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Jane Goodall in Trento on February 27th

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Darwin Trento
Primatologist, ethologist, and anthropologist Jane Goodall will be in Trento on February 27th for a public speaking titled “Reasons for hope”. The event is part of Darwin Year 2009 (check the entire program, with events from January up to June).

If you don’t know who Jane Goodall is, you can check her Wikipedia page or watch the video of her talk at TED embedded below (suggestion: watch at least the first 30 seconds!)

Her description from TED says:
Jane Goodall, dubbed by her biographer “the woman who redefined man,” has changed our perceptions of primates, people, and the connection between the two. Over the past 45 years, Goodall herself has also evolved — from steadfast scientist to passionate conservationist and humanitarian.

Kiva, the distributed micro loan platform, just released a new API, and social network analysis sprang up

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kiva apiVia Ajaxian I come to know that Kiva, the distributed micro loan platform, has just released a new developer API that gives third parties access to create innovative applications on top of the platform! I’m investing 100 dollars in Kiva since some years (my Kiva lender profile) and I found it a neat idea! If you don’t know what Kiva is, check this video about Kiva, there is also a Kiva Facebook application.

And the amazing guys behind “How We Know Us – Investigating, discussing, and measuring social capital” already started poking at the data available with the hypothesis network analysis will be able to help predict rates of return! Check
the image of the complete(?) network of relationships between the recipients and the lenders and the partners.

Go play with the new KIVA API!

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Getting things done … by your search engine: just give it your task list and it will take care of everything!

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Google Task list One point made by Prabhakar Raghavan, head of Yahoo! Research, during his talk at the FBK retreat was “People don’t want to search, people want to get their tasks done”. Search engines in fact try to infer the intent behind the query text and the intent of the user is getting a certain task done. And they try to offer information able to satisfy that intent. This made me think a bit.

Well, if I was a search engine, I would try to get the tasks lists of all my users. This will really make my users satisfied (and there is no more need to try to infer the intent behind search queries)!
Not a very original thought anyway, in fact, the search engine Google already provided the functionality of keeping your tasks list in Gmail and I started trying it recently. What is terribly amazing is that now Google can work offline on my tasks list and try to get MY tasks done! Automatically!

Out of curiosity, I checked the task list I currently keep in Google and I quickly realized that this is possible, already possible!
Some tasks in my task list (and, yes, I need to update the already scary list of things Google knows about you) were:

  • find someone to subrent a room in my apartment
  • find someone able to install a music player in my car
  • find a bed, possibly an used one as gift
  • check new activity on the Livememories wiki
  • fill burocracy about my work in univ of bolzano
  • write a paper about recent work on trustlet and get it published
  • book a flight for xyz around date abc

Well, for some of these tasks Google can already go around and suggest me solutions, just by juxtaposing relevant bits of information; for some can even go further and really do the task, for example I can authorize Google to search the flight and buy it for me without any intervention on my part!

just Imagine you have in the specific task page (such as http://www.google.com/paolo.massa/tasks/book_a_flight/ ) a list of suggestions or of automatic actions Google can perform or has already performed!!! This is really feasible, especially because now this can be done offline, I don’t expect Google to get the task done in the very precise moment I type it (while instead I expect Google to give me back relevant information in the moment I type a query!).

Of course Google cannot move my car and install a music player in it, but when we will move in the Internet of things (another topic that was very central in most talks at the FBK retreat) this might even become possible.

So let us analyze the possible situation in which we are/will be: now I have a robot (a software artifact, the search engine Google or Yahoo! or another one) that is replacing me in doing my stuff! Well of course we might start asking ourselves “if I am no more needed for getting things done, what is my role on earth? And why in the hell (!) would any employer pay me for what I do or I could do?”. And of course, the very next step would be “ok, robots can do everything. What about humans?” and then I would end in the not-very-original-I-must-admit forecast of a future Matrix-like world. But maybe it is better if I stop here ;)

Now this gives totally new dimensions to “getting things done“!

