http://www.infospaces.it/wordpress User Centred World -- Ia, Usability and Accessibility Thu, 24 Jul 2008 17:23:03 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Web 2.0 Expo in Berlin is the place to learn, network, and engage in the European Web 2.0 community I was lucky enough to attend the San Francisco edition of this same conference in April. 11K participants, an incredible number of startups, sponsors and demos. A funny, energizing and useful experience for sure. In a few day, the Web 2.0 Expo will visit Europe for the first time. A great opportunity to listen and meet gurus, experts and entrepreneurs that are making the story of the web 2.0 outside the Silicon Valley. Would you like to attend the Web 2.0 Expo Berlin, the full event, workshops included without paying an euro (registration only for a value of 1100-1300 euro)? As you may probably know, I’ve recently launched The Social Enterprise, a new blog in italian about Enterprise 2.0 adoption, tools, vendors and trends. Enterprise 2.0 is my current area of interest and study and I would like to facilitate the emergence of new actors in this arena. If you have a good italian blog about Enterprise 2.0, leave a comment below. The free seat could be for you. Tecnorati Tags: web2.0expo, enterprise2.0, italian, o'reilly http://www.infospaces.it/wordpress/topics/web-20/165 I’m glad to see an ongoing discussion about the way web 2.0 is impacting not only the web but also a number of near domains like marketing and telecomunications. Telco operators (especially italian ones) seems to be quite confused and worried about the strong evolution of IP communication technologies and the large adoption they are getting (Skype being the best, but not the only, example). Having spent a few years working in Accenture on the wireless/mvno market, I deeply believe that mobile web 2.0 is the next big thing or better it could be if telco operators will start to open up their walled gardens leveraging social networks, mobile video/photo sharing, geolocalization, etc and providing innovative services that bring these technologies where users live: on the street, on the train, into an airport keeping in mind the different context and requirements that differentiates pc from mobile devices. Similar thoughts can be applied to media companies with the new challenges and (both business and development) models that the web 2.0 impose to survive on the market. These are the some of the reasons why I’ll attend the TELCO & MEDIA: CONVERGENCE IN THE WEB 2.0 ERA that will be held in Milan, September 28th at the Circolo della Stampa - Palazzo Serbelloni in Corso Venezia, 16. These is the noteworthy list of speakers put together by Reply and Business International: Alan Friedman, Journalist and Economics Specialist, Sergio Antocicco, Presidente, International Telecommunications Users Group (INTUG) Antonio Campo Dall’Orto, CEO, Telecom Italia Media & VP, Managing Director MTV South Europe Yves Confalonieri, Director RTI Interactive New Media, Mediaset Federico Grosso, Senior Vice President, Business Development, Blinkx Denise Kalos, Managing Partner, Hinchcliffe & CO Eric Laiger, Director Business Development, Hardware and Mobile, Skype Umberto Luciani, Marketing & Content Director, MySpace Italia Eric Lumer, CEO, Rawflow Mario Rizzante, Chairman, Reply Tatiana Rizzante, Managing Director, Reply Pietro Scott Jovane, Country Manager, Microsoft Online Services Group Giorgio Stock, Managing Director & Senior VP, Walt Disney Television Italy Among the themes that will be discussed I would like to list the changes in business models and organizational processes and architectures of participations. Disclosure: I’ll attend the event thanks to Linda Basilico of Barabino & Partners The link: Telco & Media: Convergence in the Web 2.0 Era Tecnorati Tags: business_international, conferences, media_companies, reply, telcos, web2.0 http://www.infospaces.it/wordpress/topics/web-20/158 I’m honored to remark how after many months of work, calls and online collaboration the organization for this year Italian Information Architecture Summit is quite complete. After my first attempt in 2005, a group of friends, every one of them with a specific expertise and professional interest in IA, have joined me to replicate and improve the experience, helping our country to do a step toward a better awareness and comprehension of the large benefits that a holistic, user centric, structured design can bring for every web initiative. Andrea, Luca, Alberto, Dario and the people at CRC Trentino have put together a wonderful event with international speakers (soon to be announced), Italian researchers, consultants and practitioners and a lot of room for networking and meeting peers. While a number of high quality submissions (both from Italy and outside) have been submitted, the call for papers is