The introduction will be shared between all the segments, and eventually will remove the segments from the website, and publish a new article containing all the segments plus connecting material.
The sections (for today):
_ Introduction- the approach
_ 2026-05-27 - the anti-networking breakfast
_ 2026-05-27 - abitare / dwelling - and the digital twin (of a territory rethinking itself)
Introduction - the approach
Yes, some remember that did a similar experiment in 2012, when visited Berlin.
Back then, wrote in a first post that was going to visit Berlin for a couple of weeks, but, whenever a post reached 50 readers, would publish a new one.
And, back then, ended up, to keep my promise, sometimes to have to publish twice in a day.
In the end, it became a mini-book prepared in late 2012 and released in early 2013, where also explained the history of my BusinessFitnessMagazine.com, a quarterly on cultural and organizational change that published between 2003 and 2005, in preparation of my return from UK to Italy.
You can download that mini-book, #BerlinDiaries - a personal journey through the new nervous centre of Europe.
The approach was actually a side-effect of of my business experience, that was across different domains, industries, technologies: you end up continously updating and scouting.
It happened often that for either customers or partners, and in the late 1980s to early 1990s also for my employers, had to switch domain, usually interacting with domain experts.
As for the magazine, the reason why I stopped it in 2005 was that... after supporting part-time startups, private companies, and working as part-time PM/BA in Rome on Government agencies projects for a partner...
... decided that was too foreigner for Italy, and accepted an invitation to relocate instead to Brussels .
As somebody unknown who once, years later joined me for a pint I think in Rotterdam told me, moving to the "new Berlin" with my CV was not necessarily the smartest idea.
Lost count of how many "checking the background on missions" were informally done by inviting me to dinners, fairs, exhibitions.
But certainly both those and previous tests in London (as was unusual to have somebody suddenly appearing from Italy, working in banking in Switzerland living not in Chelsea but in an area considered poor, and going around weekly either to Paris or Zurich) were better than the treatment in Turin (and a bit in Rome) since 2012.
Different background checking and recruitment styles.
Anyway, writing in segments online really started in Brussels in 2008, and I remember that by 2009 had published multiple article series (now offline), all based on my experience, research, update- and blending different domains.
Just to make it funnier: after few of those articles got some local feed-back, including questions about who were my sources (disclosure: if you worked in enough different domains long enough, you can connect the dots and forecast new dot connections often even before many of those involved, except their bosses, can)...
... I received an email.
I was 43 and living in Brussels, and the email was from an American former officer- I had met him in the late 1990s, while he represented a large US system integrator, as I was in Brussels visiting my brother (once in a while took the Eurostar London-Brussels), and entered a list to work on PHARE projects.
I was never called up for a project, but probably had made a positive impression- because, when he wrote me, he was in Moscow with a Russian-American company, and the title of the email was something like "a shot from the blue" or "out of the blue".
He asked for my CV- which, having always worked through word-of-mouth since 1990, was frankly a pro-forma, with no names and no details.
Then, came a reply: please send a fully detailed CV with every project your worked in and in which capacity, no more than a paragraph for each project.
The document ended up being 9 pages long- so, asked an Italian friend working in banking to give me a feed-back.
The reply: that I was trying to hide my age, because claimed to be 43, but to have done all that should have been 143.
The beauty of working by word-of-mouth: you are not called for the CV, but for the capabilities already proven, and being asked either to use them, or if you are willing to develop new ones that could leverage on the existing ones.
So, I send it anyway.
The final reply: basically, that they had no idea how they could allocate me- welcome to specialization world.
Once in Brussels I was let to know by a recruiter that he turned down the opportunity to vet my background for a role using a 360- he said because with my CV would have been at least few years, and doing that kind of challenge testing for more than one year is inhumane.
Say: Italians have no qualms, as tests actually started when first moved to UK in late 1990s, and then from the public side again when started working part-time in Rome with some curious cameos to let me know that was known where I went, who I met, etc, in 2004.
What doesn't kill you builds you- hence, the ability to work across even more activities at the same time and across timezones with a follow-the-sun... as an individual.
My CV back then in the mid-2000s was nothing special, frankly: 99% perspiration through word-of-mouth, and 1% inspiration- chaotic for some, but simply, if you looked by industry, there were many parallel lines.
