ONE WAY TICKET

Could video-gaming transcend its virtual confines and help us hack reality?

2011-04-07T18:36:00.008-04:00

Hacking Reality from Enrico Gatti on Vimeo.

After rushing through Rushkoff’s awesome book on the importance of understanding and practicing the art of coding (in all its forms and shapes) to make sure that we, as global citizens and thinkers, still get to sit at the table of those who understand society, its tools, trends and needs, and of those who program its future accordingly, I got completely raptured by video-gaming as a way of possibly ‘coding’ a form of reality that’s fake but perfect (i.e. the virtual one typical of a game) into a more real (yet improved) version of our very own, everyday reality.

- uh?! -

Let me explain.
Probably because of the depth and breath of Rushkoff’s read, I almost immediately started to imagine what gaming would look like, being that I spend so much time playing, if it could be pulled beyond its traditional constraints of virtuality and playfulness into a society (the real one) capable of finally blurring the fundamental division between what’s real and what‘s not...to make things better, that is.

Well, as it turns out: lots of people have been thinking about this already, and for quite a while now. That’s because gaming is apparently a pretty big deal.

According to Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello, EA projects there will be 3 billion gamers globally by next year, up from 1.5 billion now and 200 million in 2000. By hours spent, gaming also trumps most major web properties. U.S. consumers spend 15 million hours per week gaming vs. 9.5 million hours on AOL. Gaming is the No. 1 category in the iPhone, iPad and Android app stores. It's also the top app category on Facebook. Even the first game offered on the grey-screened Kindle outsold the top book. Although a typical gamer plays for just an hour or two a day, there are now more than 6 million people in China who spend at least twenty-two hours a week gaming, the equivalent of a part-time job. More than 10 million “hard-core” gamers in the United Kingdom, France, and Germany spend at least twenty hours a week playing. And at the leading edge of this growth curve, more than 5 million “extreme” gamers in the United States play on average forty-five hours a week.

In other words: gaming is big...

But, who are these gamers?

Here’s the interesting way in which Jane McGonigal describes gamers in her book:

They are the nine-to-fivers who come home and apply all of the smarts and talents that are underutilized at work to plan and coordinate complex raids and quests in massively multiplayer online games like Final Fantasy XI and the Lineage worlds. They’re the music lovers who have invested hundreds of dollars on plastic Rock Band and Guitar Hero instruments and spent night after night rehearsing, in order to become virtuosos of video game performance. They’re the World of Warcraft fans who are so intent on mastering the challenges of their favorite game that, collectively, they’ve written a quarter of a million wiki articles on the WoWWiki—creating the single largest wiki after Wikipedia. They’re the Brain Age and Mario Kart players who take handheld game consoles everywhere they go, sneaking in short puzzles, races, and mini-games as often as possible, and as a result nearly eliminating mental downtime from their lives. They’re the United States troops stationed overseas who dedicate so many hours a week to burnishing their Halo 3 in-game service record that earning virtual combat medals is widely known as the most popular activity for off-duty soldiers. They’re the young adults in China who have spent so much play money, or “QQ coins,” on magical swords and other powerful game objects that the People’s Bank of China intervened to prevent the devaluation of the yuan, China’s real-world currency. Most of all, they’re the kids and teenagers worldwide who would rather spend hours in front of just about any computer game or video game than do anything else.

So if gaming is so big and gamers are such passionate people who decide to spend so much time playing, what’s in it for them really? Why is it that gaming is so fundamentally addictive and luring to them that they just can’t stop?

A great way of looking into that would be understanding what a (video)game actually is...

When you strip away the genre differences and the technological complexities, all games share four defining traits: a goal, rules, a feedback system, and voluntary participation

. [Jane McGonigal, 2010]

Bernard Suits’s definition of a game is even more interesting and useful:

Playing a game is the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles.

In other words, playing is really just...working!
The type of work though that you love, that makes you focused, positive and willing to reach a goal, accomplish something amazing, create something better, however difficult or even impossible it may look. That inspiring, deep feeling that uplifts you, rewards you and pushes you forward when you know you’re doing something unique, authentic and absolutely epic.