extended until September, 23th and we hope to receive other paper and panel proposals. The Italian IA Summit is completely free and will be held November 16th and 7th in Trento. If you have an interest (usability, accessibility, design, information architecture, communication) or you are waiting for the job of your life on the web, don’t hesitate to join us. Your knowledge will benefit from it and you could meet wonderful companies searching for talents. Tecnorati Tags: iasummit, information_architecture, italian_iasummit, user_experience http://www.infospaces.it/wordpress/topics/information-architecture/157 I’m really excited and surprised of finding my blog inside the Top 25 Enterprise 2.0 weblogs as ranked by Technorati. Thanks to Todd Stephens and my friend Luis Suarez for twittering it. I suspect the reason to be the description that explicitly cites Enteprise 2.0, but really appreciated especially now that I’m launching a second blog completely focused on Enterprise 2.0. My goal is spreading the word on it in Italy as well and that’s why I’m thinking about writing it in italian. Here the entire enterprise 2.0 topic is quite unknown (leaving out Web2oltre.it, the first conference inviting experts on the stage to discuss it). Of course this also means a large opportunity to be taken. I’m receiving more and more calls… More details soon. Tecnorati Tags: blogs, enterprise2.0, italy, web2.0 http://www.infospaces.it/wordpress/topics/web-20/156 After the initial Web Trend Maps, Oliver Reichenstein from the japanese agency Information Architects recently posted another overview of the most successful web sites worldwide linking them through a number of dimensions such as type of service (line color), web2ness (Web 0.5, 1.0, 1.5, 2.0, 2.5), potential (the weather forecast), reputation (the area). The map is loosely based on the Tokyo Metro Map and it includes english/american, japanese, german and chinese sites. Curiously enough, each service location is located in a place depending on its reputation (for example “Yahoo is in Ueno, a nice place but nothing going on there” while “Google has moved from Shibuya, a humming place for young people, to Shinjuku, a suspicious, messy, Yakuza-controlled, but still a pretty cool place to hang out”). More versions of the map are provided and discussed here. Tecnorati Tags: ia, information_architecture, maps, trends, web2.0 http://www.infospaces.it/wordpress/topics/information-architecture/155 I was searching for more info about the commenters on the first Blognation post, especially by non italians, while I discovered Four Starters, this blog from Cristiano Betta and others. I’m slowly catching up with his pieces on Essential Web 2007 but for now I would like to quote a paragraph taken from the post “Why most web start-ups don’t fly“: 99% of all web start-ups die before they fly. That figure is higher than in any other industry. Why is that? Because most web start-ups don’t offer something customers actually need. Many people in the web 2.0 scene seem to disregard this. I can see why. It’s relatively cheap to build web sites and with a potential worldwide market the prospects are extremely positive. Entrepreneurs, investors and enthusiasts - they all get carried away by the figures. But if you don’t manage to tap into that worldwide market, it’s a whole different game. It’s not just bad for investors; it might blow up the industry once more (remember bubble 1.0?). That’s why I believe we all need to be a bit more critical. Virtual communities might be the future of the web, but this doesn’t mean that any community will stand a chance, let alone be profitable. In the end, thinking of a good business model first is cheaper than just building web sites. It will pay off in the long run. I find this paragraph really true. Web 2.0 introduces new, exciting, accessible and cheap opportunities and so many people believe that launching a new initiative only means putting together some lines of code and xml schemas. I agree that not any service must be a commercial (= profit generating) project but for those who are identifying a customer need and a matching revenue model should be the very first tasks. I was discussing exactly about this with Alberto and even after some beers (well I only drink Cola Cola) we didn’t reach a common conclusion. Are business models really mandatory or some sort of optional ingredients to be added accidentally? Tecnorati Tags: business_models, cristianbetta, startups, web2.0 http://www.infospaces.it/wordpress/topics/information-architecture/154 Davide Potente wrote me about an intriguing full-immersion course he’s organizing in Rome to learn more about the Ruby on Rails world. I’m happy to give it a little more visibility because I believe that this kind of events are still quite rare (and expensive) in Italy, while an advanced knowledge