As the last year, I’ve been invited to present i-muse to the students of the Master in Brand of the Territorial Systems organized by POLI.design.
This year I went together with Francesca, our new marketing assistant and, as she said, we come back angry!
In a positive sense I mean: students were enthusiastic to try firsthand an easy to use tool that potentially represents the missing ring between modern mobile technologies and the fruition of multimedia contents made by professionals.
Sending this message to the people who have the power to decide whether to start an innovative project at their own exhibition is another challenge.
From this sort of contrast comes our angryness, so to say.. something that will stimulate us to work harder and try to communicate better with potential customers.
Accessibility was another matter of discussion with students: i-muse offers a number of options that make the application accessible to hearing and sight impaired people.
After this presentation we went back to work to get ready to launch the news on which we’re working in the background since some time: the first one is the new i-muse website, now online in italian!

After 20 galleries for a total of 1004 photos, the Vespatour 2006 went even live on the radio!
On Tuesday, April 30, together with Melly and Marti, speakers of the feature New Generation on Radio Codogno, and DJ Giancarlo, we talked about the solo journey around Italy I did on August 2006 riding my Vespa.
I love the radio as a communication medium, since it leaves a lot to the listener’s imagination, and in this case the challenge was making interesting an experience that I mainly reported through photos until now.
I think the number of questions and answers about the most curious elements of the journey, as well as the phone calls with Marco and Valentina, two friends I met during the stops in Tuscany, made the show pretty dynamic and interactive.
There were even some funny moments, thanks to the two brilliant speakers, and special touches such as broadcasting songs best suited to the main stops of the journey.
It was my first time on the radio, and that didn’t make things too easy for me, but I won’t tell you anything else, download the recording of the 1-hour show and enjoy listening it, ooh-yeah!

What’s beyond the hedge of the infinity?
The hedge “that excludes the greater part of my view of the farthest horizon“, as wrote Leopardi in his immortal poem, The Infinity.
The end of a journey? The beginning of another one?
For me it was just like that: on August 31, 2006, in Recanati, the last stop of the journey on my Vespa that reserved for me never ending emotions and surprises, I climbed the hill of the infinity, where is located the native house of Leopardi, and accompanied by a kind guide from the Centro Nazionale di Studi Leopardiani, I reached the hedge and… looked beyond it!
The quiet panorama beyond the hedge, with Monti Sibillini in the background, mixed with what eyes couldn’t see: the avalanche of sensations I felt along the journey and the uncertainty of the future that was waiting for me once back in Como.
Three years later I almost feel like being there again, thanks to the photo of the hedge I always keep on my desk.
The 52 photos of the twentieth gallery are dedicated to the last stop of the journey, between Loreto and Recanati, with the last one shot in Rimini before going back to Como.
I hope that through the report of the Vespatour 2006 I managed to give back a bit of the pleasure of traveling while discovering new people and things.
It’s also my Thank You to whom recommended me where to go before leaving, whom welcomed and helped me during the journey and whom, after reading the report on the blog, is willing to visit the wonderful places I described.
Bon Voyage!

My relatives from Bisceglie are deeply devoted to Padre Pio and they told me a lot about San Giovanni Rotondo.
So, on August 28, 2006, I went there with my Vespa to visit that holy place so important for all the devoted to the brother from Pietrelcina.
It was an important stop even for me, especially after having been in Assisi and at the Eremo delle Carceri of San Francesco a few days earlier, the other brother great example of humility.
Deep thinking and meditation are the words I could associate with my visit to the places where Padre Pio lived and received the stigmates, now valorized by the modern church designed by Renzo Piano.
After the visit to San Giovanni Rotondo, before going back to Bisceglie, I went to the beach in Vieste on the splendid Gargano coast.
When I was a kid I used to spend the summer holidays there, in a camping with my family, and there I learned to swim!
The 53 photos of the nineteen gallery describe the last two days in Apulia.
On August 30 I was going to leave from Bisceglie to the last stop of the Vespatour: Recanati, searching for the hedge of the infinity!

To the seaside, at last!
After 21 days of traveling at close stops, riding my Vespa for a total of 3000 kilometers, a week to the seaside in Apulia was the closing panacea of the Vespatour 2006.
I needed to rest not only physically, but also mentally, since during those 21 days I stared for the first time at some of the artistic marvels that Italy preserves, and for each one of them the emotion was deeply intense.
Using an effective metaphor: I got drunk with culture!
The welcome of my relatives in Bisceglie, in the province of Bari, has been special to say the least: for a few days they made me feel like a member of their family, they accompanied me on my visit to the town and its surroundings, and most of all they made me taste their culinary specialities. One day meat and the other fish: nothing was missing on our table at all!
During those days of relax at seaside, together with Nicola, I visited the misterious Castel del Monte, a strategic observation point of Frederick II, now depicted even on the 1 cent italian Euro coins.
To the castle, the welcome of my relatives and the seaside of Bisceglie, are dedicated the 41 photos of the eighteen gallery of the journey.

