The third event of the “Working Capital Camp” events, encounters promoted by Telecom Italia to discuss the future of technological innovation in Italy and to present “Working Capital”, the project through which the company intends to support the best entrepreneurial initiatives in the context of the web 2.0 and the new frontiers of the Internet, providing its advanced infrastructures and technological know-how, took place in Turin. Following the success of the Catania and Rome events, successful managers, aspiring businessmen and students met at the I3P, the Innovative Enterprise Incubator of the Turin Polytechnic.
The morning’s proceedings began with the “Dialogue on innovation” workshop, moderated by journalist Vittorio Pasteris, during which Telecom Italia’s president Gabriele Galateri, La Stampa director Mario Calabresi, I3P president Marco Cantamessa, dPixel founder Gianluca Dettori and the rector of the Turin Polytechnic, Francesco Profumo, discussed the current diffusion of new technologies in Italy and the potentialities related to the rise of new entrepreneurial challenges on the Internet.
The workshop was followed by the illustration of the five most promising projects selected by Working Capital in their first months of activity, and specifically Ustation (www.ustation.it), the portal of university radio and television stations that was recently inaugurated thanks to the decisive support from Telecom Italia.
The encounter also provided the occasion to announce the collaboration between Telecom Italia and Top-IX, the consortium established for managing the exchange of internet traffic in the northwest and supporting innovation on the web, that will grant the best startups free use of the consortium’s advanced infrastructures in order to best develop the business project that they intend to submit to Working Capital.
In the afternoon, the encounter continued in the form of “barcamps”, the unconventional conferences where anyone who registers can intervene and suggest a topic for discussion, and “elevator pitches”, a series of brief presentations in which the aspiring entrepreneurs present their business project as if they were in front of a potential investor for the brief duration of an elevator ride.
After a pause during the summer, the “Working Capital Camp” encounters will resume in September with the event at the Scuola Normale Supeiore in Pisa.