The question is then: why is it that it is so rare to feel happy and achieved in the real reality than in the virtual one?

A reason could be that... where, in the real world, can you find that gamer sense of being fully alive, focused, and engaged in every moment? Where is that gamer feeling of power, heroic purpose, and community? Where are the bursts of exhilarating and creative game accomplishments? Where is the heart-expanding thrill of success and team victory? While gamers may experience these pleasures occasionally in their real lives, they experience them almost constantly when they’re playing their favorite games.

Some of the game design leaders in the field feel that reality doesn’t quite motivate us as effectively, that reality isn’t engineered to maximize our potential, and that it really wasn’t designed from the bottom up to make us happy. [hmm... true that!]

But, could it be?

What if we used what we know about gaming to fix our own reality? What if we started living our lives like in the video-games, solving problems in the real world with the enthusiasm, self-confidence and optimism typical of a gamer?

Again some people seem to lead the way here in new inspiring ways:

I see a future in which games continue to satisfy our hunger to be challenged and rewarded, to be creative and successful, to be social and part of something larger than ourselves. But I also see a future in which the games we play stoke our appetite for engagement, pushing and enabling us to make stronger connections—and bigger contributions—to the world around us.

“It’s inevitable: soon we will all be gamers.” We have to start taking this growing gamer majority seriously. We are living in a world full of games and gamers. And so we need to decide now what kinds of games we should make together and how we will play them together. We need a plan for determining how games will impact our real societies and our real lives.

Game design, like coding, isn’t just a mere technical skill you acquire when studying computer science. Not today, in a society that is incredibly dominated, shaped and influenced both by what’s programmed for us in the real as well as in the virtual world.

Gaming isn’t just a way of passing time anymore. It’s got so much more potential than that. We can use it to hack reality. It’s our 21st century way of working together to accomplish change. As Antoine de Saint Exupéry once said:

As for the future, your task is not to see it, but to enable it.

Games, in the twenty-first century, will be a primary platform for enabling the future.

Think before you speak 2.0

2010-08-22T23:44:00.011-04:00

I just read this piece on Tech Crunch...

[...]Throughout my earlier archives, I was able to find lengthy, sometimes surprisingly personal, posts – recounting the highs and lows of starting companies, making and losing friends, leaving London, beginning to travel around America and Europe… and countless other published episodes that backed up, and enhanced the contents of my private notebooks. But then, as I clicked forward through the archives to more recent years, something odd happened. At a certain point, the number of posts in each monthly archive dropped off a cliff, particularly where details of my personal life were concerned.

The reason, of course, was that I’d started to use Twitter for that kind of personal stuff. Unperturbed, I moved my research attentions away from my blog archives and over to my Twitter archives – and that’s when I started to panic: for all the dozens of updates I wrote each month, there was absolutely no substance to any of them. [...]

...which provides an interesting take on the advent of micro-blogging (140 character tweet or status update vomiting as opposed to life journaling or blogging) and its effects on how people process and then expose to the world what happens in their lives. Although I don't agree completely with the author when he says that by micro-broadcasting everything we’ve ended up macro-remembering almost nothing (the medium in itself doesn't really make a difference but we do as thinkers/writers so choose wisely what you share or whom you follow!) I find it true that blogging or tweeting what we say needs to:

Be intelligible for people to grasp what we want to express, and
Be compelling to the people we share it with, especially as marketers - it's a 'conversational tool'... remember?

Besides that, but only as an extension to such point, I believe that yes it is also neat to consider that, be it a brand or an individual, what we share is what we (and many others) will remember in the future when looking back... because after all - and especially in this day and age - we are what we share [click the hyperlink to have a peek at the social gaming experience we are building globally for Samsung Mobile, the 2nd largest mobile phone manufacturer in the world, which attempts to capture today's identification between individuality and shareability. Please pardon the bugs - it's a work in progress - send us suggestions!]

Springboard or prisoner ball ?

2009-09-05T20:54:00.005-04:00

The digital arena is slowly causing a much larger revolution within the music industry than what we're used to think.

It used to be about rebelling against the mainstream production companies (the big 4..) and about peer-too-peer "borrowing" (slash copyright infringements and all that comes with those, think of Napster/Pirate Bay etc.).
Now it's naturally evolving into the individual power of in-home production and of instantaneous, global connectivity/spreadibility.

