Archive for category Mobile
The Little Corner of i-muse at the R2B Exhibition
An angular stand, a good position inside the hall and our staging attracted the attention of a lot of people during the two days of the R2B exhibition in Bologna. 😀
Me and Guido, marketing manager, setup the stand with the banners made by Luca and we welcomed people interested to see the videoguide running on Pdas interacting with Rfid tags.
During the two days we continued the networking activity begun with the birth of Togunà Interactive a few months ago, searching for partnership with hardware vendors, Rfid and Zigbee in particular, software solutions complimentary to our own, and presenting ourselves to potential clients, also thanks to the staff of the Startup Accelerator of the Politecnico di Milano.
Very interesting was learning the experiences of other startuppers in their search for financial support, in particular with italian Business Angels. About this I’d like to point you out to a guide made by IBAN and Kpmg.
A positive result then for Togunà ’s first stand, after the demonstration of i-muse at the Ichim 07 last year in Toronto.
For me it was the first exhibition as exhibitor, and I have to say that it’s always useful being able to look at things from different points of view! 😉
In the pictures you can see the stand, as well as the Start2B area of the exhibition.
i-muse goes to the R2B Exhibition in Bologna
We’re getting ready for our first exhibition! 😀
On june 5th and 6th Togunà will be at stand 216 of the R2B exhibition, in the Start2b area, dedicated to new entrepreneurial initiatives.
We’ll showcase our first product, the i-muse videoguide system, so that interested people can give it a try.
In Denver, during private demonstations, people told me i-muse was “nice and sleek“, due its graphics and user interface responsivity. I hope in Bologna we’ll get the italian equivalent of these compliments. 😉
Before leaving for the AAM 2008 Annual Meeting in Denver, Intruders.TV’s staff interviewed me when I met them in Milan during the event The Next Web Now organized by Microsoft. It’s a series of a brief answers to questions about the startup of the entrepreneurial adventure.
The interview is short and effective: a good presentation for Bologna. Enjoy it!
A Denver per l’Annual Meeting 2008 e MuseumExpo
I returned from Denver, in Colorado! 😀
I went there to attend the 2008 Annual Meeting of the American Association of Museums, since we decided that at least a Togunà ’s representative couldn’t miss such an important event, which attracted more than 5000 attendees, including 300 from outside the US.
I went alone, but in Denver I met Mario Bucolo, a veteran of the meeting and one of the few other italians coming from our country. After the meeting Mario flew to Oklahoma searching for tornados to take pics of them! 😯
The week spent in Denver has been intense and weary, due to time zone effects and the high altitude. Actually Denver is located exactly one mile above sea level.
It was all worth it, both for business and pleasure. 🙂
I met a lot of people of the sector and brought home a series of useful indications for the future of i-muse.
Who knows, maybe the next year in Philadelphia Togunà will join the MuseumExpo with its own booth! 😉
Togunà Interactive S.r.l. Is Born!
It’s a dream turning into reality: a new technological company is born, gathering five professionals and offering i-muse as its first product! 😀
In this entrepreneurial adventure I involved Guido, Luca, Paolo and Samantha together with me. Five young guys from Como with complementary skills who try because they believe they can succeed.
What does Togunà mean?
Suggested by Guido, who also gave birth to the name i-muse ;), it’s an african word indicating the “house of wisdom“, a sort of covered place such as the one in the picture, where the wise men of Dogon villages in Mali get together to have a talk.
A simple name, easy to explain and with a proper meaning if we recall the weekly evening meetings we regularly have since we started working on i-muse.
The company is just a starting point, although with a solid base, since we built a lot until now thanks to the work done to create a product such as i-muse.
Now we’re on the market, ready to take care of the first customer, and I, as President of the Management Board, feel at the same time the burden and the honor to give my best in order to continue in this adventure together with my partners!
Finger crossed and thanks to our supporters! 😀
i-muse Featured on Comoe20’s WebTV
The guys who launched the portal Comoe20.it decided to interview us for their WebTV. 🙂
They came to the Educational Silk Museum of Como to see the videoguide in action and ask us if we made the system with our sole forces or someone helped us out.
Although the number of people involved in the project who supported us is relevant, from the Politecnico to the Chamber of Commerce of Como, to the Educational Silk Museum’s staff, the investment in terms of time and money has been entirely by ourselves.
It’s something pretty surprising actually. Five youngers from Como who try to play as entrepreneurs starting with a product aimed to a difficult market, especially in Italy: we’re actually inventing our work! 😉
This is the message of the nice video edited by Comoe20.it’s staff and we hope the people will get it.
