About Aldo Prinzi

From Blueprints to Bytes: A 40-Year Journey in Technology

I am a technology leader and AI expert, but my story doesn’t begin with code. It begins with the smell of ink, the precision of drafting tools, and the creative energy of 1960s Palermo. I was raised between two worlds: my father’s architectural studio and my mother’s dynamic business. This unique blend of art and enterprise has defined my entire career. This is the story of how I found a way to unite them—a journey from blueprints to building innovative Artificial Intelligence.

The origin

Born in Palermo in 1965, my childhood was a fascinating apprenticeship. My father was an architect, and I was captivated by the technology of his craft: the technical drawing machines, the coded pencils, the inks. I was fascinated by the technical transposition of a project, where personal skill and imagination made the difference between something ugly or non-functional and something beautiful and effective. I followed his work, met groups of artists, and breathed in the dreams and creativity that were later translated into special techniques.

By 16, I was a perfect draftsman. But the entrepreneurial side was also part of my life. I spent time in my mother’s companies, absorbing ideas, methods, and business projects. My curiosity was always drawn to what I didn’t know.

The epiphany

In technology, I sensed a solution that could unite the two passions of my life. Then, the Xerox Alto the Mac Lisa and the HP150 arrived, acting as the catalysts that finally fused my two worlds.

This story might sound familiar. It’s the same intersection of art, design, and technology that defined Steve Jobs. But while Jobs was a marketing visionary, his technical counterpart was Steve Wozniak. I see myself in that divide. At that age, I had to make a choice between those two paths, and (perhaps prophetically, given my uncanny physical resemblance to Wozniak) I was drawn to the technical craft.

I was at the end of art high school (Liceo Artistico), ready to enroll in Architecture, when I started programming. It was an epiphany. A true ‘folgorazione’. I immediately changed my path, took the supplementary year of high school, and enrolled in Electronic Engineering—only to discover I would be learning how to build computers, whereas I, like Woz, wanted to program them!

Forging my own path

As soon as the ‘Computer Science Engineering’ course became available, I took the exam and was admitted. It was the very first year it was offered, and frankly, the curriculum was poor compared to what I had already taught myself.

By that time, I had already founded a software house and sold several applications. My work was moving forward with great hope, even in a place like Palermo, where technology was certainly not on everyone’s mind. I continued my journey, balancing entrepreneurship and ‘creative informatics’ (as I call it), until I moved to Milan in 1997.

My path wasn’t just theoretical. I wrote the search engine for the RAI’s (Italy’s national broadcaster) audiovisual memory archive (‘Teche’/Octopus). I taught .NET architectures for Microsoft/Mondadori and stood on the WPC stage twice, back when tech conferences still used lamp projectors. By 1994, I was already a Novell CNE—back then, we called it a ‘network’; today, you’d call it a ‘private cloud’

The Journey to AI (and getting my hands dirty)

I stayed in Milan for 17 years with great professional satisfaction. When it was time to move again, my marriage had unfortunately ended. I chose to return to Palermo to allow my ex-wife and daughter to live in a more familiar environment. I was supposed to leave—Oslo was my destination—but for many family reasons, I remained in Palermo.

Today, my journey has led me to become a specialist in Artificial Intelligence. But I’m not just a strategist; I still get my hands dirty with code every day. I build chatbots, robotic workflows, and language models on my platform, Flussu; I sell tech courses on magr.it; and I measure the web with flu.lu. I believe AI is an incredibly powerful tool—if you know where to put your hands.

Why this blog exists

I started this blog to share 40 years of mistakes, insights, and lines of code with anyone who feels lost in the face of AI: entrepreneurs, students, and the curious. Here you will find practical guides, prompt ‘recipes,’ behind-the-scenes looks at real projects, and a few nerd digressions on the technologies that are changing the world (again).

P.S. Why “Aldus”?

My friends call me ‘aldus the prinzimaker’ because I loved using Aldus PageMaker instead of Word. As long as it survived, I was a happy man. (Though, sometimes I suspect they called me that to reference the general from Planet of the Apes… but I’m fine with that, too).