Can the music industry evolve quickly enough to once again provide added value to the crowds [instead of just being of hindrance] ?

Flagship store wars

2009-08-17T17:10:00.004-04:00

Consider the following:

[beat this Microsoft...]

Edit from Nov. 20, 2009

And here comes an unbelievably sad response from Microsoft's first flagship store.
(yes it's been proven that many visitors were paid to be there as well, nothing new on the table there)

"None of us is as smart as all of us"...

2009-08-17T02:03:00.011-04:00

A small group of companies launched GreenXchange, a project that promotes intellectual property sharing for green product design. The initiative is hosted by Creative Commons, with Nike and Best Buy leading the way. With GreenXchange, companies can not only share research, innovation and design amongst themselves, but can also make patents available to the public.
Is this the beginning of something bigger?

Can I play too?

2009-08-14T11:50:00.013-04:00

"This is awesome!" was my first reaction...

But then I thought:
"Hey well I am in New York...so, yea why shouldn't I be able to build up its musical profile too?"
So I tried to understand where/how to contribute with my songs but the whole process felt a bit more complicated and time consuming than what it's worth... Besides who wants to deal with yet another pandora/last.fm rating system?

Is it just me?
I believe simple AND cool tools are way better than simply cool ones...

(Edit 01/29/2010)
I just noticed they fixed the problem and now you can easily interact and participate. NICE!

Let me make a difference

2009-08-12T12:39:00.010-04:00

This piece from 180/360/720 made me think.

I don't believe people share 'stuff' just for the sake of sharing.
They share whatever is worth sharing....[ read = creates value for them or for the society in which they live ]

When brands decide to (at least partially) release control and allow people to openly contribute to their image, they should do so not just for the sake of creating buzz / increasing their own popularity, which I think is a consequence rather than the main goal. The way to release control and attract people in is to link a brand's image with something bigger and more meaningful for society, something that will inspire people to contribute, to express their views, to start a give-and-take relationship with the brand, which will eventually lead to further peer-to-peer conversations.

Examples? QUANTO VALE IL TUO IDOLO? (How Much Do You Value Your Heroes?) is an Italian campaign recently launched by Reset Group and PI&C that lets people 'buy' their favorite soccer players for a day (e.g.: take them out for a pizza, or challenge them at Playstation FIFA 2010 etc.). The money raised with these ebay auctions goes to AriSLA, an organization that funds research aimed at developing a cure for ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease). It's a win-win solution: people have fun and with just a few clicks they feel they can make a difference...

Amerika

2009-07-27T21:16:00.002-04:00

The exploration of The New World continues:
a couple "international ambassadors" and I visit Washington D.C....

Amerika from Enrico Gatti on Vimeo.

Co-creating our way out of trouble...

2009-07-22T17:35:00.004-04:00

Here's a good example of what our global interconnectivity enables us to do at no particular effort. It's not just about a beautiful song and its great words (thanks also to the participation of Mr. Bono). It's about the fact that a YouTube URL leads to action here and now...in just a few clicks. Sure that paypal link could be streamlined a bit (it really takes a while to get down there from YouTube), but the elements are all here.

I thought the MP3 distribution system, although still limited, was particularly clever. I believe that if the viewership of PlayForChange were to grow further with the next videos (1.million+ just for this one) there may be room for bigger scale partnerships (read iTunes, Amazon etc.).

Enjoy the video, and feel free to let me know what you think!

the power of consumers.

2009-03-15T04:00:00.001-04:00

What if the crowds started asking for new rules?
what would the cost be? what the opportunities...?

The beauty of shopping...

2009-03-14T20:56:00.010-04:00

What paths, if any, do we follow when shopping?
We tend to think we just walk in, grab what we need and leave.
But what happens in between can be fascinating..

www.headrubforpeace.org

2009-03-05T20:19:00.008-05:00

I recently re-discovered how powerful the human touch can be.
Thanks to a great friend and mentor, I suddenly realized how little things I do can impact the life of the people surrounding me.

Here's why I think everyone should give someone a head rub, every day.

