After a day of chilling and sleeping, a few thoughts about State of the Net.
First: I’m incredibly proud of what we have been able to achieve. All the feedback that we have received has been very positive, from the audience who came to Trieste, and also from those who followed the event from outside. The organisation has been flawless, the direction of the video stream perfect, the location was absolutely awesome.
I’m also very satisfied about the show: all the speakers devoted their time not only to come to Trieste, but also to work with us on the editorial side of the event to ensure top-notch content from the first keynote to the last panel. I can’t believe how smart they are and I’m very proud to call some of them friends.
I’m also tremendously proud of my accomplices and friends Beniamino and Sergio, whom I truly enjoy working with.
This time the event resonated much more than before: thousands of tweets, page views, video downloads, articles on the press, all metrics recorded record levels, and an incredible amount conversations started and are still evolving.
So, after these two days, what do I think about the real State of the Net in Italy?
Good news and bad news.
Bad news: Italy is not where it should be on pretty much every single international chart you can find. It is improving, but it’s not nearly as fast at it should be.
Good news: there is much more awareness than there used to be, and 22 million users on Facebook is a pretty huge number (we learned that this number is both good news and bad news, depending from whom you are asking to ;-) ).
I think that we proved that the state is after all much better than what it would seem to be if you were looking only to the portrait of this country provided by the mainstream media. More than 350 people coming to the Magazzino 26 proved that the Internet is very much part of the present, not of some remote future made of “gurus” and “little magicians” that newspapers seem to like so much for their titles.
So while on one side there is plenty of attention and a sincere drive to learn new things, on the other we are slowed down by parts of our society that persistently ignore all this, it would appear hoping pathetically that the genie will be put back into its bottle if they just keep ignoring it.
It simply means that we will have to try harder. And we will.
See you all at State of the Net 2013.