Wikimedia news/numero 95/en

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Wikimedia News n. 95 - February 12, 2015

Lila Tretikov, Executive Director of Wikimedia Foundation, by Lane Hartwell [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

The Executive Director of Wikimedia Foundation meets Italian speaking wikipedians

The event that can't be missed: Lila Tretikov, Executive Director of Wikimedia Foundation, is coming to Milan on February 18th to meet Italian speaking wikipedians and wikimedians. Lila has led the WMF since May 2014 and has already met the wikimedia community (for example, at Wikimania in London and the Wikimedia Conference in Berlin), but this time the goal is to establish a direct and informal connection with the Italian speaking community. The meeting is open to everybody and will be held at the Triennale in Milan, room TriennaleLab of TIM, starting from 4 PM. Given the limited room size, it is better to reserve a place. We hope to see many of you, it's a great opportunity!

Free Knowledge Advocacy Group EU, by Dimi z (Own work) [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons

The European Parliament on copyright

This month the European Parliament will be busy updating the InfoSoc directive (started in 2001), which among other things regulates the copyright in the EU. The European Commission has the ambitious goal of updating this old directive and unify the fragmented European legislation.
Wikimedia Italia has a very clear position, already presented in the previous consultation of the former commission and restated along with dozens of friendly European associations: widen the culture available for everybody due to the public domain; publish under a free license all works from public administration; level out and simplify the rules and exceptions for the remaining works in Europe. Every citizen can help: the best way is to phone the MEPs in your language, especially those in the JURI, CULT and IMCO commissions. Some of our members already called a dozen of MEPs: what about you?

Two guests in the office

Dario and Emily, by Fra [CC BY-SA 3.0]

For the last two weeks the Wikimedia Italia office has hosted two interns from the Hensemberger technical institute of Monza. Dario and Emily (pictured) are helping with the office workload, in particular by managing donations. Thanks to their IT and mathematical skills they are of great assistance. The staff, with the help of member Laurentius, are teaching the students about office work and the world of Wikimedia and Wikipedia. The partnership is fruitful for everybody and we are happy to have accepted the invitation of hosting the interns received from the CSV of Monza e Brianza (Centro di Servizio del Volontariato).

Joining FSFE initiative

Logo Free Software Foundation Europe

Wikimedia Italia supports the statement towards a "World Intellectual Wealth Organisation": Supporting the Geneva Declaration of Free Software Foundation Europe. The text says: The Geneva Declaration is an impressive step towards the creation of a broad coalition of people, organisations and countries demanding that the international community re-thinks the goals and mechanisms for awarding monopoly control over different kinds of knowledge. It offers many constructive, concrete suggestions for changes in WIPO goals, policies and priorities, and provides ample and insightful arguments for redesign of the copyright and patent bargains to better serve the public interest of all of humankind..

Events and communications

• February 13: Wikimedia Italia joins the M'illumino di meno initiative, launched by the radio program Caterpillar of Radio Due Rai aims to raise awareness in energy saving. The association, in the framework of the project with interns Dario and Emily, worked in fixing some Wikipedia articles about that topic. We invite everybody to perform few hours of energetic silence.
• February 26-27, Università di Salerno: by request from Campania's section of Associazione Italiana Biblioteche (Italian libraries association), Susanna Giaccai will host a course on basic concepts of Wikipedia for the librarians of the University of Salerno.
• March 2-3, Florence: Luca Martinelli and Pierfranco Minsenti will host the first Italian course on Wikidata for cultural heritage professionals: Wikidata. Re-use of open data between Wikipedia and libraries. The course has a limited number of seats and registration is mandatory; to register, e-mail to tos-corsi@tos.aib.it at least three days before the beginning of classes.

Last week many articles have been published online about Wiki Loves Monuments and the exhibit set in room Tim4Expo at Triennale in Milan (February 3-8). Here are just some of them:

• TIM4Expo, in mostra a Milano le immagini vincitrici di Wiki Loves Monuments on Key4Biz.
• Il concorso fotografico più grande del mondo sbarca a Milano on Touring Club.
• Wiki Loves Monuments, gli scatti vincitori in mostra on SkyTg24.

News from OpenStreetMap

Taglocator is a Web page that shows layers of points of interest from OpenStreetMap

• With OpenStreetMap and Mapillary it is possible to visualize infrastructures few hours after their opening: the latest example is in Genoa.
• Wheelmap, the map that shows places reachable with a wheelchair, surpasses 500 thousand contributions.
• The new edition of OSM Mapping Meetings of Sardinia Open Data gathers mappers from the island every Friday evening in Cagliari.
• Less than two weeks lasts before the ending of the Mappathon of Piemonte Visual Contest: the final event will be a mapping party on the streets of Turin (registration on EventBrite).