A head rub:
- is a powerful, silent message,
- is intimate,
- is mutually beneficial
- is free,
- is addicting,
- is the easiest way to inner peace,
- is the shortest way to end a conflict
- is a gift everybody is capable of giving,
- is creative,
- is more effective than an email, a text or a call,
- is irresistible,
- is how you change someone's day for the better,
- is the simplest way to step out of a problem, freshen up and start over
- is how you win new friends
- is how you turn enemies into friends.
- is convincing
- is fun
- is unexpected
- is personal
- is unforgettable

and it only takes 5 minutes of your time...
I hope I convinced you to JOIN US

A European Dream

2009-01-16T18:43:00.004-05:00

This is for all the people who made my visit to Europe special.
It took my breath away and it only lasted a moment.

European Dream from Enrico Gatti on Vimeo.

p.s.
Sorry, I decided to put a password on my mini-movies so I don't risk infringing any musical copyrights. Please log onto vimeo and friend me if you want to peek in! Thanks

Fight Night

2008-11-27T16:16:00.005-05:00

The exploration of the American culture continues.
This time a great friend of mine introduces me to the incredible world of wrestling...

Fight Night from Enrico Gatti on Vimeo.

Uncle Bill comes visit

2008-10-21T16:21:00.007-04:00

I am so thrilled to be able to participate to the awakening of an entire country and to be here to watch it stand up strong again.
This is how I see it: have a look, and don't hesitate to let me know what you think.

Uncle Bill from Enrico Gatti on Vimeo.

p.s.
Sorry, I decided to put a password on my mini-movies so I don't risk infringing any musical copyrights. Please log onto vimeo and friend me if you want to peek in! Thanks

Brandcenter Jeet Kune Do

2008-10-05T23:23:00.005-04:00

Here's an example of what we people from the VCU Brandcenter are best at: put us together and we'll come up with something fun and creative.

For once though we are advertisers without advertising..
Brandcentarians without a Brandcenter...

VA Beach from Enrico Gatti on Vimeo.

p.s.
Sorry, I decided to put a password on my mini-movies so I don't risk infringing any musical copyrights. Please log onto vimeo and friend me if you want to peek in! Thanks

Destruction Friday

2008-10-04T03:33:00.010-04:00

Tonight,
what I thought was just an old videogame from my childhood in Italy...
...became an extremely cheerful and culturally relevant experience.

Take a look.

Destruction Friday from Enrico Gatti on Vimeo.

p.s.
Sorry, I decided to put a password on my mini-movies so I don't risk infringing any musical copyrights. Please log onto vimeo and friend me if you want to peek in! Thanks

How barbaric can civilization get?

2008-10-02T19:59:00.004-04:00

Manhattan.
The electronic counter at the MacDonald's on Lexington Ave and e.42nd reads:
"Average serving time: 49 seconds."

Scary thought.

Userocracy

2008-09-30T23:45:00.007-04:00

More and more corporations, including the the older ones, now seem to recognize that the power of free tools in the hands of users is the best way to go. Free access to software and applications once owned by a geeky and wealthy elite only, will indeed promote faster progress as well as help develop a deeper affection to their brand.
Here's Microsoft's first, indirect but powerful response to the Google array of free services.
I am almost hoping Microsoft will be able to win my trust back some day in the near future.

(click on the image below)

2008-09-24T02:25:00.005-04:00

An instant, imaginary JohnnyMnemonic-esque flashback into the future hits me.

And makes tomorrow a little duller.

Southside Speedway

2008-09-18T04:56:00.007-04:00

The following clip is dedicated to all those friends that are accompanying me in this crazy journey in Virginia. These are the people I share my fears with, my strenghts...ok my weaknesses...AAAAND MY OPPORTUNITIES!
...alright alright enough already with the marketing/S.W.O.T. crap.

here you go. eat this:

Southside speedway from Enrico Gatti on Vimeo.

p.s.
Sorry, I decided to put a password on my mini-movies so I don't risk infringing any musical copyrights. Please log onto vimeo and friend me if you want to peek in! Thanks

Richmond art-walking

2008-09-10T11:58:00.003-04:00

Every first Friday of the month, Richmond throws an art exhibition right on Broad St.
Here's how it looked like this month..check it out!

