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theStartup.eu first event: UpStart Roma

Stefano Bernardi — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:27:31 +0000

I am very pleased to announce that all our efforts in creating a tech scene in Rome and more generally in Italy are coming through. On Monday, November 23rd we will be hosting our first event, in collaboration with a few roman startups: Publisoftweb, Ibrii, Frestyl and other cool geeks.

UpStartRoma will be a monthly meetup for the italian tech and startup scene. Our fist meeting will be held in Publisoftweb’s offices (thank you) and will feature quite a few pitches and keynotes.

What we aim to do is recreate the London-like ecosystem in Rome. There are a lot of great people, great startups, investors and bloggers but nobody knows each other very well. We hope to help everyone in finding new business contacts, mentors, investors and more generally very cool dudes to hang out with.

We can’t wait to be able to do this in other cities, but for that we would need your help. Please contact us if you’d like our help with the organization of something similar in your city.

We must say, we got a good inspiration from the first Startup Night, that was held in Milan in September. And, by the way, they are hosting a second one, on Tuesday 24th.

If you’re around Rome this is a must-attend event, see you on November 23rd, 19:00 c/o Publisoftweb, Via Gallonio 6, Rome

I forgot to say that beer and pizza are on us!

Frontiers Of Interaction V: the innovators’ conference (updates, pics)

Stefano Bernardi — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 08:21:41 +0000

Today I’m attending Frontiers of Interaction V conference in Rome, a great event that each year brings together all the innovators and interaction designers.
Each year they chose a theme, and 2009’s is “smart cities, internet of things and social networking”.

The program is very interesting:

09,30 Welcome message from Leeander & Matteo Penzo
09:40 Bruce Sterling (Video) | Science Fiction Writer
||| About the Real Frontiers of Interaction |||
09:50 Fabio Sergio | Creative Director FROG DESIGN
||| Sing the Body Electric|||
10:10 Daniele Galiffa & Manuel Lima | Infovis + VISUAL COMPLEXITY
||| Discover the beauty of visual complexity in the age of infinite interconnectedness |||
10:30 Antonio Tombolini | CEO at Simplicissimus
||| Tutto parla: impara ad ascoltare le cose |||
10:50 Demo Site.
11:00 coffee break
11:20 Roberto Bonzio | Journalist at Reuters
||| “Frontiers Italians” |||
11:40 Riccardo Luna | WIRED ITALIA Director
||| ItAliens |||
12:00 KEYNOTE: Adam Greenfield | Author of “Everyware: The dawning age of ubiquitous computing”
||| Elements of a networked urbanism |||
12:30 David Orban | European Lead, Singularity University.
||| The Consciousness Panopticon |||
12,50 …video
13,00 Lunch
14:15 Joe Ferrari (Web Art Director di Wave Group) | Korinami (Sound Designer)
||| MUSIC & Video Live performance |||
14:30 KEYNOTE: Davide Bocelli & Alex Rose (video) | Long Now Foundation
||| La Long Now Foundation |||
15:00 Andrea Gaggioli | Università Cattolica di Milano
||| “Ecologia Partecipativa” |||
15:20 Matt Jones | Founder DOPPLR
||| The New Negroponte Switch |||
15,40 Coffee Break
16:00 Max Ramaciotti, Davide Casali & Luca Lisci | Maison,the
||| Community di Percorso: Pollicino nel bosco crossmediale |||
16:20 Carlo Maria Medaglia | Università La Sapienza, CATTID
||| Ubiquitous Computing |||
16:40 Luca Simeone & Salvatore Iaconesi | Vianet + Rhizome
||| Ubiquitous Anthropology |||
17:00 Andrea Vaccari | Senseable City Lab, MIT Boston
||| The Real Time City |||
17:20 Luisella Giani | Country Manager Italy Netlog
||| Web Celebrity |||
17:40 Conclusions with Leeander, Matteo, Carlo
18:00 End

I will try to write about the most important and cool stuff that comes out today, and maybe interview some entrepreneurs.
They also offer live streaming of the event.

