Harry Potter in 99 Seconds

I started to read Harry Potters' books in original language just soonafter they were published, and I followed the entire story for several years. Further to be one of the most successful fantasy sagas ever, HP has a special place in my life, having been a fil rouge for the history between my wife and me. It was just the second time we had an appointment, back in 2001, and I proposed to go to movies and see this then not-so-famous and childish story (it was the first movie, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's stone).

Great things happened since then.

Despite having the evidence of a 32-years-old man willing to go and see a movie about a child wizard, she agreed to become my fiancée first, and my wife then. We also managed to have a house and two children, while still going to see a new Harry Potter movie each time it was published, while I was in parallel reading the books.

I have to say that reading all the books and seeing all the movies was a heck of a job, thousands of pages and hours spent in following Harry, Hermione and all the happy bunch in and out of Hogwarts, chasing horcruxes, drifting Death Eaters and He Who Has Not to Be Named, and finally coming to the happy end of two families forming out of former schoolmates, as in the best tradition of fairy tales.

Considered all that, I find quite entertaining that these two boys, which were evidently children the time when the first Rowling's book hit the market, found the time to elaborate and spread this song. Good synthesis and impromptu art has to be rewarded!!

PS While doing this, I solemnly swear to be up to no good!! :-)

Scrat and Agcom

Do you remember Scrat?

It is one of the most sympathetic characters of the fortuned Ice Age cartoon movies series. What makes it funny is the fact that despite the world is crushing down around him, he has a stubborn capability of maintaining his whole focus on its beloved acorn.

One of my favourite scenes is when, unaware of everything coming down, he's trying to stop the water leak in the glacier just seconds the whole thing explodes.

What makes us to laugh about Scrat is its stupid, even if tender, behaviour; it is that carelessness of his, so as the complete and unconditioned love for a world that is not there anymore.

In my personal opinion, Scrat's behaviour is somewhat similar to what is happening in Italy these days with Agcom. Agcom (Agenzia per le Garanzie nelle Comunicazioni - Agency for the Guarantees in the Communications) is the governmental body which supervises the media in Italy, whose attribution is "the dual responsibility of ensuring proper competition among market players and to protect the fundamental consumption freedoms of citizens" (from Agcom website).

Within next July, 6th, Agcom is going to apply an act which would empower it to bypassing the judicial authorities in the assessment and possible removal of the contents of any site web; and in addition to have the possibility to close the websites which, at its unsindacable judgement, are not applying the norm. This, without the previous passage through a court which would judge about the substance of the contestation.

A vaste part of the Italian online public opinion lived this attempt as a fundamental attack to Web's freedom in Italy, and a consistent number of groups have organised in order to block the initiative.

One of the most prominent is Libertà Digitali, whose initiative "La notte della Rete" (The night of the Web) is collecting thousands of citizens' signatures aimed to block the Agcom's act. The petition is available at http://sitononraggiungibile.e-policy.it/. I personally signed and asked to all my friends to do the same, since I believe that the Web is an untouchable space of freedom, which for the first time gave the mankind the possibility to freely express.

Therefore, my claim is simple.

Sign up, don't be Scrat.

PS: A little lesson of web 2.0 for some Agcom functionnaire. The Scrat's image in this post is property of Blue Sky Studios. They could sue me for unduly using an asset of their property, but nobody would be so stupid to do it. The more an image, or a concept, or a video is shared around the web, the more its digital weight (or share of voice, in ancient terms) rises up. It means that it climbs positions into the Google search ranking, and generates leads to the company's, or movie's website. Which website is naturally a great channel for branding communications, gadgets selling, advertising about next episodes of the Ice Age saga....so please don't you bother to blind my blog....

Frontiers of eHealth

(Originarily published in abridged version on Pharmaphorum on June 29, 2011)



Frontiers of Interaction is a yearly technology event, whose 2011 edition has been hold in Florence, Italy, last June 20-21. Founded on 2005, FOI has gradually grown in quality and breadth over the years, up to become “the geekiest event in Europe”. Its mission is “creating a bridge between Europe and Silicon Valley”, by attracting as speakers the brightest talents worldwide in the field of technological innovation.

In particular, FOI 2011 has been a precious occasion to meet some of the leading-edge exponents of the UX/ID field, and vivid thinkers of leading-edge science.