Friday Art Walk from Enrico Gatti on Vimeo.

p.s.
Sorry, I decided to put a password on my mini-movies so I don't risk infringing any musical copyrights. Please log onto vimeo and friend me if you want to peek in! Thanks

NASCAR in Richmond

2008-09-08T16:45:00.005-04:00

This weekend me and some of my colleagues from school had the possibility to experience one of the most american, southern, crazy events of our entire summer: a real Nascar Race here in Richmond VA. I put together a video with the highlights...have fun!

The Sound of Speed from Enrico Gatti on Vimeo.

p.s.
Sorry, I decided to put a password on my mini-movies so I don't risk infringing any musical copyrights. Please log onto vimeo and friend me if you want to peek in! Thanks

p.p.s.: here's an interesting piece of news I found about the origins of all this...
"Stock car racing in the United States has its origins in bootlegging during Prohibition, when drivers ran bootleg whiskey made in Appalachia. Bootleggers needed to distribute their illicit products, and they typically used small, fast vehicles to better evade the police. Many of the drivers would modify their cars for speed and handling, as well as increased cargo capacity, and some of them came to love the fast-paced driving down twisty mountain roads. One of the main 'strips' in Knoxville, Tennessee, had its beginning as a mecca for aspiring bootlegging drivers."

how can Change change a thing if people don’t change a little first

2008-09-01T01:25:00.002-04:00

“It’s the baseball cap” I tell myself.
“Makes him feel comfortable cause his head must look real small in the mirror in the morning”.

That’s the cultural experience I feel I should highlight this week, I’m at G.B.’s, a notorious sports pub in Greensboro, NC. The reason why I want to blog about this is because I think I may have learned something about just one pub perhaps on one particular night, maybe about just one town, or maybe about politics in the US and about what people may or may not get out of it.

But let’s focus on that baseball hat, let’s say it belongs to Tom.
Tom doesn’t get it.
Yes, he’s in charge. Yes, he’s fairly young, in his 30s and yes, he’s the one all the employees go to tonight when and if there’s a problem.
But Tom won’t get it.

It’s a special night tonight, in an hour or so Obama will deliver his speech and will accept the Democratic Party’s nomination for president. Although there are 9 big flat screens hung around the large main room, none of them suggests the historical moment taking place: tonight, the first time in history an African American will receive the presidential nomination from the Democratic Party. But the TVs are focused solely on college football, NC State against S. Carolina Cocks, which is the reason why my friends brought me to G.B.’s in the first place.
By 9.30 it’s clear that the Cocks are gonna get this one, they’re hammering NC State with an irreversible 30-something - zero. It’s almost no fun to watch the game anymore and by now Obama should be walking onto the podium, perhaps he’s now thanking everybody and maybe he has already begun the most important speech of his entire campaign. But me and my friends can’t get him on a screen, not even that small, abandoned one in the corner of the room where the videogames are, the one TV nobody is looking at.
Tom doesn’t let us watch Obama. He just doesn’t get it.

When Leah, her sister and one of her girlfriends walk in the pub in total disappointment, my friends and I rapidly figure out what’s really going on: if three cute girls were denied the possibility to watch Obama’s speech in three different bars downtown, there’s no way it’s going to be easy here at a Sports Bar. But by the time they end up recounting what happened, I see a glimpse of Hope...Obama is finally on screen! Victory it is! Obama is talking in the empty corner of a large and noisy room. But the TV is muted.
Because Tom didn’t get it.

The more I think about that night and how “Tom” refused to either raise the volume (which would have been useless anyway) or turn on the subtitles, the more I feel bad for all those young people at the bar who didn’t watch Obama on YouTube like we did the next morning. And although I am not American and it’s not up to me, I have to say I feel angry inside for them, as I recall all of them, one by one, as they kept drinking beers, their eyes glued to the green HD screens while important words were getting lost in the ether because of Tom, and because all of them didn’t seem to care enough. They were deaf to the 50 minutes meant for them, offering them the possibility to change, to choose to change for the better. Shouldn’t all of us be offered the possibility to choose what we want to hear, watch or do in our lives? Shouldn’t we, not Tom, take charge of what’s important to us? Why do we let Tom handle it? Why is there always some Tom trying to handle things for us...and why do we let him?

