Hilde's photo of myself from a bus in Florence

This is Pietro Polsinelli’s software blog, where I randomly and incoherently post about several topics, all having somehow to do with a web worker’s online life. You can follow me on Twitter @ppolsinelli.

The main categories of posts are:

- curation

- developing and marketing new online services.

- concerning IT and my work as developer and marketer

Coming are posts on game design and game mechanics.

The part of this blog concerning startupping has been transformed in the Developers in Europe project.

The part concerning litterature is discontinued since I started Ben Cotti.

Short facts about me

I was born in Pavia in an Anglo-Italian family. I was interested in programming languages since I was 14 (it was 1981), at the time I was in London and I discovered the existence of accessible computers, the Sinclair ZX 80-81. Since then I have been interested in programming languages, recursion theory, mathematical logic, models of natural language, axiomatizations of mathematics, and studied mathematical and philosophical logic at various universities. I also tried to work at theorem proving in set theory as a pure mathematician, but I had no real talent for that.

I currently live in Florence with my partner Laura, a graphic designer, and our two children, Maia and Enea.

Professional

Currently I am a Java and JavaScript developer and software marketer at the IT company I founded in Florence with three friends in 2001, Open Lab, which has in time produced many wonderful things. At the end of 2010 Open Lab has produced a spin-off specialized in minoritarian languages and the original company is now focused exclusively in creating new software products of general interest – who’s production I am now leading.

Recently I am main working on Licorize, which is I product I strongly wanted and put loads of ideas into it. In 2011 we aree also launching a gaming site, Gamamoto, and a new game.

I also created and am maintaining  Teamwork project management software, used daily by more than 5000 people to manage their work, the experimental Patapage and BugsVoice , and the widely used Licorize.

I have a twitter stream mainly of my working activity:  http://twitter.com/ppolsinelli .

Personal

I have practiced Shintaido, a body movement art, since about 1998.

I have for many years and still am quite interested in the phenomenological branch of philosophy, and also in contemporary philosophy in general. Recently I became interested in literary criticism, and started writing novels and short stories.

In 2010 Massimo Capitani and I launched Ben Cotti, a site dedicated to somewhow hard boiled short stories (and more), mostly in Italian (there is an English section), which we now closed.

My older blog: http://ppolsinelli.blogspot.com .

You can write me at ppolsinelli@gmail.com.

Pietro Polsinelli – more in detail

Browser games

2011 November. Storytelling and video games http://gamamoto.com/2011/11/08/storytelling-and-video-games/

2011 September. Creates and launches a new “social browser game”: Adslife http://adslifegame.com

2011 May. Gamamoto releases Storymoto (MIT licensed) free engine for JavaScript game story design http://storymoto.gamamoto.com/

2011 February. Creates Gamamoto http://gamamoto.com
on “games, stories and browsers” http://gamamoto.com/2011/02/16/hello-world/

2010 Begins self taught studies of game design.

Storytelling

2011 June. Held a workshop at Better Software 2011 on “Storytelling for software marketing”
http://www.bettersoftware.it/conference/talks/not-a-talk-a-workshop-storytelling-for-software-marketing
http://pietro.open-lab.com/2011/06/29/story-tell-your-software-product-2/

2010 Summer. Short stories (mainly in Italian) with fellow Semicerchio student Massimo Capitani su http://bencotto.wordpress.com

2009-2011. Student at Semicerchio creative writing course http://www.unisi.it/semicerchio/

Marketing, gamification, social software

2010 July -2011. Creates, launches and supports the social bookmarking service Licorize http://licorize.com/

2010 November. A reflection on gamification (presented at UX Florence 2010): Game mechanics for thinking users http://pietro.open-lab.com/2010/11/09/game-mechanics-for-thinking-users/

May 2010. Talks at Better Software 2010 on “Get visitors to read and remember your home page” http://pietro.open-lab.com/2009/10/19/get-visitors-to-read-and-remember-your-home-page-the-principles/

2009. Creates blog Homo Surfens covering various aspects of web workers’ anthropology.

Project management

2007 Awarded in 2007 with “17° Productivity Jolt Award” at SD West, Santa Clara (CA) USA (for Teamwork)

2003-2011 Creates and develops Teamwork http://www.twproject.com  version 1-4 in Open Lab, creates the totality of documentation, site’s contents, indexing, blogging and marketing. Still does support and boot camps. Teamwork is sold all over the world with more than 500 installations in production. Did boot camps in Europe, USA, Brazil, Africa.

2001-2011 Creates Open Lab with three friends, and all four of us are still working in it. Supplies various custom web solutions to companies and corporations. http://www.open-lab.com

Logic, linguistics  & philosophy

1 year grant for foreign studies from Florence University to Carnegie Mellon University.

1988-1995 Studies in philosophy and mathematical logic in the University of Florence; thesis on “Y. Moschovakis. The formal language of recursion. The Journal of Symbolic Logic, 54, 1989”. Researches done for University of Ghent (Belgium) in Artificial Intelligence and computational models (European degree in Mathematical Logic). Post graduate fellowship from Università di Firenze granting one year in Carnegie-Mellon University (Pittsburgh, PA, USA), and Universitè Paris VII (France), Department of Mathematics, for studies in Logic.

Beginnings

Born in Pavia, Italy, January 11 1967. Italian and British citizen.

Skills

Main task in Open Lab is project manager of all phases of product development and release to market (specifics, mockups, modeling, servers side, UX, client side, debug, release, presentations (sites, blogging, videos), press contact) for all software products.

Development:

Server side web development (Java, databases): 12 years experience.
Client (browser) side development: HTML plus JavaScript: 8 years experience.
Also worked on browser plugins, mobile development (HTLM5).