If I were to prepare it now with the same level of detail, maybe as an AI Q&A model, would be even funnier and less credible: still, enabled to accelerate auditing of and writing about patterns.
As you can see on this website, writing in segments is a habit: as it started in the late 1980s, when was almost on a daily basis in a completely different town and business environment, mainly around Italy.
Therefore, the approach for this week has been to reserve events where I could "sample trends" and get "signals" from the territory, also to get different perspectives, and, potentially, different opinions on the same concepts about innovation, emerging technologies, change, etc.
And now, today's segment.
2026-05-27 - the anti-networking breakfast
If yesterday the breakfast had the specific purpose of networking (and wrote in the previous segment, yesterday evening, how the application of the concept could be improved), today was instead a different format.
It was specifically described as something where attendees would talk openly, not just meet to deliver a pitch or share business cards.
As I wrote yesterday, actually the blend of local culture, that will describe later in this section because shared its description with non-locals today, plus the format, implied that yesterday too many focused on the breakfast, too few on the couple of "lessons learned sharing" that were actually worth listening at and thinking about, and generally people stayed with those that they already knew- sitting at the tables.
The cultural element is simple: having lived abroad since the late 1990s, and having lived and worked around Italy since the late 1980s, often I entered places (pubs,clubs, conferences, libraries) alone, and then met other people there- fellow "accidental tourists", as well as locals that were open to exchanging ideas.
A visible sign of the local difference is that few pubs or café in Turin have a counter where you can sit, talk with the bartenders, or with other customers.
Often here people meet in a private home and then go together somewhere.
Or reserve a table to meet in a public space.
Still, even in Milan, Florence, Rome was even joining others at their table, or the place owners or waitresses/waiters asked me if they could let others join my table.
Try to do that in Turin with locals (including non-locals who have been here long enough), if you see empty seats, and ask if you can sit down, and you are met by puzzled faces.
Now, the format this morning explicitly said why it was anti-networking: no business cards, no presentations, no pitching.
And contained a detail that reminded me when attended in Brussels an information architecture meetup, almost 20 years ago: the concept of sipping a coffee.
Back then, we met around dinner time, and most of the people were Flemish. And, with other groups and via IEEE and IET, had meetings elsewhere- in Belgium as well as in The Netherlands, plus other more limited meetings in Paris (it was less that 90 minutes by Thalys from Brussels).
Our meeting places in Brussels were actually closer to "brasseries" than "pubs", when we met in the evening to discuss about startups and technology, i.e. in some cases were brewing their own beer, and had a full menu.
The common complaint from the Flemish side was when instead meetings where organized directly by Dutch- it was early morning or anyway much earlier in the afternoon, and no alcohol- milk, fruit juice, pastries.
So, I was used to events involving startups or technology etc in UK, Belgium, Switzerland, Netherlands, and was also invited to some in the third of the BeNeLux triad.
Once attended a PMI meeting hosted by a consulting company (I had similar invitations from their competitors in Brussels- both American firms).
A taxi driver used as an IQ test on consultants the point that- and was true- train timetables showed that a train passed... at the 63rd minute of the hour: when I started laughing, he told me that few got the point- I think that the logic was to avoid misunderstandings by writing 3 or even 03- clearer 23 43 63, if it is every 20 minutes, was the rationale.
This morning, even before seeing the name of the organizer, assumed therefore from the description that had been organized by a non-local foreigners: as even foreigners moving to Turin, even when have no Italian language skills... end up picking up local habits better than a local (like me) who left the place in the late 1980s.
Now, why this preamble of the "culture of the meeting to discuss themes in a public place"? Because in this culture, frankly to start something that hopefully eventually will develop, you need few things:
_ a small number of people
_ a catalyst that nudges people into opening up by active listening
_ a place where you can relax instead of feeling as if you were observed and judged.
The latter is frankly the most difficult element in Turin: it is still Macondo+Trantor, hence when you enter a place, you suddenly feel, like in a village, that you are being "assessed".
The choice of location, the "snodo" open café at the OGR (which includes also open air tables) was nice, as it is informal yet structured enough to allow both working and talking- and some students from the nearby Turin Polytechnic like to study there, as it is quieter and less crowded than study rooms.
This morning the organizer (you can see the event card on the FutureWeek Turin 2026 website) opened stating that the theme was "futures", specifically starting from low-intensity signals that cold eventually become part of emerging trends- but you need to look forward and accept uncertainty and the potential for continuous re-assessment.
