I Fighi aka Italian Internet Startups: H-Farm

Strictly speaking, the H-Farm is not a Startup but an Incubator that "seeds" and "grows" Startups. I paid them a visit in a beautiful green setting in Venetian countyside a couple of days ago and was absolutely flashed by all the creativity and can do attitude I encountered there. And it was funny to have a deja-vu sensation from my short days in a startup in Berlin: the same rows of desks, the same dress code, the same long hours...
For me as a publisher it was also a glimps into the future of advertising. The "participation web" has certainly and more and more obviously and for us painfully changed the attitude of advertisers towards how to spend their money. Less and less are they willing to pay for the distribution of their message but prefer to spend it on creating the message itself. And here a rather amateurish interpretation of McLuhan's axiom "the medium is the message" applies: it's not about what exactly is communicated but about the experience you have learning it.

And this is how my rather longish excursion leads me back to H-Farm where you can find different answers to the crucial question: "How do I make people spend their time to look at something?"

"By having a fresh look and an entertaining approach." would be the answer of H-Art, a hybrid between a web and a creative agency.

"By activating a highly specialized community." would Zooppa say. They run competitions for user generated advertising in a young creative community with some very nice results.

"By piggybacking people's ambition to suceed." is a very interesting idea that brought forth H-Play, a treasure hunt inspired by the Da Vinci Code.

"By giving him customized services" says H-Care who created a digital assistant that talkes to you via web, MMS and other devices.

As you can imagine my head was buzzing when I got out after 8 hours of talking and brainstorming. And now I really hope to hook some of our great fresh ideas to media and advertising business that despie reality is sometimes still very old economy. But then, I can be quite a pain ;)