Last week I was in Udine (Italy) for the InnovAction fair 2007.

Four days full of Knowledge, Ideas, Innovation and great speeches…Who was there? Well there’s a pretty long list of interesting names, but among my favourites I would mention:

- Jean-Paul Fitoussi (President of the Scientific Council of the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris, President of the Observatoire Francais des Conjonctures Economiques) that gave a great speech about the international economic scenario.

- Kenneth Morse (Senior Lecturer and Managing Director of the MIT Entrepreneurship Center) and his presentation of the companies growth and technology innovation. His presentation was not missing tips and humor like the CFIMITYM (Cash Flow Is More Important Then Your Mother).

- Nicholas Negroponte (former President and founding member of MIT Media Lab) and the ‘One Laptop per Child’ project.

- Thale Kvernberg Andersen (Member of the Executive Council YEAR – Young European Associated Researchers). She talked about the role of young researchers in shaping the European Research Area. Bright lady with great ideas!

- Derrick de Kerckhove (Director of the McLuhan Programme in Culture & Technology and Professor in the Department of French at the University of Toronto) gave an excellent speech about designing future scenarios (his speech like the Fitoussi’s one was in very good Italian…impressive)

- Jonas Ridderstråle (Visiting professor at Ashridge Business School – GB and author of the best seller ‘Funky Business ‘) was simply great! He gave a funky presentation about the new challenge of leadership..defenately one step ahead…

Really interesting was also the ‘Future for Young’, an entire area completely dedicated to creativity and youths. Saturday night the Mtv area hosted a big live event with top quality music selection played by three different dj sets. Asia Argento (first time I heard her live), Mr. Oizo and Sebastian (great sets…).

Talking about innovation and young people I have to name Massimo Baù, the only Italian I’ve found with a skype id on his business card! Well done Massimo!

The event’s organization was good but the only minus was the access to the WiFi connection that wasn’t open and free to the participants of the fair.

If anyone is interested to see something more about the event I’ve published some photos on my flickr account (tagged with ‘innovaction’).

Andrea

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