranet in an ever-changing structure lead by users: enterprise level tagging, wikis, blogs, etc. (Microsoft Sharepoint)

Why adopting these 2.0 tools? Efficency gain (RSS feeds), competitive pressure that oblige you to continuously innovate.

Informal organization brings strong advantages: business efficency, reduced operational costs, improved customer satisfaction and company morale.

MARCO VERGEAT (FIAT CORPORATE UNIVERSITY CEO)

He cited Bravo and 500 FIAT cars cases where customers where strongly involved in the product projects (millions customers’ ideas to create the new 500 minicar).

Collaborative learning: learn by by the knowledge exchange between networks of people;
Informal learning: non intentional learning that represent the main quota of the learning on the job.

Self development: training the managerial skills of each one; huge quality levels of the participants is the assurance for a correct collaborative learning.

Too late. Really gotta go, hope to find the rest of the seminar backed-up online. And - s**t - cannot listen to Luca De Biase’s speech.

This is probably because of the years on your shoulders teach you how to fall in love for details and how to appreciate the uniqueness. Probably. For me at least.

Tailor-made has always been a synonym of richness. Just think about Ferrari cars: each one is made by hand following its owner’s desires. They even have a dedicated web site.

But we were talking about my thoughts, weren’t we. Yes sorry. Let’s get back to them. While thinking about the way life changed my taste I suddenly realized how the tailor-made=rich equation is becoming less and less common (by the way: my pal Marco helped me discovering a great tailor that prepares shirts for us for just 40 euros, drop me a line if you live in Milan and need her contacts).

Examples? Here they come: each morning I have personalized news and informations via my Bloglines feeds; I sleep on a latex
mattress that modifies according to my body shape and weight; I choose the films/shows I want to see at the time I want them on my IP TV (more to come with things such as Joost); etc. etc.

You might say this is not truly tailor-made; they’re just (very good) approximations of what tailor-made really is. And you might be right.

So what about future trends? I actually see two main trends in this area for the next years.

1. Atoms from bits

The first 3D printers are reaching our desktops with a price that’s more or less the price os a laser printers 15 years ago (or, if you like, you can build one by yourself); today they could be useful for rapid prototyping, but tomorrow? If you imagine a future rich in nanotechs you can then imagine to create your shirt in a 3D modeling environment and then making it real using your printer. Want more? Buy the specs of your favourite digital player and let your “printer” build it for you. Fully functioning.

Kinda too futuristic huh? I agree, even if I think that my generations will see this future. But take a look at the next trend.

2. Personalization through data-mining

Google, the greatest data miner on earth, has started the creation of synthetic models of real buildings, linking them to the original through Google Earth geodata and images.
Given a number of items big enough, you might “invent” an object and find a very similar one between these items. You just need a proper way to search for it; and Google is indexing the world: I can imagine to model an object I’d like to have, give the model to google, and shop for the (already existing) approximation of it. Nice huh?

I really think we already have the knowledge and the algorithms to perform such a project. Any Venture listening? (if the answer is es you might want to contact me via Linkedin)

Believe me, I’ve always been kinda unlucky with helpdesks. Unfortunately. So I was happy my first day at Gabetti to discover I would have worked shoulder to shoulder with a small helpdesk team serving our 1000 agencies on IT related problems.

Back in June 2006 the only way to contact the helpdesk was to give a call to a phone number behind which laied an exchange that took care of the call forwarding to the first free operator. In other words the process was something like

1. call the number
2. stay at least 15 mins (if you’re the lucky boy) on hold
3. explain your problem to the operator (other 15 mins, at least)
4. wait until the IT team solves your problem

A syncronous helpdesk is a waste of time for everybody: for who has the problem and for those who solve it.

Then we started innovating the technology and the processes below the IT helpdesk; our keyword was “asyncronous”.

The first step was to provide the support team and our users with a web interface, with proper problems sections, to communicate and manage tickets. We’re really really happy with the open source software OTRS which could be managed both via email and web and is plenty with personalizations.

That was an important shift from syncronous to asyncronous assistace which brought some interesting features to our helpdesk structure:

• Our clients wouldn’t have to wait for a free operator to communicate their problems anymore
• We have the power to simultaneously close a large number of tickets in the very moment (that is to say make more users happy in less time)
• We can prioritize problems (both basing on the quantity and quality data of our users’ problems)

With just this change we obtained a huge (nearly half an hour) speed up of the ticket opening. Not bad, huh?

