Novara Silicon Valley, the 4th cycle starts March 8th 2010

[paolo marenco]

Here you  can find the Program of the Novara Silicon Valley: La Storia nel Futuro a Economia starting March 8th at 4pm . Great program ....with SVST Alumni now speakers....

[Stefano Cayre]

Great idea, Giulia!
I'll try to be there!!

[Andrea Tonelli]

It would be very interesting the conference Giulia, but i will not be there because i've started to do a stage/work and i will be in the office wednesday. Marco, if you will go, can you take some notes? I think it may be interessing also Fyp, like argument of discussion...

[paolo marenco]

absolutely I'll do it

[Marco Vescera]

First of all I wish to thank Giulia for yesterday's great opportunity! The lesson has been very interesting.


If you like, I can write some infos about the two startups that were not presented during Novara's conference cycle (Sokku and Muntagnin, the first one is the first social courier, the second one is a powerful web-portal dedicated to mountains), I think that both of them have some peculiar aspects that should be discussed; by the way Giulia is involved in one of them (Sokku), so maybe you can ask her some details :) !
Marco

[paolo marenco]

good idea Marco...and I see the "romans" are coming in fypnovara.tk, animation starts!

[Andrea Tonelli]

And i thank you one more time Paolo for the support

[Marco Vescera]

OK, here I am! Sorry if I'm a little late...

Muntagnin is essentially a web-site dedicated to mountaineering, but it has many interesting features. They (Too bad I didn't write down their names... the website is still under construction and therefore I couldn't find them) decided to build it because they realised that on most web-sites and search engines there's lack of informations about this particular topic or that, often, it's very tough to find what you're looking for. The highlights of the project are:

- Geosearch (retrieving locations without knowing the names)
- Seasonal search (results will change according to the different season, in particular for suggested activities and accomodations)
- Automatic translation improved by users (something already seen on Wikipedia or Google, the automatic translation should allow anybody to understand the content of the page, and it may be corrected by willing users)
- Social search (rumors, comments, reviews from users will be included).
- Powerful search engine (it will give wider results than most of the other engines, for example related searches or synonymous match).

They think that this features will allow them to beat their main competitors (search engines such as google or yahoo, blogs, commercial and istituional portals).
The project will start in our region, but they expect to extend the coverage in the future. In a certain way the site will also work as a social network, because the infos will be supported by users' opinions and the community will be actually part of the project.

The money will come (hopefully) from advertising, fees for covering over areas (this depends on the success of the first launch) and from potentially derived mobile applications.


SOKKU, as I previously said, will be the first social courier: a sort of network that will help people in sending packages safely, fastly and cheaply. The intention is to match, over the network, people who need to ship objects and people who travel between different places (and who want to make little money during their travel).
They focus mainly on low value objects, wich do not justify the use of a commercial courier (the shipment is often more expensive than the object itself).
They're still in a very early stage, but the main characteristics will be the feedback system (users will know whether other users are reliable or not ) and that the fee will be "locked" until the package reaches it's destination (by using a code system).
Many questions were raised during the lesson about security and guarantees, but I think that the idea is very interesting and that they will find a way to solve this problems.

(Giulia, please correct me if I'm wrong about something :-) )




About Fyp: I'm really happy they're joining the forum, Paolo, I hope that a nice cooperation will start!

[stefano siccità]

very interesting Sokku...i found it a nice idea; I hope that there will be meetings like this in Novara...

about Fyp forum I think that students of Economy in Novara( and not only) should konw more about it!

[Marco Vescera]

I agree with you Stefano, we're trying to inform other students as much as we can! If you want to help your efforts will be much appreciated!

[Giulia Bignoli]

Thank you Marco.
Your review is perfect and I think you have "touched" the most important points of every idea.
Hope to see you and Paolo again and having the chance to get in touch with new and smart ideas! Maybe through Fyp.

See you soon.

[paolo marenco]

Guys and girls...the time is coming ;-) do not miss Novara Mind The Bridge meeting , Tuesday 11 th....very interesting for you!

[stefano siccità]

I won't miss!:-)