I’m back home after an exciting week in Paris. I was there to attend LeWeb (it’s my 5th time there!) and now that I think about it I cannot imagine being elsewhere on the first week of December. This time I won’t talk about logistics: LeWeb is a very well organized event and it improves year after year. Hats off to Loic and Géraldine for putting it up. What really struck me this year was the general atmosphere, which was extremely positive if you consider the hard times we’re going through.

As my friend Luca Sartoni pointed out in his podcast, I find interesting that most of the companies and products which had been talked about on stage this year are now deeply rooted in our daily life. Airbnb, Spotify, foursquare and Twitter are now 100% part of my reality and even the new apps (e.g. Uber) are so seamless that you can use them right away and still feel like you’ve been using them forever.

LeWeb also showed me that the startup ecosystem in Europe is changing. Until a few years ago it was all about London; now things are different because the Scandinavian countries and Berlin are becoming the new centers for innovation. Berlin in particular has proven to provide the right humus to grow a startup because of its cheaper cost of living (compared to other European capitals) and the cultural groove that makes it one of the top three most exciting cities in the continent along with Paris and London. If London is the European “New York City” Berlin is definitely going to become the European “San Francisco” in terms of lifestyle and opportunities.

The enthusiasm at LeWeb has always been contagious but this year I feel more optimistic about the future: it’s great to see that creativity and ideas can still capitalize and save/change the world. I’ve heard a lot of encouraging speeches about magic, passion, curiosity and hard work. They all came from successful entrepreneurs who really believed in the power of their ideas and somehow managed to turn them into great products. I was also very proud of my fellow Italian entrepreneurs who won the startup competition with Beintoo, a smart product that has a lot of potential.

That said, I can’t wait for the next edition to come!

When it comes to presentation techniques, the list of books about the subject is endless. To be frank, I believe that presenting skills (just like any other skill) are somehow innate and these books can only help you refine something that’s already there. But this is not what I want to address here. The point is that most of these books focus on the relationship between the presenter and her audience as they interact in the same physical location. Recently I found myself in the situation whereby I had to give presentations to an audience that was located somewhere else and I could feel on my skin the difference between a face to face interaction and a virtual one. That said, I’ve come up with a short list of tips that might help you deliver a good telepresentation:

Get your stuff ready
The latest Web conferencing platforms allow you to share your screen with your audience and ensure they see what you are talking about. Nonetheless, it is important to have a plan B in case the screen sharing doesn’t work and you’ll have to rely only on audio. Get your slides printed and ready in front of you and don’t forget to email a PDF copy of them to your audience early on, so that you won’t have to do it whilst hosting your presentation.

Be on time
If being late is embarassing, being late at a telepresentation is double embarassing. If your audience is located in different time zones it is triple embarassing. Always be the first one to join the telepresentation you’re hosting.

Know your chickens
Whenever possible, get to know as much as you can about your audience: who are they? How can you get their attention?

Introduce yourself
Before you start, make sure your audience knows who you are and what topic you will be addressing. It is likely that they have just gotten out of a telepresentation and will get into another one after yours. Don’t give anything for granted.

Avoid misunderstandings
When you give a presentation in front of a real audience you can easily understand whether what you’re saying is boring people or making them feel uncomfortable. In a telepresentation you will have to figure it out in other ways. If you want to make a joke don’t rely on spoken words or on facial expressions (they might not see/understand its meaning) unless your audience knows you very well: instead, put something on your presentation slides that can easily be interpreted as a joke (a picture, a funny quote, a phrase… anything). The ability to make good jokes is a powerful weapon but – just like any other weapon – needs to be handled with care.

Keep it short and be original
If a 50 slides presentation with bullet points were a human being it would be a serial killer. Make it simple and quick, leave the hard stuff aside (or simplify it). More importantly: be original. I draw my own slides on the iPad – although I’m not a good drawer – and my audience is always curious to know what will the next slide be. Drawing your own slides will also help you memorize information and data because you’ll be able to display them in a familiar fashion.

OMGuitar is a great way to play guitar on an iPad. I’m really addicted to it.

OMGuitar is the best mobile guitar emulation ever created. It is a synthesizer with unique interface and new-generation sound hybrid engine that allows anyone to produce realistic guitar sounds. OMGuitar is very playable and truly expressive. It responds to the speed of your strumming, catching the emotion of your melody. The quality of the sound is so high that it can easily be used in studio work as a quick method to produce realistic rhythm and arpeggio guitar tracks.

Un’altra bella figura di merda made in Italy.

Questo infographic diffuso qualche giorno fa sostiene che il genere femminile è quello che si sta impossessando della maggior parte degli spazi nel cosiddetto “social Web”.
I dati presi in considerazione provengono da Google Ad Planner e Brian Solis e si riferiscono all’utenza americana.

L’attendibilità di questi numeri potrebbe essere discutibile sotto alcuni aspetti ma in ogni caso rivela una tendenza che ha del verosimile. Quello su cui mi soffermerei, infatti, non è il rapporto tra la presenza maschile e femminile bensì la tipologia di siti su cui le donne sono più presenti e, di conseguenza, la qualità dei contenuti prodotti e condivisi da queste ultime.

Le donne sono presenti in maggioranza sui social network che danno importanza alla conversazione e mettono in contatto le persone mediante profili e condivisione di materiale privato. Gli uomini invece la fanno da padroni su siti in cui l’aspetto sociale è meno rilevante rispetto alla condivisione di materiale (nel caso di Digg, link ad articoli asettici che parlano soprattutto di tecnologia e che spesso non sono nemmeno accompagnati da una riflessione personale).

La parità dei sessi si riscontra invece su servizi come YouTube, che è intrattenimento allo stato puro, e su tutti quei siti in cui la condivisione di informazioni non ha una particolare rilevanza sociale perché si tratta di contesti neutri (Linkedin, Del.icio.us, etc.).

Dopo anni trascorsi nel lusso di Palazzo Grazioli, tra nani e prostitute, karaoke e gioielli a forma di farfalla, letti grandi e aerei utilizzati illegalmente, Silvio decise finalmente di arrendersi al popolo che reclamava la sua testa.