Singing in the rain

This year has so far been the worst ever weatherwise. Dark heavy
rainclouds follow me wherever I am. So at the moment raindrops keep
falling on my head in Hamburg, a city with an awful reputation for its
climate. People think about bad weather when they hear Hamburg. The
truth however is that the weather here is very inconsistent. And the
trick is that it applies to both ends. True that the sun rarely shines
the whole day. But it rarely rains for a whole day either.
That's why I am sitting in a cafe overlooking the harbour, sipping a
hot drink, watching containerships pass by, waiting for the dark
clouds to go away, being perfectly confident that they will because I
can already see the next blue spell on the horizon.

Uncool deluxe

They will probably kick me out for this but then: The heck with it! I am talking about asmallworld, an invitation only online community for the famously richy-rich beautiful or whatever. They have quite strict rules how you can approach other members and there's a NDA on other members or something like that. I stumbled upon a membership a couple of years ago but never quite got the point of this network.
But today I think I finally had my Eureka moment after reading two posts in the forum. One was by someone asking for hotel recommendations, another one was about the hottest spots in each city. The first got responses like: "Hyatt." "Oh no, the four seasons." "Try the Ritz.". I mean - hello? That's like asking for a good burger in New York and being told to go to Burger King. Plus the chi-chi nuveau riche aspect for which I can't think of an equivalent.
The second post got for Berlin "Felix", "Cookie", for Munich "Baby", "P1", for Milan "Gold", "Just Cavalli" and for Hamburg "Golden Cut" and "East" to stick to the cities where I have lived.
That was when I understood! You have to deconstruct it then you can use it as a real guide! If you want to know where the people go that are called "bridge and tunnel people" in New York, from the "Hinterland" in Milan, "from L.A." in Munich (L.A. stands for Landshut) and "Brandenburger" in Berlin, if you want to know where they go so you shouldn't be there in any city in the world, just check the ratings on aSW and voilà! you are safe!
Actually I like this idea so much that I will probably start publishing "Bridge and tunnel Guides" for a couple of cities here :)

Gli Altri Fighi aka the Italian Barcampers

If you check out http://barcamp.org/ you will discover that despite the relatively low internet penetration, Italy has a very high level of activity when it comes to barcamps.
It was someone from Germany who first introduced me to this concept. From what I understood, they were meetings where geeks and freaks meet and where young startups give presentations on their business ideas because VCs and journalists lurk around and look out for promising investments and trends.
It is nothing like this in Italy. It is true that barcamps are really nice gatherings where you can meet a lot of interesting people. It is here where the buzz begins and it has become a real network. But the difference is that it is all centered around bloggers and not business. Actually I had to justify my being there to some of them because being the responsible manager of websites obviously didn't qualify as having to do with the internet. Fortunately, they turned out to be quite easy going folks so I was accepted even without an acceptable explanation for my presence ;-)
But there is one thing I would really suggest: Don't bother with those panel discussions! They usually are boring but people still participate because they are afraid to miss the big bang if they don't go listen. I would really appreciate a lot more of actively assisted networking. Much more fun and much more rewarding...business wise...
The still barely audible buzz tells me that the next big barcamp will be in RomeCamp2008 in November. Let's wait and see where it's heading!