Dr. Dario de Judicibus

A prolific IBM inventor with 7 patents to his name, he is the European Fashion Industry Leader for IBM Smarter Commerce Italy, specializing in Business Strategy, Knowledge Management, and Social Networking, he has written more than 250 articles in several magazines and newspapers, published 6 books, and speaks regularly at national and international conferences. He is an expert of problem solving and decision taking methodologies. After a period in which he dedicated to research in software reuse and object-oriented programming, he began pioneer work on knowledge management in his country. He was invited as a speaker on that subject in various Italian universities and academic institutes. Born in Brescia, Italy, in 1984, he received his Laurea degree in Physics, High Energy Particles, from Florence University in Italy. Prior to IBM, he worked at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, SLAC at Stanford, and DESY, German Electron Synchrotron where he gained extensive background and research experience. He joined IBM in 1986, having graduated and completed mandatory military service as an officer. He initially worked as a consultant. In his 27 years with IBM, he held a wide variety of roles, both technical and non-technical. His position was unusual in that he had the opportunity to interpret and create his job description as he wished. He is what is called a ?Wild Duck?; a term coined by former IBM Chairman Thomas Watson, Jr. who knew how important it was to work with people who question the way things are and challenge the status quo. One of his roles was to practically invent a new global practice from scratch. For instance, in 1993, he founded the Reuse Shop, which was the first IBM group to create software libraries of building blocks that could be used to develop products. He later took on managing the first Intellectual Property initiative (ICM) for Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Turkey, and Israel. In 2010, he became Fashion Industry Leader, first for Italy and later on for Europe, creating the first IBM Retail Practice and market segment focused on the Fashion and Luxury Products Industry. In 2004 he founded the digital magazine L'Indipendente (ISSN 1824-8950); among his collaborators there are a few journalists. In 2007 he founded the official island of IBM Italy in Second Life; an online virtual world, developed by Linden Lab (San Francisco) launched on June 23, 2003. Second Life users create virtual representations of themselves, called avatars (also called Residents) and are able to interact with other avatars, places or objects. They can explore the world (known as the grid), meet other residents, socialize, participate in individual and group activities, build, create shop and trade virtual property and services with one another. He is the author of several articles in Italian computer magazines as MC Microcomputer, Internet News and internet.pro. He is also author of two books about Internet, and two essays of psychology. His works include: TCP/IP in pillole, Tecniche Nuove, 2002 (1999), ISBN 88-481-1441-5; Imparare XML in 6 ore, Tecniche Nuove, 2000 ISBN 88-481-1098-3; Le 10 Regole dei Buoni Genitori, Armenia, 2003, ISBN 88-344-1505-1; and Le 10 Regole per Vivere Sereni, Armenia, 2005, ISBN 88-344-1803-4. He is also co-author of Old Italics block in The Unicode Standard, Version 4.0 with Deborah Anderson, Carl-Martin Bunz, Joseph Eska, Stefan Schumacher, Brent Vine, and Rex Wallace.