LuBeC 2007: ICT and Cultural Heritage
Lucca is a town of magic: I already wrote this when I visited it last year for the first time during the Vespatour.
This year I had the chance to get back to Lucca thanks to Lu.Be.C 2007, the event dedicated to the combination of ICT and cultural heritage organized by Promo P.A. Foundation at the Real Collegio.
A combination which isn’t exactly a marriage in Italy yet: I had the feeling that Public Administration representatives managing cultural heritage and entrepreneurs offering the so called additional services, too often speak different languages.
It’s a natural defect of computer science engineers making things only they can use, and in my opinion this is the strongest barrier in the dialogue between the two sides.
We try to do our part with i-muse: technology, PDAs and Rfid in our case, it’s just a tool.
What really matters is that the service we provide boasts quality and visitors actually benefits from it.
Along this line I appreciated the brilliant speeches of Andrea Granelli, advisor of the Minister of Cultural Heritage, and Ilaria D’Uva from D’Uva Workshop.
Who knows if next year at Lu.Be.C we’ll be able to report some progress towards this marriage thanks to i-muse. 😉
i-muse Presentation in Villa Olmo
Yesterday evening the emotion was great: we presented i-muse in the place where the idea was born: in Villa Olmo, during the 12th innovation technology matching organized by Centro Volta.
In 2004 I visited an exhibition about Mirò, the first of the great exhibitions organized in Villa Olmo, and while I was using an audioguide I got the idea to make a guide running on Pdas.
Then, in 2005, I committed to Centro Volta’s engineers a due diligence study for the project, a study that led me to search for the people to build a team.
This is the first blog post in which I wrote about the project, on march 18, 2005.
Back then the IComo initiative was at the beginning and Centro Volta’s engineers became increasingly more active in supporting local companies along the difficult, although stimulating, path to technologic innovation.
Since then a lot of things happened, and chance wanted that we presented i-muse first at the Educational Silk Museum, then in Canada, and now in the place where the idea was born.
I hope this strange combination will be a good sign for the future. 😉
i-muse on Rfid Italia
Rfid Italia, the italian portal about Rfid technology, published a video interview on i-muse.
Paolo Conti, Rfid Italia’s director, came to Como and had the opportunity to try the video guide at the Educational Silk Museum.
He spent words of appreciation for the system, in particular since we implemented the Rfid technology in a transparent way for the visitor.
Actually a small antenna mounted on the Pda is used to locate the Rfid tags placed on the caption holders and the visitor just have to bring the Pda close to the icons hiding the tags in order to play the content related to the exhibit he’s looking at.
A pretty simple interaction method which proved to be critical for the people who doesn’t feel at ease with technology in general, especially the so called couch potatoes. 😉
The Rfid Italia portal is pretty active lately. For example they recently launched the Rfid Italia Network initiative, aimed to provide consulting, matching and marketing services to the companies operating in the sector.
Enjoy the video!
i-muse Conquers ICHIM 07
A week spent in Toronto really flown away: an experience that I couldn’t even imagine just one year ago when we seriously started working on i-muse.
The demonstration at the ICHIM 07 conference went very well, a lot of people were curious to see the video guide running: from representatives of major canadian, american and european cultural heritage institutions, to curators, researchers, professors and students. Being able to meet these people, discuss and talk to them, has been the real added value of the event.
The clear feeling I had is that we’re among the pioneers in this sector and at the same time we have a product with a quality many didn’t expect! 😉
A positive experience from a business point of view then, as much as it was for the pleasure of discovering a multi-cultural and rich of points of interest city such as Toronto: we walked through the city’s quarters visiting major museums, climbed up to the CN Tower’s 447m high Sky Pod and admired the power of the Niagara Falls. 😀
A nice presentation and a great cultural enrichment are the balance of the canadian adventure. 🙂
The i-muse Team Flies to Toronto
In a few days all the five of us will leave for Canada to demonstrate i-muse at the ICHIM 07, the international conference about informatics applied to cultural heritage that will take place in Toronto from the 24th to the 26th of october.
It’s an important chance to show the results of our work to the 300 invited people coming from all over the world, including researchers, sector experts and professionals.
Even the local daily newspaper La Provincia wished us good luck with an article by Sara della Torre.
It’s a big investment for us, although actually facilitated, since we are among the beneficiaries of the Bando Ingenio, a regional announcement of competition which guarantees us that the expenses sustained for the educational mobility will be refunded.
Meanwhile, we got some interest thanks to the paper about i-muse we wrote for the conference.
We’ll try to leave a positive impression and to enjoy the adventure.
We’re getting ready with the last things and then let’s go! 😀