That night, entertainment won over smart thinking, tyranny crushed democracy, the silence of a mass prevailed over the voice of a minority, and the idea of Change was defeated: Change as a society that can do better, Change as a nation that wants to improve to become a wiser organism in a world that needs smarter and more peaceful players.

Change is what many other countries would love to be offered, mine included, and Change is what many others cannot afford and yet do need.
Change is what America may need as well (as far as I can judge through my foreign eyes), and what America will give up if it doesn’t wake up and reach for it with both hands.

New York New York

2008-08-03T11:34:00.004-04:00

Arrivederci New York. I will see you soon.
It's been great playing with you.

Lost in Transit

2008-07-24T01:28:00.006-04:00

L'arancio lampione sfreccia soffuso attraverso il retro del taxi.

Giallo fuori. Nero pelle dentro.
LaGuardia Airport -- Brooklyn con il fiato sospeso e gli occhi spalancati, mentre il mutismo disilluso di un tassista pakistano si mischia al brontolio della Buick che tira.

Rockstar G. ci ha preso in pieno: e' quel senso distaccato che il taxi-trip notturno ti lascia dentro qui, in una citta' che non puo' dormire mai. E' la malinconia felice di guardare dal finestrino un party appena finito...ma che domani ricomincia. Sempre.
Bene-maledizione di una metropoli che da' le vertigini...dove quando perdi il ritmo, tutto e' improvvisamente ancora piu' difficile.

il Chrysler, appannato strizza l'occhio in un silenzio di pioggia, lontano, dall' Isola.
Pizzicotto.
Sono qui per davvero.
E fra 2 settimane sono nell'unico altro posto dove vorrei essere....

Virginality

2008-07-10T01:55:00.007-04:00

The ideas that really stick...are the ones that make you wonder:
"Why the heck nobody thought about this before?!"

my lady

2008-07-03T11:57:00.002-04:00

L'ho vista stanotte.
Bellissima.
La mano in fiamme.
Senza paura, non una parola, e noi cadaveri senza segnaletica.

E non conta cosa hai concluso o in cosa hai fallito oggi,
mentre il Q la accarezza di striscio sull'acqua, lei quasi te lo sussurra orgogliosa.
Timida ma imponente:
"liberty"...

a dream or a hunch?

2008-06-18T17:03:00.005-04:00

it almost feels like in 3 years or so...videogame consoles such as the XBOX 360 or Sony Playstation won't even have a reason to exist any more...at least "physically" speaking.

check THIS out

The time has come

2008-03-29T16:06:00.006-04:00

The expectations all over the world are extremely high. They created the entire genre. They crushed their competitors.Will Rockstar Games be able to re-invent its baby and shock us all one more time?
Take a look at it..

Mouse or trackpad? Naaw, moving on...

2008-03-26T13:23:00.003-04:00

I know, don't need to say it.

The mouse can be annoying at times.

...and hey don't let me started on trackballs or the trackpad of my laptop.

How about we use a camera instead?

You are what you share

2008-03-22T11:36:00.008-04:00

The idea of being what you own is today replaced by the idea of being what you share. It's everywhere, sometimes so outscreamed that it can create movements such as the so called anti-soci@l-networkers, people who decided they need to just go back to the good old face-to-face relationships and abandon altogether the various facebooks or myspaces communities.
But there is something so fascinating about sharing online, about leaving your comment on somebody's blog, about micro-blogging or diving into somebody's flickr account: the idea of democracy, the idea of a shared set of values, a common ground that unifies everybody in a society, that can help create equality and justice, that goes beyond sexuality issues as well as racism, political views...and lets everybody express an opinion.

Have a look at this:

Burn baby, burn...

2008-02-20T14:02:00.007-05:00

I keep avidly absorbing this extremely different US culture as a sponge does. A culture that we Europeans got used to observe from a soldier/fastfood/hollywood-biased telescope and that we like to pretend we deeply understand in all its facets...