An example is David Orban, an influential member of the Humanity+ program. H+ members are a multi-disciplinary group of international scientists whose aim is exploring the possibilities offered by the applications of robotics to medicine.

Another highlight of the meeting was the speech of the Hollywood’s Fiction UI designer Mark Coleran (Mission Impossible 3, The Island, Children of Men) dedicated to the methods for the creation of veridical and technology-intensive movie scenes.

FOI11 has also been the place where the visionary Cyborg Anthropologist Amber Case thrilled the audience by presenting the opportunities and the pitfalls offered by the constantly interconnected culture. The main point of her presentation was that machines are not taking control, they are helping us to be more human by allowing connection and self-reflection.

A place of high appreciation by the audience has been finally granted to the young genius Zdenek Kalal, who presented his ground-breaking “Predator” visual tracker, a tool that learns from its errors and is aimed to allow the machines to “see” and follow objects.

Further to the high level of speakers, FOI11 has also been the occasion to showcase the possibilities offered by the current level of technological explosion, and how this is impacting the most different fields, from music to remote controlling of objects. It has for example been the place where a Jam Session by solely using iPhones as musical instruments has been performed; and where a AR.Drone Parrot turbocopter has been apparently piloted around the conference auditorium by using the force of thought, in the astonishing example of a mind-machine interface.





May the Force be with you!!



The absolute novelty of the 2011 edition has however been the presence of a strong trace in the program dedicated to eHealth.

eHealth is emerging as the point of singularity between cultural, anthropological, technological and medicine-related issues, thus allowing a new way of conceiving and managing interactions among Health Care Providers (HCPs), patients and caregivers. In this respect, the leading trend in fostering the contact among the main stakeholders of healthcare panorama is the utilization of mobile (or nomad) devices.

Since a number of years, there is indeed a growing body of evidence showing that physicians are progressively considering the seamless access to information not anymore as an option, but as a key condition of their daily operability. In particular, it is clearly evident that physicians are using the web as their main source of information, by substituting the traditional printed journals with their online editions; following CME courses online or in blended format; gathering information about drugs and pathologies by reading online expert opinions or visualizing webcasts; participating in medical events remotely, live or in asynchronous modality, and using sharing and commenting tools for spreading and discussing information with their reference peer network.

The cognitive transformation which is hitting doctors is also having a strong impact on patients and caregivers, which are progressively getting empowered by the growing body of information available on the web. From their specific standpoint, patients and caregivers are interested to gather trustable and independent information about their condition, the treatment they are going to undergo, or finding psychological or practical support in the case there is illness is a chronic or progressively disabling one. This reality is completely disrupting the communication dynamic between doctors and patients, and transforming it from a unidirectional speech, to a conversation, where the amount of available information is bridging the traditionally wide gap between them.

The ongoing conversational convergence of physicians and patients/caregivers is further exalted by the appearance on the market of nomad devices like smartphones and pads. Following the very same trend the generalist access is showing, nomad devices are allowing seamless, real-time information gathering, thus substituting the traditional desktop-based access.

In this framework, most part of the eHealth path at FOI11 has been dedicated to the workshop “Transforming health with nomad devices”, an event led by Roberto Ascione and AJ Triano, respectively President and VP, Digital Strategy, of Publicis Healthware International.

The workshop was subdivided in a theoretical part, aimed to set the stage of reasoning and a hands-on brainstorming session, where the concepts outlined into the first part where brought to life. The audience was divided into three groups, each led by a PHI strategist. Furthermore, each group had a geek physician in the number, which acted as source of information about doctors’ and patients’ real-life needs. The three groups have been assigned a specific path, e.g. Point of Care; Patient Education/Compliance; Physician Education. The assigned task was developing, on the basis of the needs individuated by the doctors for the specific issue; and leveraging the experience of the participants; three apps dedicated to nomad devices.

The outcome of the workshop, which has been the most followed of the whole event, has been greatly successful. The conceptual schemes of three applications, respectively dedicated to Oncology (Patient Education), Gynecology (Physician Education) and Dermatology (Point of Care) have been produced. The level of detail and potential for immediate transformation into real apps has been such that all three sketches have been presented by Roberto Ascione at the Doctors 2.0 Conference (June 22-23, Paris, France). The achievement has been of particular relevance, since Doctors 2.0 is one of the leading international congresses devoted to understand and describe the new communication paradigms in the healthcare enabled by digital technologies.

