Also pictured is fellow globetrotter Scott Evans... having just returned from Germany, Scott is headed to Japan next week.

Saturday was the annual Chianti festival.  One would think that this involves wine & merriment, but we only experienced grown men dressed-up in period attire… oh well.  Most entertaining were their unenthusiastic expressions… “I can’t believe they talked me into doing this again.”

Woke up and noticed, curiously, that the alarm clock was dark.  I initially thought that Scott & I were a little over-ambitious by charging our Laptops, Pocket PCs, phones, cameras, etc., and had perhaps blown our room's fuse.  Once down in the lobby, we quickly learned that there was a blackout in all of Italy!  Hmm... Deja Vu.  What are the chances of experiencing two major blackouts in two months?

Fortunately, the power came back, and we decided to head back to the station.  No update on train #9307 to Turin anytime soon.  We decided to take the only outbound train headed north to Pisa, then try to find transit from there...

No love.  Zero trains leaving from Pisa.  Awesome.  Now we're stranded hundreds of miles away from Turin, with no clear options for getting to the conference on time.  I called Microsoft Travel, and learned that most flights had been canceled from Pisa-Turin due to the power failure, and the few that were running were (not surprisingly) completely overbooked.

It was soon clear that only one option remained.

Take the bus from the train station to the airport, head to the Avis counter, and...

3+ hours later, we arrived in Turin...

The conference was very well-organized, and well-attended.  Kudos to Marco Combetto of MS Italy for his diligence.

After the day's technical sessions, Microsoft rented-out the atrium of the Mole Antonelliana, Turin's most historic building.  Since Turin is the moviemaking capital of Italy, this amazing structure has been reinvented to house the Museo Nazionale del Cinema (great web site, by the way).

Absolutely incredible space.  Amazing environment design... imagine a combination museum/theater/lounge with gorgeous detailing to rival New York & London's hippest hotels, and you start to get the idea.  If you're ever in Turin, I highly recommend a visit, particularly if you're interested in the science of moviemaking.  The exhibits were also stellar.  Plenty of unique props & paraphernalia from both Italian & US films, but the most interesting area was The Archaeology of Cinema, a step-by-step walk through of the technologies leading to motion pictures.  Shadow puppets, magic lanterns, and early film projectors.  Each room presented the key innovations by the pioneers of filmmaking.  The community of inventors was really fascinating... I got the impression that these brilliant minds would feel right at home in today's Siggraph community.

All told, I really enjoyed my time in Turin.  I was expecting an over-industrialized complex, but was thrilled to find plenty of rich culture, art, architecture & design.

The conference continued for another day, but I had made a commitment to speak at the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea (IDII), a small interaction design graduate program about an hour north, just at the base of the Alps.

I found it really interesting to contrast Italian rental car marketing with the U.S.  In America, it's all about convenience and size... "Would you like to upgrade to a bigger car?  Perhaps an SUV?"  In Italy, it's all about quality & performance.  Almost all cars are manual transmission, and most cars are very small or midsize sport sedans.  No towncars or minivans in sight.  Amen to that.

With this model, they've found the sweet spot between traditional art&design programs and CS research labs like the MIT Media Lab.

On the second day of my visit, design visionary Don Norman was also visiting the institute, and I had the unique opportunity to show him my latest research, and dialog about current Microsoft design trends.

(In case you were wondering, the device to the left is an ambient display that's part of the FluidTime project.)

The Hotel Castello San Giuseppe was built to be a monastery, but was converted to a military castle by Napoleon and his army.  Today, it's a luxury bed-and-breakfast, with amazing staterooms, great food, and breathtaking views of the surrounding landscape.