Update: Online the first batch of pics.

Scoop: Passpack rolling out MiniPacks, share passwords with other softwares

Stefano Bernardi — Sun, 31 May 2009 21:00:58 +0000

Italian startup Passpack is an online password manager. A web application to securely store your passwords.
With the release of Passpack 7 they introduced a lot of new cool features such as automatic saving, search, tags & filter. But the most important has surely been secure password sharing: you can now send your passwords to other passpack users without having to email or IM them.
A few days ago another great feature was released: bulk actions. You can now delete or share multiple entries with one click, awesome. But not enough..

At TechGarage I met Francesco Sullo, the founder of Passpack and he gave me a scoop: get ready for Minipacks.
As of now you can share passwords only with passpack users, so if they are not registered you actually have to call, email, IM them and get them to sign up. But what if someone is using other softwares?
With this release (due in one week approximately) you will be able to send out minipacks, completely secure and encrypted files containing your passwords, if the person you are sending the minipack to is not registered on passpack he will be able to import the file in any software after having inserted a password (you will have to call or email for this).
I think this is such a huge feature, it definitely needed a post. Can’t wait to see it live.

Here is a video if you’ve never heard of passpack

TechGarage: The most important italian startup event

Stefano Bernardi — Thu, 07 May 2009 12:58:40 +0000

On May 22nd, the italian and european startup scene will gather in Rome for TechGarage. Hosted at LUISS university, the event is one of the most important startup happening in Italy.
The event is organized by DPixel, which operates one of the few early-stage venture capital funds present in Italy, and for this year with the help of Telecom Italia.

TechGarage features a start up competition featuring 10 hot and new european start ups. These 10 finalists will have the chance to pitch their ideas and business plans to VCs and business angels. 3 winners will receive an award and a package of services from DPixel: accounting, legal and advising services that will guide the company to its next stage and prepare it to get funded. Many venture capital funds will be present as well as entrepreneurs, CEOs, bloggers and the best of the italian internet and media community. Given its smaller “size” compared to major events like TheNextWeb, LeWeb or Next, there will surely be opportunities to create more relationships, making it a networking event not to miss.

TechGarage will bring visibility to european startups and many opportunities to young and promising entrepreneurs who will be able to meet some of the most importan seed and venture capital fund, business angels and other entrepreneurs. They will also have the opportunity to meet bloggers and journalists so to get media coverage for their ideas, as well as meeting programmers and all kind of geeks.

This is the program for the day:
- 8:30‐09:25am
Guest Registration and and  Breakfast
- 9:30am
Introduction by Pier Luigi Celli, CEO Università Luiss
- 9:30 – 9:45
 Keynote  ‐  Luca  Montezemolo,  Ferrari, LUISS  chairman
- 9:45 – 10:15am
 Keynote  –  Franco Bernabe’,  CEO Telecom  Italia
- 10:15‐11:15am
 Start  Up  Pitches
- 11:15‐11:40am
Coffee Break
- 11:40‐12:40pm
Start  Up  Pitches
- 12:40‐1:10pm
Closing  Keynote  by  Saeed  Amidi, CEO And President Plug & Play Tech Center
- 1:10‐1:30pm
Awards to the 3 Winning Start Ups
- 1:30pm
Lunch
- 2:30pm
Working Capital Camp

In the afternoon Telecom Italia will host its Working Capital Camp. WorkingCapital is a nice new initiative focused on high tech and innovative companies. Telecom Italia helps entrepreneurs by funding their companies with services. It is refreshing to see such a big company take interest in early stage innovative startups.

theStartup.eu is an official media partner for the event, so expect (hopefully) live coverage, startup presentations and interviews.
If anyone is planning to attend the event, send me a quick email and we’ll meet up!