Paola Di Maio Narrative Biography

NARRATIVE BIOGRAPHY (bits of memoirs and how did I get here)

As a child, when people asked "what do you want to do when you grow up?" I used to answer: 'I want to be a journalist'.

Maybe because my dad worked for a large publishing house in Milan, and we met many journalists at the tennis club. Somehow they looked taller and more elegant than other dad’s colleagues, overall they appeared smarter, more clever even.

I showed an inclination for writing, had something to say about everything, and I had an interest in 'truth', which later sustained my enthusiasm for scientific knowledge (I now hold a Masters of Science) and philosophy.

I was full of ideals as well as new ideas.

I trained to be a journalist, working on the job and reading communication, and joined the controversial 'Journalist's Guild' in 1991 - admittedly a pseudomasonic association.

In Italy, if you want to be called a journalist, you need to belong to this professional association. Much debate around it, not all good, and not all bad. Lots to talk about that.

I do not have many friends, and nobody has ever been able to help me build my career.

I published both in Italian and English and ended up freelancing for various publications, writing about media and advertising, but admittedly I did not mix well with the media crowds. I can be terribly unsociable when it comes to writing, I do my own thing. I did at times, also make spelling mistakes, which did not help.

And at times I was unreasonable. I did not like having to write about the commercial crap. Although it was easy and paid well.

You end up becoming overcritical about everything.

I came to realize that journalism was more about lies, or hiding truths, than about writing truths.

Information sources were more about stopping people to find out the truth. Truths and facts can be horrible, sad , and shocking. In business, in politics, in economics, the world is centered around illusions and deceit.

I was lucky enough to work as a London based 'correspondent' for one of Italy's major titles, 1995-2000 Il Sole 24 Ore. They have an office in the basement of the Financial Times, but the FT guys do not hang out with the foreign press below. Never mind. I worked from home and only went to visit the office occasionally, to pick up my copies and some papers. I then worked for the FT, both at the desk doing night shifts, but nothing interesting, more just occupying empty desk spaces, and as a contributor to the IT section.

I had to study technology a bit more. It's very difficult to write about IT when you dont understand it much

Being a writer is not enough.

I was accepted for a conversion degree at Christ Church College, after chasing the Faculty ceaselessly til they gave me an interview

University of Kent at Canterbury in 1998. I studied software engineering, object modelling, artificial intelligence, knowledge, rules, compilers, code

Things started becoming clearer. I could begin to understand what makes up systems, how they work, what's important. I learned a lot

Grasped things.

Then the politics changed in Italy, and when the politics changes so do the publishers, editors in chief, and so the freelance journalists.

Now that I could understand all about IT - okay a bit more about IT - now that I could start asking the right questions, scratch behind the surface of those meaningless press releases, now, my articles in the IT section of the Sole 24 Ore were becoming more and more difficult to publish. I was no longer a good puppet. Admittedly, I had started becoming a little aggressive.

Those nicely clad exectuvies, with their shiny suits and shiny shoes, who were picking me up with their lovely blue cars, and paid for my helicoper ride and my five start hotel suites and champagne breakfast so that I could 'interview them' were not happy when I did not show appreciation for the red carpet.

I stumpted all over their red carpets with the muddy shoes of inquiry.

Il Sole never called me again. I think I was tired. I needed something else.

Published for IT Week, der Spiegel Online, Computerwire other magazines. It was fun for a while, but as I started familiarising myself with the internet, I knew that it was the future of journalism, and the future of information, knowledge, education, democracy.

The future. But we had to build it. From scratch.

And it depended on getting things right. I have been spending most of my time online ever since, mostly working things out. I launched several websites, and still run a few of them, with varying degrees of success.

More recently I decided to limit my time online, I took up traveling again to try regain some health and some balance. I work in Thailand as a lecturer, do research, consulting, work on interesting project, generally try to enjoy the wildlife around me and get occasional writing and publishing outbursts.

When the Tsunami hit Phuket the internet was the only place where I could turn for information, so I helped to set up a blog ‘TsunamiHelp.info’

I ended up working on even more online projects (sic) currently mainly centered on new technology , education, sustainable development. Weblogs are some of the tools I use, but by no means the only ones.

I started publishing research for www.cutter.com, published a Country research report on the state of the IT indsutry i Thailand for Orbicomm (a Unesco agency which is now online.

Occasionally attend a conference, run a seminar or workshop.

Will update this page when I have the time with more details and links to my stuffs

Conferences and workshops

KICSS

Asiacommons

Online communities

W3C Incubator EIIF

read also:
Taking sides - media & war
ITV News veteran correspondent Terry Lloyd liked to see the truth for
himself, ... full story thanks to Paola di Maio for this contribution ...
takingsides.blogspot.com/

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