I play with it, I try to leverage on my European standpoint to stretch it and to create new roads for brands, products and services in order to make local as well as global noise.

And sometimes it happens again: I get stuck and amazed by it, just when I thought I had gone one step forward, when I was starting to believe I was one tiny speck of dust more expert about it.

But these guys here caught me off guard once more.
Here's how: the BURNING MAN (1986-2008)

Let the Androids handle it

2008-02-20T13:48:00.003-05:00

Seems like Linux ain't that cool and original any more uh?

Head down...keeping up

2008-02-04T23:50:00.000-05:00

Death of a love story (?)

2008-02-01T17:52:00.000-05:00

Isn't it strange how the perception of a brand can change dramatically in a matter of seconds? One moment you think you want this product so bad because it has been associated to the possibility of generating less waste by reducing the overall usage of plastic bottles...and then you read that it may cause significant health problems.

...here we go again.
Welcome to the modern world

[ARTICLE]
This emerged quite a bit ago, when I wasn't part of this country just yet. I see Nalgene everywhere now: does it mean the data was not relevant? Or maybe, did the people forget?

Con cattiveria...

2008-01-23T15:53:00.002-05:00

e poi ci sono i momenti come questo...quando in questo mondo multimediale ultra fast paced ti rendi conto che da dove vieni tu c'e' ancora un sacco di lavoro da fare.
il TG5? il TG1! I nostri fiori all'occhiello! I nostri TG preferiti...la sigla, i colori...

ma prediamo l'ultimo MacBook, ultima generazione, aggiornatissimo, drivers, codecs, tutto.

FIREFOX fa a cazzotti con il TG5.it e provare a guardare l'edizione integrale delle 13 e'...un po' vergognoso per me, straniero all'estero...dove la TV la guardi gratis online ormai.

Ma torniamo al TG5.it...In streaming a 6Mbit tutto appare a scatti e flash (schermo nero/immagine, schermo nero/immagine) ....e con SAFARI il video e' talmente spezzettato che dopo i primi 42 monosillabi non si ha neppura la parvenza di una frase intera.

e allora andiamo sul TG1...la speranza c'e', ma i fatti non la supportano per niente: dopo 5 minuti ancora nulla...

No. Non pensarci nemmeno.

Ti capisco: anche io ero un fan del TG5. Anche io ho sentito il dovere di informarli della falla! Dar loro un feedback costruttivo in qualita' di simpatizzante e consumatore.
Peccato che si sono dimenticati di mettere un link CONTACT US o simili...o forse in fondo fondo...parlano di noi quotidianamente ma...non hanno bisogno della nostra opinione?

ps
ma vediamo se il Gabibbo dice qualcosa...(dubito)

High fever in Manhattan

2008-01-14T13:32:00.002-05:00

The days pass by one after the other and only now I realize what is going on around me. I feel I'm in the midst of two different worlds, once more, once again.
The question is always the same: where do I belong to? Do I belong to any place in particular? Do I belong to the people I care about, maybe more than any specific place? What is this drive for freshness that keeps me moving? Where am I running to? Will I ever get there? What if after running for so long I am not happy where I finally am? 6th visit to Manhattan, 1st one in bed with high fever...

holding up

2007-10-06T18:08:00.001-04:00

Flash of a moment, an instant frozen in time.
Life is hard at VCU Brandcenter, it really is.
But every once in a while we are able to finally take a break.

I'm just loving it

till the last drop

2007-08-23T14:57:00.001-04:00

1st class: creative thinking
ok oggi ho avuto 4 ore di lezione, la prima lezione con questo professore, una persona straordinaria, un afro-americano che nonostante mi aspettassi fosse un pazzo creativo e con la puzza sotto il naso (visto che ha un curriculum spaziale ed ha lavorato con dei brand incredibili..pepsi, nike etc)...si è dimostrato una persona molto molto sensibile.

ci ha spiazzato tutti dall'inizio alla fine, le 4 ore sono volate. (solo all'inizio per esempio ci ha fatto chiudere gli occhi nel buio e fatto ascoltare un pezzo jazz di 9 minuti...le nostre lezioni inizieranno in maniera strana ogni volta)

quello che ha fatto la differenza però sono stati i ragazzi, siamo 25 per il mio corso di Communications Strategist e altri 25 per i Creative Brand Mangers....ci sono delle teste, sono creativi, sveglissimi, provenienti da tutte le zone della nazione + un gruppo di indiani, un thailandese, una spagnola, dei cinesi, il messicano... ecc.

