Relazione sulle attività 2015/en

This is an English translation of Relazione sulle attività 2015 ,
it may be not updated or may be different from the original

Wikimedia Italia Annual Report 2015

The annual report of WMIT activities for the year 2015 is organized in chapters highlighting the main goals reached within the projects promoted by the Association:

GLAM - Libraries
GLAM - Museums
Educational program
OpenStreetMap
Wiki Loves Monuments
Wikipedia in Italian

Also, a final part will be dedicated to two key focus of WMIT activity:

Volounteers
External communication

GLAM - Libraries

During the last year, the relationship between libraries and WMIT became more fruitful: some significant events in Torino, Firenze, Brescia, Mantova, Trento, Pavia and Bergamo were arranged.

The most important one was the second annual conference GLAM/Libraries on November 27th at the National Central Library in Florence. After the success of the last year edition, the conference was organized again, allowing the world of librarians and the world of wikipedians to get even closer.

Wikisource has also been a very important project for Wikimedia Italia for the year 2015: we have dedicated both a national contest and an international meeting in Wien, to celebrate the 12th anniversary of the project. Wikimedia Italy’s President has given his personal support to Wikimedia Austria in the planning of the event and participated in the event itself together with Eusebia Parrotto, WMI’s member and a librarian in Trento and Cristian Bacchi, Wikipedian-In-Residence at the National Central Library of Florence (BNCF). Eusebia brought her experience of using Wikisource in library editathons instead of Wikipedia, as a first step for laymans into “editing” and Cristian explained in detail his work as a WIR, working on a very technical (but hugely promising) project of importing library records into Wikidata. The conference allowed WMIT to strengthen the community and increase the attention around this particular sister project, and also to discover the experience of other chapters and affiliates with Wikisource.

In 2015 WMIT also activated two Wikipedian in Residence projects, one with the National Central Library of Florence (BNCF) - already mentioned above - and another with the Library of Trento. For this second project we counted on the collaboration of Eleonora, a young volunteer of the civil service who decided to be part of this project. The WIR project with the Library of Trento replaced the planned project at the Central Institute for the Union Catalogue of Italian Libraries and Bibliographic Information (ICCU).

Unfortunately WMIT faced some bureaucratic problem during the year 2015 which has undoubtedly slowed down the drafting of some agreements, especially the one with AIB (Italian Association of Librarians), which is still in progress. At the moment, a draft of the agreement is being discussed by both parties. Despite this, in the last months of 2015 WMIT deepened its relations with “DigitaMi”', a digital library collecting documents about the historical and cultural tradition of Milan and “MAB”', association of museums, archives and libraries who both expressed their interest in collaborating with us and drafting a convention.

Finally, with the aim of promoting the work carried out by WMIT with libraries, in 2015 we created an internal database to reach the specialised press and started to send messages through some specific list . Among these, the AIB-CUR, a mailing list for librarians counting more than 6000 professionals.

GLAM - Museums

Although WMIT started some important projects and collaborations in the past, until now museums has represented an unexplored ground for the organization. That’s why in the first part of the year 2015 WMIT focused on building solid relationships with two of the most important Italian association of museums, ICOM Italia and Museimpresa.

In the framework of these collaborations, at the end of 2015, WMIT managed to publish a call for interest open to museums interested in hosting a wikipedian in residence, that appeared on our communication channels and on ICOM Italia and Museimpresa too. WMIT carefully selected 4 important national museums among a total number of 12 applicant institutions: "Museo Nazionale della Scienza e della Tecnologia Leonardo Da Vinci” (National Museum of Science and Technology) in Milan, "MUSE" (the Science Museum) in Trento, (both in the ICOM network), "Fondazione Mansutti" in Milan (which is partner of Museimpresa) and "Museo Galileo" of Florence (out of the call, collaborating with WMIT since 2014). At the same time, WMIT carried out a selection of the 4 WIRs who started their residence period on February 2016. The selection criteria for museums took into account the collections, the material the museum would like to share, the encyclopedic degree of their material and the history of the institution. The museums chosen demonstrated to be the most suitable to host expert wikipedians and the most prepared to a cross-cultural contamination: they are willing adhere to Wikimedia values and proved to have perfectly understood that the contribution of the WIRs is not to be seen merely as a "communication" action but is a starting point for a change of perspective, for enabling them to work independently on wikimedia projects.

In 2015, WMIT also signed two significant and unexpected agreements. The first, on July 14th with the Historical Archive of the Touring Club Italiano, the most ancient touristic institution in Italy (established about 120 year ago), who shared some historical images of Italian monuments on Commons, thus inaugurating the first project of WMIT with the archive world. This agreement turned into a very important result: 184.830 uploads from July to December 2015.

The other agreement was signed last November with the Food Museum of Parma, for the release of about 800 images in Creative Commons License. This collaboration is going to continue in 2016.

Additionally, WMIT started to interact with the new directors of the 20 major museums in Italy. An official letter has been sent to them and some directors answered enthusiastically. In November and December 2015 WMIT met the directors of the "Galleria degli Uffizi" in Florence and of the "Pinacoteca di Brera" in Milan, who were very interested in the association and very well informed about the open source philosophy and the use of creative commons licences.

Finally, the thematic coordinator of volunteers in the field of museums in Sardinia, where WMIT’s presence is not deeply-rooted at the present time, started to build a stronger network with the regional museums with the aim to plan at least one project for the year 2016.

Educational program

WMIT educational program shown significant results during the first part of the year: several Italian schools contacted the association for activating courses and our volunteers moved from their personal contacts to organize initiatives with schools. Indeed, the “Wikipedia goes to school” project, which aims to bring Wikipedia in the Italian classes, follows exactly the guidelines on the recent educational reform given by the Italian government, in which the information literacy plays a central role.

