Archive for the ‘Italy’ Category
How I worked with thirty amazing people and lived to tell: Stacktrace
Posted by Giovanni Intini | Filed under Italy, Programming, Python, Random Stuff, Ruby, Ruby on Rails, Stacktrace
I’ve had the pleasure of working with thirty brilliant techies for the launch of Stacktrace, an Italian website about technology in its various forms.
Stacktrace was and idea of Antonio Cangiano. He felt that Italy missed an authoritative and original technology reference, and contacted about thirty of the best Italy has to offer, people I am very proud I could work with, to prepare the lightning quick launch of a wonderful site, full of original, well written and interesting content.
If you can understand Italian, even a bit of it, I strongly suggest you check Stacktrace. You’ll be glad you did.
The day after TechTalk Italia
Posted by Giovanni Intini | Filed under Business, Fun, Italy, Nimboo
On monday I came back from Techtalk Italia and it was such a wonderful experience that I had to wait a day before posting. It was relaxing, inspiring and fun.
We had four sessions where we talked about our projects and the problems Italian enterpreneus encounter during their work, and between these sessions we had great food and great fun.
I met cool people I didn’t know and met with people I now consider friends. Luca Conti, Federico Feroldi, Gioxx and Martin Varsavsky have posted about the event (but Martin didn’t attend).
There is also a flickr set about the talk.
Techtalk Italia
Posted by Giovanni Intini | Filed under Business, Italy, Nimboo
Good friend, fellow nimbooer, wikio engineer and all around cool guy Lorenzo Viscanti organized a meeting that will take place next weekend (the day after tomorrow) in the beatiful Tuscany.
Some of the most brilliant Italian people in the web business will attend to exchange ideas, relax, show each other their work, and to have fun.
Among the others there will be Marco Palazzo (Duespaghi), Davide Lombardi (zooppa), Daniel Ruzzini (domainsbot), Stefano Vitta (bloggers.it and fon), Guido Bellomo (Babelgum), Gioxx (Mozilla.it), Kiaroscuro and Federico Feroldi (nimboo), Lele Dainesi (cisco) and Luca Conti (Pandemia).
If you’re interested in attending the meeting you can contact Lorenzo. There will also be some video posted soon after the event.
OpenCoffee and Italy. Part 2 and good news.
Posted by Giovanni Intini | Filed under Business, Italy, OpenCoffee
I was quite happy when I read this post on Marco Barulli’s blog. As he said on his comment to is italy ready for opencoffee? he went to an OpenCoffee meeting in London, where he demoed the wonderful Clipperz, and the response has been quite favorable.
This is just a small piece of evidence that adds to all the evidence I have about a simple but true statement: “Italy is ready for venture capital yet no one does anything”.
Will we ever be able to solve this problem? Live and see.
Shortage of coders?
Posted by Giovanni Intini | Filed under Business, Italy
I read this interesing post on the 37signals blog a few moments ago, and I couldn’t avoid thinking we almost have the same problems here.
I have been criticizing the lack of capital in Italy since I began blogging on tempe.st, but capital isn’t the only resource we lack. There’s also a shortage of good heads. The hundreds of talented coders are working around the clock and have to say no to interesting ideas all the time, and obviously can’t find the energies to work on their big projects.
Anyone has a solution to this contradiction?
Netwo, Italian web initiatives join forces.
Posted by Giovanni Intini | Filed under Business, Italy, Netwo
In the last couple of posts I told you I had the luck of being at Yahoo Italy HQ on friday, and I told you I was going to post more info about that.
Unfortunately (or luckily) I am a programmer at heart, thus lazy, and I found a post from Emanuele Quintarelli that sums it all up. This post is so correct and exhaustive that I couldn’t write anything better than that.
I also suggest that you keep having an eye on this page because it will grow big in the near future.
Is Italy ready for OpenCoffee?
Posted by Giovanni Intini | Filed under Business, Italy, OpenCoffee
I guess most of you know of OpenCoffee and those who don’t should read the exhaustive post that started it all.
I have seen OpenCoffees prosperate all around Europe and America with the exception of Italy.
Are we ready for it? If so, why isn’t anyone doing anything? I’m pretty sure an OpenCoffee in Italy would be a wonderful thing, and every person I talk to thinks the same, yet no one is taking action to start anything.
There are similar initiatives, but they are not born with openness as one of the core principles.
If you’re wondering why I don’t start an OpenCoffee instead of whining about it on my blog, it’s because of my geographic position. I live deep in the South, where most people only go on Vacation and where no one would go for an OpenCoffee, so I guess I’m entitled to wish for someone in a better position to begin working on an Italian OpenCoffee 
I hope laziness it the only reason OpenCoffees are not being organized in Italy, instead of the usual trust-no-one approach we have to enterpreneurship, so I keep my fingers crossed waiting to see what will happen in the next few months.
As I keep telling people I work with, there’s no more time, we have to take action now, or stop thinking about it.
Bread and Butter vs The Big Project
Posted by Giovanni Intini | Filed under Business, Italy
A month or so ago I had the luck of being able to talk with Marco Palombi, one of the few Italian enterpreneurs that have succeded.
It was a pleasant and inspiring experience, mostly because I discovered that he encountered the same problems we all do, but was able to overcome them. What hit me like a rock though, was the fact that he didn’t earn a single cent for five years. That’s an important fact that shows success doesn’t come with zero effort. You have to believe so much in what you do that you’re willing to risk five years of your life to reach the goal you set for yourself.
Unfortunately strong beliefs are not all that’s needed. You have to find a way to sustain yourself while you work on your big projects, and I have to resort to bread and butter jobs to earn what I need to go on with my life.
I think there are many people among you that are in the same situation and struggle daily trying to balance those jobs with what you really would like to do. Sometimes b&b jobs are well paid, sometimes they’re interesting too, but they are no substitute for the rush of energy you get when you work on your own projects.
In the South of Italy this situation exacerbates, because b&b projects aren’t well paid here, and you have to work more for less money, and that’s not an ideal situation.
Sometimes I think I would be better just dropping unpaid projects, my own brainchildren, and getting some sleep at night, but there’s something in the back of my head that tells me I would not be happy doing that, and time after time I keep listening to that voice.
Maybe, just maybe, that’s the voice of freedom, the freedom of doing what we really like to do, creating cool technologies.
Italian Enterpreneurship
Posted by Giovanni Intini | Filed under Business, Del.icio.us, Italy
I don’t like writing posts about the things I tag in del.icio.us, but this is an important moment for Italy, and an important signal that something is starting to happen here too.
If you understand Italian you can read the blog post on Infoservi. It basically says that Marco Palombi (former member of the board of the jabber foundation and former Tipic/Splinder CEO) and Michele Appendino (venture capitalist) have decided to form an association to help Italian Enterpreneurs.
This is a breakthrough since Italy has always been 100% old economy, with the notable exception of Splinder, that was acquired by RCS last summer.
I really hope this is just a first step for all the Italians involved with net startups, and I hope Italy will become a viable environment for those businesses.