Hello Digital - Carlo Donzella

Carlo Donzella

About

Carlo Donzella was born in 1959 and brought up in Genoa, Italy. After taking his Secondary School Diploma, he moved to Bologna to read Philosophy of Language, Linguistics and Semiotics at the local University. He graduated in Philosophy (General Linguistics) in 1983. His interest in the theory of formal languages led him to take up Computer Science. He attended, among others, a Computer Programmer course in an Educational Center of Regione Emilia-Romagna and later a post-graduate Computer Science course at the University of Bologna.

In 1982/1983 he had his first working experiences as a free-lance programmer. In 1984 he began to work as a Junior System Programmer in PC environment. After six months he joined the Data Processing Center of the City Council of Bologna as a Programmer Analyst. He was involved in the design and implementation of various Information Systems for consumer price gathering and inflation rate computation; for political and administrative elections; for management control and financial accounting; for social security services. In the same period he lectured in Business Information Systems at the University of Bologna and in Educational Centers.

At the end of 1988 he joined Omega Generation, a small independent company specializing in advanced information technology as a member of the Management Board. In 1989 he created the R&D unit, initially devoted to Natural Language Processing. In 1990 he managed to involve the company in the Esprit programme and was the Team Leader of Omega Generation for the Esprit Project 5254 PLUS (Pragmatics-based Language Understanding Systems). He was the initiator of several projects: CITYCARD (EP8123), which created Iperbole, the first European civic network providing free Internet access, RUMS (EP8224), HOOK (VALUE AC-097/93-1).

In April 1993 he joined the European Commission as an Esprit Project Officer. He was the first Project Officer entirely dedicated to OMI, the Open Microprocessor systems Initiative. He was in charge of the evaluation and coordination of many OMI projects, with budget costs well in excess of 50 MECUs. Since September 1994 he was the coordinator of the OMI Software area. He was also member of the Esprit Exploitation & Technology Transfer Group, in which role he was promoting pilot initiatives in Italy.

In June 1996 he started a career as a senior technology management consultant. In this role he had a major contract with Gruppo Formula SpA, for which he coordinated a new business unit, WinCity, dedicated to MultiMedia tools and applications reporting to the Operating Director until December 1996 and took care of international projects financing reporting to the Finance Director since then. In 1996 and 1998 he was Director of Marketing and Finance of Advanced Bytes & Rights Ltd., a UK start-up specialising in formal verification. From Jan 98 to Dec 99 he has been Strategic Marketing Advisor for Etnoteam SpA, a leading Italian IT company.

In 1999 he founded Terra Incognita, a UK consultancy specialising in business modeling and analyses in the digital economy. He has given several lessons on Business Modelling and Technology Transfer to various post-graduate courses. Within EC’s FP5, he has been Project Manager of the supporting measure PACKMAN (G1MA-CT2000-01015), of the Roadmap ROCKET (IST-2001-38245) and of the accompanying measure ABChina (IST-2001-38616).

He is actively involved with European R&D programmes as a reviewer and as an evaluator. He has been involved in activities concerning ICT and International Cooperation with the European Commission and the G8. He is consulting on European and International Affairs to FILAS, the development agency of Lazio region, since 2002. He has managed the sub-project on Ambient Intelligence for Quality and Safety of Wine in the EC Integrated Project GOODFOOD (IST-508774) on behalf of the University of Florence. He qualified to hold courses on “Innovation & Business Planning” as Assistant Professor by the University of Bologna and of Florence for the Academic Year 2004.