I will skip sharing what I shared about scenarios, the planning vs. plan concept in Eisenhower, etc- as wrote about that often on this website- just search.
Few days ago, while discussing AI, it was reminded that the former Assessora (under Mayor Appendino, before the current incumbent), then Innovation minister in a previous government, before returning to the University of Turin, was part of a project for an Italian Government ministry on monitoring potential and evolving conflicts by monitoring news etc.
Meaning: news items that, individually, are mere "blips" on the news radar, when connected with others, could impact and represent an emerging trend.
I will not summarize our discussion on that point today, but you can have a look at a couple of sites that discuss the theme:
_ Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies
_ Master di Secondo Livello - Previsione Sociale
Anyway, was interesting also because we were few but from different backgrounds- and, frankly, suggested to the other younger ones who, local or not, live in Turin, to try doing what suggested within the article yesterday, as part of the section on the networking breakfast.
The concept is really simple: having different backgrounds can lead to both "knowledge contamination" and "identification of shared patterns", as well as elicit rethinking what you take for granted.
Which is exactly what is needed when you assess scenarios.
We briefly discussed also models, e.g. on climate, and reminded the conference that "emerged" few days ago and planned for tomorrow by the American NAAS on the impact of climate change on brain functions.
We humans forget that we are part of an ecosystem- and therefore, if affects animals and plants, why not us?
The issue with models is that, by necessity, they "compartmentalize" reality and then focus on their own perception of reality- few models allow to spot and monitor signals that were not considered at the design phase.
This applies to companies as well as to States and other organizational structures- and, frankly, KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) should be designed also to make easier to identify emerging patterns, not as a point-by-point "compliance".
Again, discussed often in the past KPIs and, within my AI experimental activities, will release eventually non-LLM models to apply some concepts to real data- first static, then evolving.
The context can change dramatically: before the tsunami few decades back, we Europeans (and Americans) considered the impact of Asian tsunamis as something at most worth sending aid in the aftermath, not our own shared issue.
That event, affecting also Western tourists and showing impacts elsewhere, revealed how many countries did lack the disaster warning equipment needed, and then, after the tsunami, there was a sudden shared concern.
With a catch, confirming why designing scenarios requires a mixed background (including cultural background): if you want to increase the capabilities to spot an emerging disaster, you cannot push the same equipment that we use everywhere- but you have to consider at least few elements: _ infrastructure (e.g. is there electricity 24/7?) _ materials (e.g. are there spare-parts nearby?) _ "the human side" (e.g. are there technicians skilled and within reach to both continuously monitor equipment and intervene if and when needed?)
This is oversimplified, but shows how just sending in money is not enough: you need to build and keep capabilities.
Also, we humans are used to "filter out" what is not directly relevant to us and, to avoid processing too many signals all the time, to be selective.
This enters also in models design: remember the discussion about AI models and datasets used within e.g. facial identification that, having been trained mainly on specific racial subsets, fared poorly with other somatic characteristics- so much, that some Chinese companies did retrain elsewhere.
An element that we discussed this morning is the usual old question of where the balance should be between model(s) and politics.
I prefer to share here my position (relatively unpopular whenever I utter it- but I am a pragmatist).
There is never and there will never be "the" model- all models are selective.
Whatever your focus, currently there are multiple models, most of them built respecting "canonical" safeguards to be as "scientific" as possible (i.e. trying to minimize different types of bias, and following a repeatable and traceable process).
Anyway, no politician will ever simply implement a model "as is"- because any model implies prioritization and affecting somebody somewhere.
Like it or not, also what some described as "Vulcanian" voters (or decision-makers), inspired by Star Trek concept of pure rationality, will have motivation, interests, and a general Weltanschauung that will identify how can can go, and what could be acceptable or not acceptable, including to decide who will have to be displeased.
As I said this morning: if you are a politician, you cannot satisfy everybody at the same time- you can pretend to, but you will have to identify an acceptable balance, and live with the disappointment of some (and manage it, e.g. by offsetting temporarily).
Sticking on climate, as one of the nudges was to think 20 years in the future, but in two dimensions, i.e. with and without yourself in the picture that you are considering, personally I said that the UN SDG 2030 objectives probably will not be reached, and 20 years in the future means thinking about the next round- 2050.
