Today was another day of media visits and again they were very interesting. We started the day with a short bus ride to Art Attack Advertising Agency and although I have almost no interest in advertising they did a very good job of making it interesting. Claudio Ciatti, who is a partner in the firm, introduced us what Art Attack does. They are an independent firm and have over 35 clients and they do a variety of work. They threw some numbers are way and some of them were very surprising. They only have 27 million internet users which is only 50 percent of the country, the most popular person on Twitter only has 1 million followers but that is almost every twitter user, and they spend the most time on Facebook in the world. This has lead the Art Attack agency to do a lot on Facebook and the work that they showed us was very cool. They had an application for the movie Tangled that let you and your friends make Rapunzel’s hair longer and another cool application for Cowboys and Aliens that let you make a wanted poster of your friends.

After that we went to La Repubblica and got a look at the every evolving world of the print newspaper. They had a cool IPad application that let you get the papers and when you would hit a picture it would play a movie.  They also let us talk to their investigative reporter who gave us a really cool insight into what he does.

We wrapped the day up with a good dinner and we got to go in The Coliseum which was really cool and then saw some landmarks light up at night.

Rome at Night. 

We had a pretty jam packed schedule for our final day in Rome. Since we didn’t have to head out until 9:30 today, My Roommates and I  decided to go get a cappuccino and croissant for breakfast before the group headed over to the Art Attack Advertising Agency.

Let my just say that the people are Art Attack Agency probably hated me. I sat down in a stool before the presentation started and said to myself “this is really wobbly, it’s probably broken”. Yet, I stayed in the stool even-though two stools in front of me we available. Needless to say, the stool broke and I made a little bit of noise. After switching to one of the open stools, I proceeded to just and make noise causing everyone to look at me everything the stool even wavered a little. Despite my horrible impression and embarrassment, I really enjoyed the time spend at Art Attack Advertising Agency.

I learned too much to even go over right now, even though I’d really like to. As a digital media major, I am naturally interested in and someday looking to find a job creating digital/print/web graphics someday and working with an Ad team would be my ideal job.

I could also work at some place like La Republica, the newspaper we visited this afternoon. Just like at Art Attack and the Vatican, La Republica is working hard to connect to people through the new digital world. Seeing as that is what I studied a little in undergrad and hope to pursue more intensely as a postgraduate, I love seeing that there is still demand and even a growth in my planned job market.

La Republica was the first newspaper in Italy, and also in the non-English speaking countries of Europe, to put their paper online. Now they even have Ipad app’s. On the app, you can read the same paper the print edition, but also watch videos, look at galleries, view slideshows, and much more. I was extremely impressed. I’ve never toured a newspaper before with such a gigantic digital presence and understanding of the digital age and it made me incredibly excited to go out and find a job!

Honestly, I didn’t even though the tip of the iceberg about the media visits but I feel as though I should try to restrain myself a tiny bit and stop there… because I didn’t even get to the best part of the day.

Today was long, but it sure was good. After the media visits we became tourists again and went inside of the Colosseum. Oh my god was it incredible. Not only was it captivating to be standing on and looking at  history, but the views of the city from inside were to phenomenal. I took so many photos and made too many panoramas.

After that we ate dinner across the street from the monument before a guided night tour around the city led by Matteo. Taking some time to go around some of Rome’s most well known sights and take night pictures was such a good idea. Even if I make a single photo (but you know I did) it was just beautiful to be in this beautiful city and watching the sunset behind the Spanish Steps was a perfect way to say ciao to roma.

Buonasera.

Mary.