FBK Retreat 2009 Live!

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I already posted about FBK retreat 2009: the future of scientific and technological research (program). Today and tomorrow great speakers will share their insights with us and with all the world. You can in fact follow the FBK retreat live! Of course if you can make it to Trento, you are welcome to join us here! If not, embedded below there is the Web stream, enjoy!!!

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FBK retreat 2009: the future of scientific and technological research

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Very interesting retreat at my research institute FBK (Fondazione Bruno Kessler)! Here there is the program of the retreat. There are many uber-interesting invited speaker. Personally I’m really looking forward to listen Prabhakar Raghavan (Head of Yahoo! Research) – USA, Hendrik Berndt (VP & CTO of DoCoMo Eurolabs) – Germany/Japan, Ray Perrault (Director Artificial Intelligence Center – SRI) – USA and Wolfgang Wahlster (CEO and Scientific Director of DFKI) – Germany.
Let me know if you would like to join us!

FBK retreat

New directions for scientific and technological research: a comparison of diverse views
Start: 29/01/2009 – 00:30
End: 30/01/2009 – 19:00
THE FUTURE OF SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNOLOGICAL RESEARCH
PRO>RETREAT OF THE SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNOLOGICAL CENTERS OF FBK
Trento, Italy, January 29-30 2009
(for the schedule of January 28th, see moreover)
Sala Conferenze Ovest, FBK
Via Sommarive 18, Povo (TN), Italy

January 29th (in streaming da giovedi’ 29/01)
9.00-9.30
Welcome & Opening Welcome by Andrea Zanotti (president of FBK)
The FBK Research Programs
Andrea Simoni (Director Center for Materials and Microsystems – FBK)
Paolo Traverso (Director Center for Information Technology – FBK)

9.30-11.00 – Nano & Micro Technologies (1)
Chairs: Pierluigi Bellutti – Head of MTLab, FBK; Lorenzo Gonzo – Head of Smart Optical Sensors and Interfaces, FBK
Bruno Murari (Scientific Advisor ST Microelectronics) – Italy
Peter Seitz (Vice-President Nano-medicine, CSEM SA) – Switzerland

11.00-11.30 Coffee break

11.30-13.00 Future Internet (1)
Chairs: Massimo Zancanaro –Head of Intelligent Interfaces & Interaction, FBK; Luciano Serafini – Head of Data & Knowledge Management, FBK
Mark Maybury (Executive Director – MITRE) – USA
Klaus Tochtermann (Director Know-Center Graz) – Austria

13.00-14.30 Lunch

14.30-16.00 Nano & Micro Technologies (2)
Chairs: Alberto Lui – New Materials and Analytical Methods for Biosensors and Bioelectronics Group, FBK; Leandro Lorenzelli – BioMEMS Group, FBK
Pietro Siciliano (Resp. IMM CNR – Sezione di Lecce) – Italy
David Holden (CEA- Minatec) – France

16.30-18.00 Future Internet (2)
Chair: Marco Pistore – Head of Service Oriented Applications, FBK
Hendrik Berndt (VP & CTO of DoCoMo Eurolabs) – Germany/Japan
Roger Kilian-Kehr (Research Architekt, SAP Research Center CEC Karlsruhe)

January 30th (in streaming da venerdì 30/01)
9.00-10.30 2009 – The Year of Innovation – The Challenges for ICT (1)
Chair: Alessandro Cimatti – Head of Embedded Systems, FBK
João da Silva (Director of the Network & Communication DG-INFSO)
Malik Ghallab (CEO for Science and Technology – INRIA) – France

10.30-11.00 Coffee break

11.00-12.30 Future Internet (3)
Chairs: Marcello Federico & Bernardo Magnini — Heads of Human Language Technologies, FBK
Yuichi Matsushima (Vice President of NICT) – Japan
Prabhakar Raghavan (Head of Yahoo! Research) – USA