To avoid influencing, did not share a news item that received today- a forecast assessing the possibility that by 2064 the human population on Earth will be half the current level, but still in every event I attended this week demography was a Damocle's sword hanging above the discussion.
Again: another example that I like to share is Hormuz: we discussed the oil, and, seeing that was "just" 20% of the world volume, we assumed that would be manageable.
Then, we saw that the 20% was unbalanced- affecting some more than others, and that Hormuz is critical for various supply chains, e.g. fertilizers.
I suggested to have a look at the UN SDG EU dashboard on Eurostat, that allow to see the EU as an aggregate, but also individual countries: if you are in Europe, the "harmonization" and "normalization" provided by Eurostat will save countless hours- across economic, social, technological dimensions, and all the data are free.
I used some in the past to create, along with other data from other sources, new datasets on Kaggle.
The second event was instead about the future of Turin from the perspective of architects and urbanists, as well as the digital twin of Turin
2026-05-27 - abitare / dwelling - and the digital twin (of a territory rethinking itself)
For this section, will start by sharing some key slides that were presented, and then my commentary: so, that we can agree to disagree on my commentary.
I will keep my point short and direct to the core of the issue, as shared in the past not just articles about the demographic future of both Italy and Turin, but also data from national, European, and local authorities, data with forecasts up to 2100.
Yes, we are highly urbanized.
But yet, Turin (and the county of Turin) include many smaller towns and villages that, while are integrated with Turin from an infrastructure perspective, still retain a degree of "local life"- not just bureaucracy, but also social components.
If you look at those charts, you will see how the composition of the population evolved, and also how prices per square meter evolved.
Turin, as any company town for a multinational company, had a characteristic: a rotating mix of "imported" managers, a mix that required continuous services targeting the affluent new arrivals- including restructuring apartments, interior design, etc.
Being a company town for the "industry of industries" (automotive) implied also that there was a long list of "corollary" industries, and as an aggregate this "pushed" demand for value-added services, not just fast food for tourist.
The succession of international crises since the early 2000s, coupled with the continuation of contraction of the main automotive champion specifically in Italy, affected therefore many businesses.
Also, as you can see from the charts, the composition of the real estate implies that most Italian apartment (and office) buildings are really old: set aside those with historical value, but just to look at the last century and this one, only 3% were built from 2006- twenty years ago.
Italy (along with other Member States) already missed deadlines for restructuring building- and, frankly, it is still to be assessed how many of those buildings within the slide will be possible to really restructure- also if there were a mandate from the Italian Government.
This morning but also in previous day and in events across few years there was a point hinted at quite forcefully: that some in the territory want to retain control also if the town is trying to attract investments, talents, and... retain what is already here.
Frankly, as kept sharing, I care about Turin and Italy but, paraphasing what Elkann said, I had enough of appeals to "torinesità" and "italianità", appeals that usually start routinely with boasting pride and why choices should be done locally, including countless new initiatives announced...
... then immediately followed by requests of funding from outside the territory to subsidize locals but giving control to locals.
Italy has a national debt of over 3,000 billion EUR- which more or less doubles since when moved to Brussels around 20 years ago.
Hence, subsidizing all that can convince themselves to be unique, and uniquely worth subsidizing, is not a viable approach.
I do not know yet if I will stay in Turin or Italy- I had enough of repeating always the same discussion patterns, being gaslighted for disagreement, and then few years later receiving confirmations.
I do not claim to have a crystal ball: simply, I started in political activities from an evidence-based perspective, and my experience in business since the 1980s continued on that thread- balancing the soft, contextual information, with hard data- and then talking straight how, to stay on the automotive, Iacocca titled his own book.
Yes, it was a different era, and was a riposte to a book from Japan, but still conceptually some elements could be useful, if you adapt to our own times.
Personally, I am one of those that say that Turin for too long got used to delegating strategy and planning to the local champion, to the point of losing planning abilities, and simply coasting on meager margins.
As soon as, decades ago, the local champion started opening and expanding elsewhere- be it LATAM, Poland, elsewhere, gradually the criticality of the territory was that tried not to focus on one line and develop, but, as was discussed in a seminar over a dozen years go based on commenting a book on the "organizational structure" of the élites of Turin, too many things at the same time.
