Last Thursday, I attended the IComo: La Fabbrica delle Idee (the factory of ideas) meeting in Villa Olmo, an event organized by the Centro Volta and the Chamber of Commerce of Como and presented as a matching of technology innovation aimed at the local small and medium enterprises who want to innovate exploiting new ideas to be able to remain competitive on their markets.
The subjects of the presentations ranged from robotics and automation to new manufacturing techniques such as MIM (Metal Injection Moulding), but included also a very interesting presentation about RFID technology by a HP representative as well as a brief overview of the future of information technology by Intel which of course included mobile devices.
For me the relationship with the Centro Volta is already generating positive results. We’re starting a project committed by a small artigianal enterprise who was searching for a partner to take care of the realization of their innovative idea from both the hardware and software side.
It looks very stimulating, but at the same time we recently completed the doability study for the project I submitted them some months ago and it appears we’ve already found the right contacts to actually make it real, something that appeared a bit difficult to me at first.
Looks like I’m building a pretty busy schedule for the next months, but that’s what I really wanted when I first got in touch with the staff of the Centro Volta, so I can’t complain at all!

That’s what I actually did in these summer months, reorganizing things in my home-office as well as reorganizing thoughts and relaxing my mind with some very good books to get ready for the incoming busy months.
Among the books I read the most entertaining has been Joel on software, a collection of the writings by Joel Spolsky, CEO of Fogcreek software house, originally posted on his well known blog. It contains views, comments, rants and raves about software development so brilliant that I found myself exclamating a “That’s so true!” after reading lots of passages.
Software development is not like any other artigianal work, it’s pure design, as Joel states, that’s why the skills needed to be a good programmer or even a program manager are so peculiar.
I also read a couple of very interesting books about personal leadership and human social relationships. Another one was much more related to my work on mobile devices, Windows Mobile Guida Pratica, a beginner’s guide about devices with the Windows Mobile OS, written by the Italian friend developer Massimo Mangia.
I met him the last evening here in Como with great pleasure since there are only a handful of independent developers in Italy and you can imagine how much such occasion can be so special when guys like us get the chance to share their views and problems about the work they do with so much passion.
So, a needed pause from actual coding work to save energies and prepare myself for the incoming months which do look very busy. More about that in the next update.