12.30-14.00 Lunch

14.00-15.30 Embedded Intelligence: Ambient Computing & Intelligent Interaction
Chair: Oliviero Stock – Senior Fellow, FBK

Ray Perrault (Director Artificial Intelligence Center – SRI) – USA
Wolfgang Wahlster (CEO and Scientific Director of DFKI) – Germany

15.30-16.00 Coffee break

16.00-17.30 2009 – The Year of Innovation – The Challenges for ICT (2)
Chair: Paolo Traverso, Director Center for Information Technology, FBK
Lutz Heuser (Vice President of SAP Research) – Germany
Dario Avallone (Director R&D Engineering) – Italy

17.30-19.00 Concluding Remarks – Moderatore: Michele Lanzinger (Direttore Museo Tridentino di Scienze Naturali)
Lorenzo Dellai – President of the Trentino Autonomous Province
Andrea Zanotti – President of FBK
Andrea Simoni – Director Center for Materials and Microsystems
Paolo Traverso – Director Center for Information Technology
Discussion & Remarks by the Invited Speakers

19.00-20.00 Aperitif

Sala Conferenze Ovest, FBK
Via Sommarive 18, Povo, Trento, Italy
reatreatinfopoint@fbk.eu

PLEASE NOTE: the talks are in English and attendance is upon invitation

As far as the Center for Information Technology is concerned, two additional days are being added to the programme, as follows:

– The first part on Wednesday, Jan. 28, starting from 9 a.m. and dealing with the Trentino Research System
– The second part on Monday, Feb. 2, starting from 9.30 a. m. for FBK researchers only

January 28th (no streaming!)
9.00 – 9.30 Welcome & Introduction — Paolo Traverso Director of the Center for Information Technology, FBK

9.30 – 10.00 Francesco De Natale
Director of the Dipartimento di Ingegneria e Scienza dell’Informazione (DISI), University of Trento

10.00 – 10.30 Imrich Chlamtac
President of the CREATE-NET Research Consortium

10.30 – 11.00 Coffee Break

11.00 – 11.30 Raffaele De Amicis
Director of the Center for Advanced Computer Graphics
Technologies (GraphiTech)

11.30 – 12.00 Corrado Priami
President & CEO of The Microsoft Research – University of Trento Centre for Computational and Systems Biology (CoSBi)

12.00 – 12.30 Remo Job
Dean of Facoltà di Scienze Cognitive, Università di Trento

12.30 – 13.00 Discussion & Concluding Remarks

Happiness as a contagious virus: please spread it!

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Some papers are more worth than others.
Dynamic spread of happiness in a large social network: longitudinal analysis over 20 years in the Framingham Heart Study by James H Fowler and Nicholas A Christakis.
Solid analysis based on data from 4739 individuals followed from 1983 to 2003.

Conclusions People’s happiness depends on the happiness of others with whom they are connected. This provides further justification for seeing happiness, like health, as a collective phenomenon.

Objectives To evaluate whether happiness can spread from person to person and whether niches of happiness form within social networks.

Results:
Clusters of happy and unhappy people are visible in the network, and the relationship between people’s happiness extends up to three degrees of separation (for example, to the friends of one’s friends’ friends).
People who are surrounded by many happy people and those who are central in the network are more likely to become happy in the future.
Longitudinal statistical models suggest that clusters of happiness result from the spread of happiness and not just a tendency for people to associate with similar individuals. A friend who lives within a mile (about 1.6 km) and who becomes happy increases the probability that a person is happy by 25% (95% confidence interval 1% to 57%). Similar effects are seen in coresident spouses (8%, 0.2% to 16%), siblings who live within a mile (14%, 1% to 28%), and next door neighbours (34%, 7% to 70%). Effects are not seen between coworkers. The effect decays with time and with geographical separation.