of RoR could be a real plus to find/change a job during these web 2.0 months (conferences on the theme are exploding). The course will be held on August, 5-7th by two of the main RoR experts in Italy, namely Paolo and Jacopo of Seesaw. No gadgets, no frills but a lot of content and experience. Addressed topics will include a complete overview, MVC paradigm, real applications, the deploy/debug/test cycle and the latest news about the language. Only two seats are still available and the price will be in the range €270-€340 (depending on the participants’ number). More information here. Tecnorati Tags: davide_potente, ror, rubyonrails, course http://www.infospaces.it/wordpress/topics/web-20/153 The energetic Amanda Lorenzani, blogger and portal manager at Excite, launched today the italian version of the new Blognation network, a “global river of news” created by Sam Sethi: Blognation is certainly a “Go Big” ambitious project set to cover the United Kingdom, Ireland, Belgium, Germany, France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Iceland, Netherlands, Japan, China / Taiwan / Hong Kong, Australia, Brazil, South America with the help of 16 editors who are ready to start writing and raring to go. A key differentiator for blognation is the fact that all of these blogs will be written in English and collectively all of these blogs will form part of an advertising network aimed at promoting the startup community. And proving that I must be totally mad but certainly not lacking in ambition, I am currently close to confirming a further nine more prospective editors to cover Canada, Russia, India, South Africa, South Korea, South-East Asia, Poland, Turkey and Greece. There is of course one noticeable absentee from this list. That is of course the USA aka Silicon Valley. I took the decision some weeks ago not to cover the USA, simply because there were already enough excellent blogs reporting on the start-up ecosystem over there and one more wouldn’t make the slightest difference. I deeply believe there was a real need of a stronger connection between local (european and asian) markets and the UK/US world. Language was often a major barrier and a lack of international visibility was a second cause. Now this is over and european startups have a relevant common ground to be presented eventually gaining global exposure, feedbacks and contacts. Hats off to Amanda for his crystalline, complete and insightful first post. The bottom line for Italy seems to be a live ecosystem struggling to fill the gap with the international scene, a number of startups and groups supporting this change of perspective and big guys waiting to learn more about what is happening. More about my thoughts inside the post (Amanda interviewed me). This is the same feeling I got from Web2.Oltre, the major web 2.0 and enterprise 2.0 conference in our country that I helped organizing for Reed Business Information. I saw managers and companies with a sincere interest and large opportunities for the future. Goodbye Vecosys, welcome Blognation! Tecnorati Tags: amandalorenzani, blognation, italy, samsethi, web2.0 http://www.infospaces.it/wordpress/topics/web-20/152 I’m honored to let you know that our article about faceted tags and Facetag has been requested to be part of the June-July number of the http://www.infospaces.it/wordpress/topics/information-architecture/151 I loved Rawsugar. I helped them improving bringing in my two cents and I came to knew Frank Smadja, a very smart guy and VP of Rawsugar. The site has been sold and while users were said data would have been kept safe for the time to come it seems I lost all my bookmarks. I lost my tags, hierarchies and especially years long work. I hope it to be a temporary bug on the new version.. This data was and IS fundamental to my activities (conferences, talks, posts, speeches) and now.. puff.. I log in and without any notice I found nothing. If it is true, this is a really bad bad bad behavior. This makes me loose money, time and of course trust and respect on the service and the people behind him. Social media is respecting your customers that are now your best partners, that help you improving and tailoring your service and at the end the one make a site successful. If some changes have to be made you should be responsible and avoid focusing only on the money. Data portability becomes a central issue while everyone of us is 24/24h connected to social systems, putting in its information and attention but every service has to learn to be transparent and honest with it users. This means communicating, if not conversating. How can you sell a tagging service if you don’t get this? Rawsugar, I actually feel betrayed and I want my data back. Tecnorati Tags: folksonomies, rawsugar, respect, smc, socialmedia, tagging, trust, web2.0 http://www.infospaces.it/wordpress/topics/web-20/150