Like every year, I’ll be at Netcomm — and once again, nothing will shake the feeling that this is less a trade fair than a collective pantomime, where everyone performs the role of someone attending the event that will define their next 365 days, while knowing perfectly well they don’t understand a damn thing about what’s happening around them.
The grand theatre of Italian digital
And so the grand theatre of Italian digital rolls on: enormous stands, software and ideas that sound revolutionary, promises of glory and personal success, and conversations that will mostly dissolve into background noise.
Everyone insisting that tomorrow will be AI-driven, Omnichannel, with personalised Customer Journeys and immersive experiences — without having genuinely understood why any of it matters, or whether it does at all.
The illusion that works
The beautiful thing — and there is one — is that this collective illusion works anyway, because nobody actually goes to listen.
You go to mark your territory, do the rounds of vendors who’ll stand you a beer and a sandwich, grab a couple of selfies, and then proudly announce on LinkedIn that “these two days of exchange and vision have been absolutely incredible.”
The reality
But the honest translation is this: poor souls that we are, we’ll have downed seven terrible coffees, shaken the hands of 25 salespeople whose products interest us about as much as the two of cups when trumps are clubs, sat through a parade of pitches with barely concealed boredom, and finally choked down a rubbery focaccia at €18, eaten standing up next to the toilets.
Not entirely useless… but
To be clear, I’m not saying it’s all pointless.
Netcomm is genuinely useful — as a liturgy of mutual reassurance. We see each other, we get seen by the social algorithms, and then for another year we can go on happily telling ourselves that “after all, we’re the ones who actually matter in Italian digital.”
Yeah, right.
See you there
Anyway — see you there. Or maybe not. But we’ll definitely like each other’s posts on LinkedIn.