But the we moved fast forward both from the technology and process points of view: we rolled out Gabi, our Virtual Assistant, back in July to manage the whole help desk front-line and, more recently, we choosed to prioritize our asyncronous tools (such has gabi itself and the online helpdesk) by cutting the telephone helpdesk times from 8 to 3 hours a day.

Even if this strong move towards the asyncronous life style hasn’t already showed its entire potential the results are huge: the mean life time of each ticket is now something less than 1.5 days and the monthly helpdesk performance has gained full 44 man hours (which is something more than the Italian equivalent of the work week).

Mantova in the last 15 years has become a liveable city rich in culture events (Festival Della Letteratura, Mantua Jazz Festival, live concerts, etc.), museums and, last but not least, an almost endless choice of restaurants.

My wife always enjoys shopping in Mantua due to the small dimensions of the city itself: you can tour it by feet all its trendy shops in a couple of hours; and you can also stop by an excellent bar for a delicious cappuccino; doing this it’s not unusual to step by one of my childhood friends (just tomorrow I had a chat with Zelo, who’s now working part-time at a local bookshop plus continuing his artistic career).

Life in Mantua is stressless and quiet; you can feel the raising lifestyle od the inhabitants; and the food is terrific.

In Milan everything is fast. You don’t have time for nothing but business. Chaos & disorder are powerful forces in this city. Concrete is everywhere. You barely can use your car to do shopping but public transportation really deserve an empowerment.

But I still leave in Milan. And I’m so happy with this that I just bought a new and bigger house (we’re still in the redesign phase; I’ll post some shots on Flickr once we cosolidate the architect’s proposal).

Why?

I think that part of the answer reside in Richard Florida’s theory on Creative Cities (and Milan is the Design World capital): The Frontiers of Interaction wouldn’t have been possible in Mantua; meeting with top-notch professionals such as Leeander, Simone, Flavio, the people at the Bicocca University, Fabio and many many others barely unthinkable.

But the rest of the answer is about potential; Milan has the potential to become more liveable, to transform itself from the ground up cutting the distance between the city and its inhabitants; continuing to remain an innovative city. Milan is a city for the youngsters, for the makers, for the thinkers.

Milan is a city where this is possible. But this and this too.

My professional life is still based in Milan and my forecast is that this won’t change in the next 10 years. But I won’t age in this city: I prefere move my family to cities more similar to the one I was born in. I prefere a return to my roots while keeping my innovation potential intact.

A Virtual Assistant is basically a 3D human-like interface that processes natural language (both spoken and typed) and is ahead of an artificial intelligence engine which takes information from a knowledge base.

I’m gaining more and more knowledge on this subject since we’re developing a VA - named Gabi - at Gabetti (see here a video interview with some interaction with the VA, in Italian) , together with the Kallideas team, to manage the basic support at our IT helpdesk. And - since the pilot phase launch early on July 2007 - we started training Gabi.

We choose the training arguments by taking a look at the most frequent items on our online helpdesk: we released Gabi with basic knowledge on PC, printers and network problems and then moved to email and password management.

During a meeting, early this week, with our Helpdesk manager and the IA expert from Kallideas I was taking a look at the tickets data to understand which arguments need to be teached to Gabi next and then BOOM I “saw” the long tail in these data.

It’s not long ago that I finished reading the inspiring The Long Tail book by Chris Andreson: looking at the ticket statistics I saw how the higher number of tickets was concentrated in less then 10 different arguments and, from there, the number of tickets decreased rapidly while the problems our users were declaring raised impressively.

It was pretty interesting finding my first tail, but now problems arise: VA are very good at managing a small amount of know-how helping with this large numbers of users; but we’re now going to face a nice task: managing a large amount of information to help a relatively small number of users… uhm… need to go deeper into this to better understand the most effective solution.

We’re looking for skilled avatars eager to make some money working directly in Second Life; we can offer a pay in Linden Dollars, an office on the Gabetti Island and the possibility to work in the most cutting edge project of a real life Estate company inside Second Life.

You can take a look at the job opening on our site (Italian only, sorry), Monster (again, Italian only) or send your CV at SLrecruiting[at]gabetti.it; we’re closing the offer during September, so don’t loose this opportunity.

A lot of designers worked hard to build up a whole lot of buildings that will cover the Myrsine Island in the next few days: you can navigate non-spaces with gas walls or 18th century buildings or nature-like projects; you choose!

You can take a look at the building by entering the Myrsine Island in Second Life or you can take a look at the buildings pictured here.

A nice machinima has been shooted too.