When In Rome....

So last Friday I was in Rome again, a city that has always charmed me. Mostly, because if you ask any Roman, on any street, including taxi drivers, about their home city, you will get more or less this answer: "Roma e la piu bella citta del mondo" and just like a woman whose response to affirmation is to glow prettier, so does Rome, she glows under her labels "The eternal city", "The most beautiful city"

Yes you can, find litter, beggars, people dragging sad dogs in a haze of drug-induced stupor, but Rome's people love it. I love it. The fountains, the piazze, everyone of them unique, and I'm not a foreign tourist anymore. I have lived north of here for years now.

The venue was good,and  thanks to my taxi driver I found it easily enough in 30 degree heat.

Anyway, I was there blogging for techgarage awards for innovation in web and new media at LUISS. and representing poken.

So began a jam-packed day with 10 start ups presenting.

Poken was represented in the gadgets arena and our poken table with myself representing Poken for Italy, was by far the most visited and popular, with lots of people waiting their turn to see how it worked to manage their social media contacts better.

If you can't wait to get your hands on one of those little critters, then Click on Firebox AD(on the right) they will sell and ship you a single poken. For larger orders in Italy, contact me via my direct email link, bottom right.

The award for innovation was won by a group of smart young people who started Criticalcity.com and  runner up was another interesting start up from Torino called smartRM

Then a good lunch was served outside by white coated waiters, roman style. I never managed to access wifi, but then Italy and her bars are not known for public wifi accessability, innovation or not.

I met so many interesting start ups and people there that, as a networking event, it was worth braving the heat.

Afterwards, we repaired to a cool bar on a wide leafy avenue, Parnaso piazziale Muse above LUISS uni to look over Rome and the green belt with an icy Aperol .

I did not get a chance to throw a coin in the Trevi fountain, but I will definitely be back.

In the following weeks, some of the start ups and VCs like Dpixel (shown below) organising and sponsors at the event, will be interviewed here on wisequeen,

so keep your eye on the blog.

Send us a comment if you attended the event, or want to know more about the startups represented there.

Donna Jackson

Social Communications Specialist.

Wisequeen

Comments

[Julius]

Nice post and Trevi fountain never worked for me, so not a big miss ;-)
Julius

[Andy Piper]

There has been a spate of interest / renewed mention of Poken in the past few weeks. I notice that people in the US are starting to take notice - http://tech-ink.net/2009/05/24/do-you-poken-or-have-business-cards-gone-the-way-of-the-dodo-techuncamp/ - not sure they are widely available over there yet.

Let me be clear about this, so that I don't immediately sound too negative - I think Poken are a really cool idea. I'm a fan.

However, I think there are a few issues here, which I'm basically re-stating from that other post:
- cost more than most people are prepared to pay for what is essentially a small capacity but cute looking memory stick, and they are not very readily available;
- the cuteness factor can also be off-putting to some people, particularly those with a business purpose in mind and the disposable income to buy them;
- too few core connectors and salemen have them (see Gladwell's The Tipping Point), IMHO they should seed more;
- the value-add of the site (which actually manages the contacts) is low, so the business model is presumably centred on selling the devices.

By the way - those look like new / different designs than the ones I've seen - interesting. It would be cool if they did some kind of 3d printing / customisable ones which people could actually design and have custom made. *that* would be a cool, value-add (branding play).

[Donna Jackson]

Hi, Andy, you raise some important points.
They have covered the cororate image question and are working on it, also conference badges with poken embedded were launched at the LIFT conference in Geneva in March. So now, conference-goers will simply touch badges.
Customising the poken for corporates is also in pokens pipeline. At the moment they are concentrating on getting those little critters out to meet demand.
Thanks for your comment and valuable feedback.
Wisequeen