Sririam, l'indiano nel disegnino qui spra (è la sua immagine su FACEBOOK) ci ha tolto il fiato. si è alzato al suo turno nella presentazione, e ci ha sorpresi tutti skippando i punti della sua presentazione personale e partendo invece a raccontarci (50 persone di fronte a lui e una telecamera) una antica storia indiana della loro mitologia.....
.....non ha mai finito di raccontarcela.

è scoppiato a piangere poco dopo sotto l'attenzione di tutti...rendendo ancora più difficile comprendere la sua già difficile pronuncia.
ma non c'era più bisogno delle parole.
come lui combatte per i suoi genitori che muoiono di fame, noi tutti ci siamo riconosciuti pieni di sogni e speranze trascinati dentro quella piccola stanza buia...insieme alle paure personali e le difficoltà da vincere

passione. capacità di essere deboli e creativi allo stesso tempo di fronte ad un pubblico cui si deve presentare la propria idea, anche idiota e senza speranza...per poi diventare più forti giorno dopo giorno..per 60 settimane...le nostre famose 60WEEKS.

è stato magico
sono nel posto giusto

7 hours to go

2007-08-23T02:04:00.000-04:00

Here we go...
7 hours and the dream starts off, with all its challenges and its difficulties and fun parts.

And I am here stuck in a slow sleepless night, feeling people close for one moment and far away the next one... family, friends from home and from other parts of the planet...

Everything's starting to mix down into a single frightening exciting pulse down my throat...

Looking forward to riding this feeling all my life long

I am what I decide to be.
I am what I am

Downtown Richmond, VA

2007-07-27T01:33:00.000-04:00

Semplicemente un'emozione pazzesca. Ci siamo, ecco l'obbiettivo.

Il caldo mostruoso si mischia alla voglia di cominciare.
Una pizza da JoJo's e 2 chiacchiere in Italo-americano, mi aiutano oggi a rallentare l'impatto del cultural shock.

Non vedo l'ora di trovare una casa tutta mia...

Jet Lagged Rafting on the French Broad River (North Carolina)

2007-07-23T00:34:00.000-04:00

Back here, in the UNITED STATES, and still not believing it.
It is starting to hit me, slowly tho...I notice things that I used to love and had forgotten about..

differences from home mainly, like cars, or the environment, the people welcoming you basically everywhere and being so nice and warm...the fried chicken...

and then I think about it all suddenly and...i say to myself: "Wait a minute, i know this country, I love to be here, and guess what...I'm going to be working in the U.S. advertising business...this is just my dream coming true"

it is actually happening,
and i am just starting to open my eyes wide open...

Good luck co

2007-07-19T20:21:00.000-04:00

This is what my great friend and house mate wrote to me before my departure...this was the guy who jumped into this Milan crazy dream life with me and shared all the adventures that followed.

He has been a fixed point in my last 7 months and always will be.
thx Co,
we're co 4 life.

here it goes:

“When you fly to a new place, you get a shiver. You don’t know what will happen. Not yet. Somebody is scared of these unknown things, somebody prefers to keep from moving then. Maybe am I not scared? No, it’s not true. But I like that shiver. I live for that shiver.”

1 day to go

2007-07-18T20:28:00.001-04:00

Thx Mex friend...thanks so much for freeing me up...talking to you made me release what was left of my normal life: away the fear, the hidden pain...pure energy, and curiosity I got from you tonight, again.

Make it so I can keep that all in me for the future.

thx to everybody, for putting up with me...here I am now...and
cut!

...I'm gone

6 days left to go

2007-07-15T15:00:00.005-04:00

6 days left before leaving Italy, Europe...and no idea what I am throwing my life into.
I keep my eyes wide open, as if recording every detail surrounding me.
And I keep my dream safe and tight, right here in my hands.

A long, steep path awaits me.
...Bring it on.