Dario de Judicibus

Born in Brescia, Italy, in 1984, Dario de Judicibus 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, and initially worked as a consultant.

A prolific IBM inventor with 7 patents to his name, de Judicibus served as the European Fashion Industry Leader for IBM Smarter Commerce Italy, specializing in Business Strategy, Knowledge Management, and Social Networking. He wrote more than 250 articles in several magazines and newspapers, published 6 books, and spoke regularly at national and international conferences. He was an expert in problem solving and decision taking methodologies.

After a period in which he dedicated himself to research in software reuse and object-oriented programming, de Judicibus 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. In his 27 years with IBM, he held a wide variety of roles, both technical and non-technical, and his position was unusual in that he had the opportunity to interpret and create his job description as he wished.

He is what is sometimes 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. In 1993, de Judicibus 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 for Europe, creating the first IBM Retail Practice and market segment focused on the Fashion and Luxury Products Industry. In 2004, de Judicibus founded the digital magazine L'Indipendente (ISSN 1824-8950), among whose collaborators were a number of journalists. In 2007, he founded the official island of IBM Italy in Second Life, an online virtual world developed by Linden Lab of San Francisco and 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.

De Judicibus was the author of several articles in Italian computer magazines such as MC Microcomputer, Internet News, and internet.pro, as well as two books about the Internet and two essays on 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 was also co-author of the 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.