A garden extending for 3 kilometers, with an incredible sight both towards the hill and the royal palace!
The Royal Palace of Caserta really surprised me and I think that I definitely did a good choice stopping there in the morning of 23 August 2006, while I was traveling from Rome to Bisceglie, in Puglia, where I was going to spend a few days at the seaside to rest a bit after the long journey around Italy riding my Vespa.
The 54 photos of the seventeenth gallery are entirely dedicated to the Royal Palace of Caserta, to the sumptuousness of the royal apartments, visited while listening to an audioguide, and most of all to the marvellous garden and its fountains, a complex built by Carlo III di Borbone with the aim to rival with the magnificence of the Royal Palace of Versailles.
I’ve never had the chance to visit Versailles yet, but I think the astonishment I felt in Caserta will stand steady in my memories when I’ll do that. Who knows, maybe in the next Vespatour…

Staring at the magnificence of the Sistine Chapel has been another of those so intense moments of the Vespatour 2006 that it’s impossible for words or pictures to describe it.
In particular I wanted to see the “hand of the creation” that, stylized by an artist friend of mine, I had chosen as logo for my blog.
Vatican Museums really deserve a visit, and the Sistine Chapel is the last stop of the long visit route, the apex of the wonders exhibited, as depicted in the sixteen photo gallery.
During the three days spent in Rome I couldn’t miss a romanesque-style funny evening devoted to the local cuisine: on August 21, together with Stefano, a Vespa fan who came to Rome from Como by train, I went to Ariccia, in the Castelli Romani area. The laughs and the juicy “porchetta scrocchiarella” (pork roast) of the “fraschette” (outdoor inns) have remained among the silliest things we did until now!
The stop in Rome couldn’t be complete without a photo in front of the Colosseum, shot by a passing girl wearing a t-shirt with “Monnalisa” written on it… thanks Monnalisa!
The next stop, on August 23, was going to be the Royal Palace of Caserta.

They say that all roads lead to Rome, and that’s what happened for my
Vespatour 2006, the solo journey on my Vespa I did in the summer of 2006.
After a long pause, the photo report of the journey continues with a three days stop in Rome, walking along the streets of the italian capital discovering historical places and staring at the most famous monuments lighted up by the August sun.
In a couple of days I walked among the “sacred monsters” of the Eternal City: from Piazza San Pietro to Villa Borghese, from Piazza Navona to Piazza di Spagna, from the Pantheon to the Trevi Fountain: memories so strongly impressed in my mind that I feel like being there again while browsing the 56 photos of the fifteen gallery, now almost 3 years later!
Still a few stops and the photo report of my Vespatour 2006 will be completed.

As much as Wordpress changed the way I managed and presented my blog, Facebook is now changing another fundamental component: the update rate!
I often find myself microblogging on Facebook by updating my status or filling my wall in a quick and easy way, just what I needed in order to highlight what I wasn’t able to through posts on the blog, even if visibility is limited to my network of friends.
In my opinion Facebook follows the 80/20 rule pretty well: for 20% of the time you typically use it to “nurture” your ego and for 80% to look at your friends’ activities!
More or less this is my relation with a tool that in Italy is fast-growing in popularity, is generating discussions about the birth of new forms of dependence and privacy issues, but that has such a strength to be able to bring many new users on the web: without knowing it, they became micro-bloggers!

A lot of things happened in 2008, and what I wrote on the blog is only the tip of the iceberg.
However, should I really make a choice, the single thing that impressed me the most has been the evening walk in the Red Square when I was in Moscow with the Virtual Tailor of Cernobbio: misterious, fascinating and… I didn’t expect it was not flat at all!
Travels, exhibitions, events and meetings filled a 2008 that ended with such a concentration of good news in the last two months to make 2009 full of good expectations.
And even bad or unpleasant things, once elaborated, become part of the luggage of experience I bring with me in the new year.
As the last thing of the year I’d like to thank the people whom I felt close during difficult times and send a special greeting to those who call me crazy since I ride my Vespa with any kind of weather!
Welcome to 2009 and its winds of change!