The experience developed at FOI showed how the construction of tailored healthcare applications for nomad devices can represent a quantum leap in transforming the way medical information is communicated, shared, commented and rated. It has also demonstrated how this transformation will require the integration of strategic, technical, medical and communicational capabilities, in order to develop services which are really reflecting the needs of all the involved actors.

Alitalia, LinkedIn and the lost Roo

A lost baggage is an experience that any frequent flyer experiences at least once in his lifetime, and I'm no exception. To be precise, I lost my baggage twice, one on my first business trip with Bristol-Myers Squibb; the second only few days ago.

In the first occasion, it was quite embarassing, and not a good way to start a work relationship with any company. I was in BMS since four days only, and I was going to participate into the yearly marketing&sales conference. This already implied that, as a brand new product manager, I was going to be presented to my direct colleagues; but also that all the eyes would have been on me, ready to form a first and durable impression about my person. It was therefore a very critical moment for any manager, since how a famous and appropriate American say expresses, "You never have a second best to make a good impression".

The result of lost baggage n.1 has been that I was forced to be in the plenary meeting room, among some 200 colleagues dressed in elegant suits, with the same casual dresses I weared when I took the flight. The baggage showed itself in the hotel onthe following afternoon, but the magic moment of the first presentation was lost forever.

I flew Alitalia.

Some three years after that day, I woke up in Paris at 6am of a glorious May day. I had a business meeting at 8am, strange to say in BMS again, but this time as a consultant. The day showed himself to be very positive, the interaction with the client was immediately good, the suggestions I made were judged appropriate, etc. etc. All and all, and despite the tiredness of being up since early morning, I was in that state of satisfaction that consultants experience when everything seems to snap in naturally.

When in Paris, I usually take an outbound flight from Orly, but this time my colleagues and me preferred to fly from Charles De Gaulle airport, on an Air France flight aimed to Venice, where a connection with Naples was due to wait for us.

The connection flight was an Alitalia one.

At CDG I embarked my luggage direct to Naples, unaware about what was going to happen. Notably enough, in addition to the usual contents of a businessman's luggage, this time there was Roo inside. Roo is a cartoon character, straight out the Winnie the Pooh stories, and a peluche reproduction was in the trolley aimed straight to the waiting arms of my older son.

Long waited indeed, since the last time I was in Paris one month before. In that occasion, I buyed a Buzz Lightyear for my son, and a Roo for my daughter. If you have young children, you already know what happened. My three-years-old son went immediately jealous about my two-years-old daughter's Roo, and it was then that I promised him to bring a Roo next time I would have been in Paris. Therefore, taking profit of a free time slot I run to the shop, and there it was, another Roo aimed home.

In Venice the Alitalia connection flight was three hours and half late.

My colleagues and me wandered in the terminal, waiting to be allowed to fly back home. Our flight eventually arrived, and we finally landed in Naples at 23hrs. It was there that I discovered that my trolley was lost.

The notification to the lost luggage office took time (before me in the queue there were other passengers from Rome with their own stories of lost luggages) and in was only 1am, after 19 hours from the wake up, that I finally managed to go bed.

Before to get asleep, I had a very instinctive, but very infantile reaction. I facebooked and twitted via LinkedIn all my frustration about what had happened. My post was harsh and unequivocable: "I'm flying for business since 1998, with any company. Only Alitalia managed to lose twice my suitcase. Down with Alitalia, may you to fail."

What tiredness and rage made me to forget was that: a) when you air a comment into a social medium, virtually all the world can read it; b) a former colleague, which hired me in a precedent company, had become a big shot of Alitalia, and he was among my LinkedIn contacts.

After a few days, two things happened. My luggage, and its precious Roo content was finally found. On the same day, my former colleague wrote me a message on LinkedIn, offering help and "hoping that the wish for Alitalia to fail was out of frustration".

I have to admit, and I wrote it to my colleague, I felt ashamed. After having teached and consulted about it, I personally experienced for the first time the fact that everything that finds its way to social media can be picked up at any level of audience. And that it is better to take a deep breath before airing something to the world, because you could say unintended things out of rage and frustration, as I did.

The summing up of this experience is that companies are more and more realising the importance of a single complain when expressed through the web; and that conscious behaviour is cardinal in building a digital image which is coherent to what you are.

Thank you LinkedIn, thank you Twitter, thank you Alitalia, and sorry.

Roo is aimed home.

Primo esperimento con un blog, vediamo come funziona.