Posts Tagged Startup
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! 😀
i-muse Awarded by FinancIdea in Milan
It’s the biggest prize we won so far! 😀
The confirmation of the validity of our entrepreneurial project started with i-muse!
On monday 8 october, in the wonderful Sala Parlamentino of the Palazzo Affari ai Giureconsulti in Milan, I received the 1st prize of the Evaluate your entrepreneurial idea contest , organized by the Chamber of Commerce of Milan in collaboration with Fondazione FinancIdea and the support of Rasbank and Unicredit Bank: a thick plexiglass plate and a money contribute to help starting the business.
Some of the people I met during the last months attended the award ceremony, something I appreciated since it means I captured their interest. 😉
An important prize then, maybe more important than we think, since now we’re busy getting ready for the ICHIM in Toronto.
On the Milan’s CCIAA website they’ll publish the official chart of the contest.
i-muse Back on TV for ZeroTreUno
After the interview on last February on ZeroTreUno during which, together with Luca and Paolo, I explained what we would have done to make i-muse, I went back to Espansione TV to tell what we actually did at the Educational Silk Museum.
Elda De Mattei, the presenter, was curious to know if we managed to keep our promises and created an innovative tool to visit museums and art exhibitions.
With a PDA in my hand, I showed her how much easy using i-muse actually is, and I believe I got the attention of the viewers by showing some of the best pieces of the video guide.
Elda wished us good luck for the incoming trip to Toronto where we’ll present i-muse at the ICHIM 07 and I appreciated when she gave me the opportunity to tell about the passion for the Vespa and my wish to be able to see i-muse guiding visitors at the Museo Piaggio someday. 😀
Elda called Alice our virtual guide Chiara, a little mistake, certainly lesser than the comparison with the atomic bomb during the interview in february! 😉
Here is the 12 minutes interview.
An Award for i-muse in Venice
After the presentation on saturday 29 september for the event A Night at the Museum 2007, which attracted important guests as Paolo De Santis, President of the Como’s Chamber of Commerce, and Pierluigi della Vigna, professor at the Politecnico di Milano, together with numerous friends and curious people, yesterday I went to Venice to get an award for the i-muse project: a special nomination in the e-culture category of the eContentAward 2007 contest.
The journey has been the opportunity for me to visit for the first time a fascinating town such as Venice.
Dario, a student at Ca’ Foscari university, who kindly guided me through the town’s Calle, told me with a bit of irony: “First time in Venice? It shouldn’t have been easy missing it!”.
Once filled the laguna gap, for i-muse there are other surprises coming! 😉
A Night at the Museum 2007
By reading the name of the event maybe someone will recall the movie with Ben Stiller.
Actually it’s an event involving 250 museums in Lombardia, each one offering different cultural initiatives: free guided tours, musical events, videos, exhibitions and degustations.
If I hadn’t had to be at the Educational Silk Museum of Como for the scheduled public presentation of i-muse at 18:30 I would be really pleased to attend some of the events!
I’m just joking, it’ll be an important event for us. 🙂
The staff of “our” museum is very active lately to say the least. On wednesday 20 they inaugurated a wonderful temporary exhibition dedicated to a collection of american bags from 1930 to 1970, while on wednesday 27 it’ll be the turn of the second edition of the bobbin lace competition.
Three reasons, two exhibitions and the presentation of i-muse, good enough to choose the Educational Silk Museum of Como among the numerous cultural offerings on saturday 29 september.
I’ll be waiting for you together with the i-muse team for our first Night at the Museum! 😉
PS: After the interview on Telereporter even the local broadcast Espansione TV dedicated us a brief but effective two minutes long service during the evening news.
The Gallery of i-muse Testers
In july and august we invited more than 70 people to the Educational Silk Museum of Como to complete the usability tests for i-muse, a fundamental step of the project which absorbed me completely and allowed us to refine the software in its different components.
Thanks to all the people who come and enjoyed using i-muse. Thanks also to the museum’s staff who has always been kind and welcomed our testers.
Testers have been impressed by the overall quality of our video guide, as if they didn’t expect a result of a such level, a result obtained by a group of five young people who are “playing” as entrepreneurs. 😉
Enthusiastic for the video guide, at the end of the visit with i-muse, someone often commented about the workers’ labour inside factories in the recent past.
Now that usability tests are completed the second step is waiting for us: promoting what we did so far and setting up a competitive commercial offer.
The way is still a long one, as the experts tell us…
Interview on Telereporter
The chance has been as much unexpected as important: together with Davide Marrone, author of the now celeb Skebby, I’ve been interviewed by the journalist Stefano Peduzzi for the TV broadcast Estate con Reporter! 😀
I talked about i-muse and the work we did at the Educational Silk Museum of Como.
In the studio there was also Prof. Mario Benassi of the Università degli Studi di Milano and Giovanni Giovannini, vice mayor in Corsico, who presented an innovative method to remove graffiti.
It was a long and challenging interview. I hope my performance was a good one and I managed to shown the competitive points that make i-muse great: here are the videos so that you can see for yourself! 😉
The Ingenio inside i-muse
While usability tests of the videoguide at the Educational Silk Museum of Como are going on and continue to give us great results, the value of our entrepreneurial project granted us the admission to the Bando Ingenio, now managed by Regione Lombardia.
It’s a pretty articulate announcement of competition which includes a series of facilities: vouchers to spend for base and advanced courses about different matters, consultancies by tutors and experts qualified to support the beneficiaries of the competition, and also the expenses refund for educational mobility, that is to say for the participation to seminaries and education courses useful to complete the entrepreneurial project.
This last kind of facilitation is very important to us since it will allow us participating to the ICHIM 07 international conference which will take place in Toronto at the end of october, during which we’ll have the chance to present i-muse.
In my opinion there’s no better way to professionally grow up than being able to confront with experienced people and these high profile conferences are the right place to do that. 🙂