Probably, but I was not there before the early 2010s, it is when it started to develop that unusual habit that saw so annoying from 2012, to routinely claim to be "the natural location for X", where X is whatever carries wealthy or at least spending tourist (nobody wants to attract backpackers).
I shared evidence-based analysis in previous articles about Turin, so I will skip it here.
Still, the feeling confirmed today is that locals have a control freak issue related to being still "orphans" of the main local champion and, instead of building up their own, they seems focused on trying whatever venue can make them attractive, but then limit the resources (financial and human) to develop up to a point of "organic" attractiveness, to instead prepare a draft, and push it to actually have somebody else take on it (and provide both funding and talent)- but leaving to them control.
Aspirational, but delusional- a sign of cognitive dissonance.
Few years back were discussed issues about the upkeep of gardens, and even recently local authorities looked for companies who would sponsor some interventions in that area.
Today was told how much of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR, in Italian) was spent locally (completion due soon), and how the Valentino Park will become a pivotal area.
Fine- but now it is the time, without much further ado and self-referential boasting and aggrandizing, to put "boots on the ground" and deliver initiatives that leverage on that investment (as that should have been- investment, not just expenditure) to generate new revenue streams.
As the Unione Industriale leader Gay said (so was reported by local newspapers), Turin does not need a special status as disadvantaged economic development zone (ZES), but a rethinking of the relationship between territory, bureaucracy, and businesses.
I might differ on some points he requested, but I think that that Turin should stop looking for an "investment white knight", roll up its sleeves, quit boasting about its own "understatement" while using the work "excellence" every other phrase, and deliver, and sell what has delivered as part of its own "marketing of the territory".
Just selling "initiatives that will be", "projects", and "vision" cannot be balanced if in the single metro line still cannot do a single run meeting all the moving staircases working, or if, as it happened today, had to leave a streetcar because... there was no electricity due to the excessive heat impacting on what has been described as aging infrastructure.
The real understatement would be to deliver some small "initial steps", and then "selling them", while preparing and working on larger steps.
Whenever I attend webinars discussing funding of initiatives, the point discussed is not availability of funding, but quality of initiatives.
Turin, after losing its status, routinely complains of having been marginalized, having become a backwater.
I am afraid that that is so typical fading company town: it was a backwater before, but just a more prosperous one: as you can read within the 9,000 pages of the history of Turin that a bank funded long ago, actually Turin extracted value from being a backwater but also a transit location centuries before the founding of FIAT.
FIAT just masked the provincialism by sheer size of the workforce and turnover, and its own internationalization.
Now it is up to Turin to build its own international presence and attractiveness but by aligning with what that requires, not continuously preaching about its "special status" and sitting on its hands waiting for others to fund continuity of the status...
Today the representative of the Turin Polytechnic talked about two projects that derived from the funding of the PNRR, both focused on monitoring the territory (40 satellites launched), the digital twin, and energy efficiency (both by mapping up to 5 points per meter the solar energy potential, and by having a specially equipped vehicle go through the town both at day and at night to see emissions).
In a digital world, a town that wants to have a pivotal role as a laboratory for smart cities should learn something else that is outside that "control freak" attitude: transparency.
It will take time- but start exploring ways to have citizens involved (today was briefly hinted at "crowdsourcing"- citizens giving the data and getting back in return the model or other information that could be useful).
In the early 1990s, my German girlfriend was urban planner in a small village nearby Stuttgart.
Our plans was to then move to Amsterdam, the city where we met.
Why Amsterdam? Because it was a dream location for that type of experiments involving citizens, something that saw again decades later in London and then Brussels, whenever new initiatives were presented.
The recently adopted approach to sharing with citizens the planned evolution of the town, and the feed-back period to collect remarks is a good choice from the incumbent Mayor.
Still, instead of asking for subsidies to keep afloat an industry that was based on a consumption model for their services that is not there anymore (and architects are not the only ones), a different model, as hinted at above, is, in my view, needed.
And if the locals insist that they decide, they plan, they control... well, have them cook their own pie and eat it- but do not ask others to pay for it.
Feasible, but a missed opportunity: I prefer what has been done with part of the funding of the PNRR, as written above, and the attempts to increase transparency in decision-making, which, in and by itself, could make more credible the concept of becoming a "city lab and focal point" for smart cities, courtesy also of the massive knowledge base accumulated in over a century, a knowledge base that would be wasted otherwise.
Tomorrow, the fourth episode.