(credits: Photo by beija-flor released on Flickr under Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial No Derivative license)

Coworking in Trento

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CoworkingI’ve been somehow coworking (I just created the page in the Italian Wikipedia which was missing) the past weeks, i.e. I’ve been visiting friends in their offices for meetings and then remaining there for working: when I have an Internet connection I can do my work in any place and visiting other talented people is always a source of new inspirations and fruitful discussions and a more creative way of working and seeing your daily job from different angles and perspectives.
So this post is just to put out there a sort of placeholder: anybody interested in formalizing some coworking spaces in Trento? Anybody maybe already doing it?
(Credits: photo by “hillary h” released on Flickr under Creative Commons AttributionShare Alike license)

The IT Crowd, nerdiness and people you might want to stay away from ;)

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I received the following message in Facebook: “Don’t work too hard! Is this what you do at work all day?” With a link to the first episode of the IT Crowd. So I thought I might embed episode 1 below. Enjoy!

You might also search for the other episodes of The It Crowd.

If you don’t ROFL (Roll On Floor Laughing) watching “The IT crowd”, don’t worry, we are a subculture and it is much better for yourself if you don’t understand this kind of jokes ;)
Usually during one of the first lectures at the University, I’m used to project full screen the following image “There is no place like 127.0.0.1”
No place like 127.0.0.1
and observing students telling nothing. The class can be divided in two: students who get the joke (and usually start smiling by themselves with self-complacency, self thinking “we are in the same crowd”) and those who don’t get it. And I usually tell people who cannot get it to stay away from people who get it ;) And this also gives me an index of the nerdiness level I should keep during the lectures.
By the way, the “There is no place like 127.0.0.1” t-shirt might be a good present for me, just to let you know of course … ;)

Obama and keeping citizens in the loop

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In a previous post I reviewed the tools used by Dellai for his local political campaign and I was wondering if and how he will keep trying to involve citizens in the loop.
Of course Obama had a much larger campaign and faces now a much larger effort in order to keep the US citizens (and partly all the world inhabitants) in the loop.
I read from a post on the Complexity and Social Networks Blog the following email, sent to Obama’s e-mail list, by David Plouffe, Campaign Manager of Obama for America.
This is an amazing time, the challenges ahead of Obama are huge and I would not sleep the night being in his shoes but what he and his staff will do is going to reshape how we think about government and participation.
The emphasis on locality (your community!) in this message is really amazing!

Exactly one month ago, you made history by giving all Americans a real opportunity for change.
Now it’s time to start preparing and working for change in our communities.
On December 13th and 14th, supporters are coming together in every part of the country to reflect on what we’ve accomplished and plan the future of this movement. Your ideas and feedback will be collected and used to guide this movement in the months and years ahead.
Join your friends and neighbors — sign up to host or attend a Change is Coming house meeting near you.
Since the election, the challenges we face — and our responsibility to take action — have only gotten more urgent.
You can connect with fellow supporters, make progress on the issues you care about, and help shape the future of your community and our country.
Learn what you can do now to support President-elect Obama’s agenda for change and continue to make a difference in your community.
Take the first important step by hosting or attending a Change is Coming house meeting. Sign up right now:
http://my.barackobama.com/changeiscoming
To get our country back on track, it will take all of us working together.
Barack and Joe have a clear agenda and an unprecedented opportunity for change. But they can’t do it alone.
Will you join us at a house meeting and help plan the next steps for this movement?
Thanks,
David

David Plouffe
Campaign Manager
Obama for America

But in Italy something is moving as well! Yesterday there was a discussion in the Italian Parliament about Internet Technologies and politics.
The video embedded by David Orban in his post is very interesting so here we go with the re-embedding. It is a video from the documentary “Us Now”, a film project about the power of mass collaboration, government and the internet (tagline from site: “New technologies and a closely related culture of collaboration present radical new models of social organisation. This project brings together leading practitioners and thinkers in this field and asks them to determine the opportunity for government”)