A standardization of the educational offer, planned for May, was accomplished in Autumn. This task in fact was originally run only by volunteers as well as other activities which need coordination and obviously take time. That’s why in 2015 WMIT completed the transition from a model in which few volunteers were overloaded with activities to a more structured model in which the members of the staff can undertake some of the tasks before carried out only with volunteers' forces and obviously with their precious support. WMIT also hired a project manager for this specific project, Paolo Brambilla, also in charge to work with the members and the community.

In 2015 WMIT produced several informative materials for promoting the Educational program and planned a massive e-mail sending at the end of November. Also, we created a page of the state of the projects in wikina and created a questionnaire model to submit to students at the conclusion of every project.

In the last months of the year WMIT managed to start some courses in regions such as Liguria, Toscana, Veneto and Lombardia, especially with the help of our regional coordinators of volunteers. Also in Basilicata, a region of the South of Italy, two different projects were activated in secondary schools in two different cities. WMIT also started 2 extra-curricular courses in an educational centre in Bologna.

OpenStreetMap

The promotion activities included in the OSM program started in 2015 with some delay. Indeed, in July WMIT hired an OSM project manager and, due to his sudden unavailability, in September he has been replaced by another person. This explains the reason why most of the planned activities were reallocated to 2016.

The new OSM project manager immediately started to arrange some events in order to increase the promotion of OpenStreetMap. Target of the actions were several professional fields and wikipedians. The original idea exposed in the 2015 strategic plan to contribute as WMIT to the organization of the national conference held every year by the OSM community unfortunately expired because the community decided to organize this event autonomously and later deleted the event.

Nonetheless, WMIT organized a two-day informal meeting in November in Bologna, which had seen a significant participation of community members and beginners (43 people). A second event, a conference for professionals (from Civil protection, Public Administration, University, Logistic companies, etc.), was held on December, 3rd in Milan, at Politecnico, one of the major universities in the city (42 participants). This conference has been very important, since WMIT got in touch for the first time with some potential stakeholders and partners for courses and data extractions. In particular, WMIT started to dialogue with GTer - a spin-off of the University of Genoa - to help city councils improve their geospatial data and to promote their territory in a better way; WMIT presented to GTer some ideas for specific courses to be held in 2016. WMIT also arranged a meeting with the Surveyor Class in Milan, in which the training manager expressed his interest in collaborating with WMIT.

During the first days of November WMIT also participated in the “Collaborative Week”, an event lasting an entire week dedicated to themes such as sharing economy, co-working, open culture, which took place in the building that will host our new office in Milan. The vice-president Simone Cortesi hosted a conference on OSM.

In addition, mapping parties were arranged in the South of Italy on December 18th: one in Puglia during a hackaton with more that 100 participants and one in Basilicata. Moreover, an agreement has been activated with Region Molise for the sharing of geospatial data. Lastly, in December WMIT created a national database of contacts of professional schools, and sent them OSM educational offer.

Wiki Loves Monuments

2015 was a year of reinforcement and growth for Wiki Loves Monuments. The fourth edition ended with some relevant results, both quantitative and qualitative:

947 photographers participated, both amateur and professionals: Italy was placed first for number of participants;
12.712 pictures gathered. These picture have been downloaded 5.249.340 times;
5.149 monuments, authorized by 392 institutions that promoted the contest actively. Of these, 216 are city councils, 37 are museums, 47 are archeological sites, 92 are institutions of other kind;
46 “wikigite” arranged in 11 regions, often supported by seminars and workshops on free sharing of culture and pictures with CC-BY-SA 4.0 License;
About 500 participants at the “wikigite”.

A strong help in reaching these important results came from the involvement of the volunteers: they gave their support in the preparation of the lists of the authorized monuments that have been photographed and selected by the pre-jury. This has also been possible thanks to the training day which took place in June 2015, where the engaged people got in touch with every aspect of Wiki Loves Monuments. Photography enthusiasts, FIAF and WLM members participated.

When the contest ended, in October, a group of volunteers selected some pictures among the thousands of pictures uploaded, that had to be judged by a Jury formed by professional photographers and wikipedians. WMIT involved 7 wikipedians and 7 members of the Italian Photography Federation (FIAF) for this process and used a special tool in order to simplify the work of the jury.

WMIT also arranged 46 “wikigite” in 11 Italian regions, with over 500 participants. The great number of visits and their distribution on the whole Italian territory are great achievements, useful to spread the knowledge of Wikimedia Italy and its mission, especially in those areas, like the South of Italy, where the organization has been traditionally less involved.

Wiki Loves Monuments 2015 has also allowed WMIT to develop a stronger relationship with the world of photography: thanks to a partnership with the Toscana Foto Festival - one of the most popular events in Italy, entirely dedicated to photography, which takes place every year in July - and the Massa Marittima municipality, we participated in the initiative with a workshop about Wiki Loves Monuments, open data and a wikigita. Our Executive Director gave a speech about Wiki Loves monuments during the Festival final press conference. On that occasion the famous international photographers Franco Fontana, Uwe Ommer and Settimio Benedusi were involved as members of the Wiki Loves Monuments jury.

Also, thanks to the participation of professionals in the Jury, an Italian picture ranked remarkably at the 2nd place in the world-wide competition. The partners of WLM 2015 edition were: FIAF, the Italian Federation of Photographic Associations; ICOM Italia - International Council of Museums; Toscana Foto Festival; Touring Club Italiano e Bandiere Arancioni - a non-profit association responsible of tourism, culture and environment; Comune di Massa Marittima - the Municipality that hosts the Toscana Foto Festival; APT Emilia Romagna (the regional touristic promotional service) and the Emilia-Romagna local authority of Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Tourism. Media partner: Archeomatica. Main sponsor: Euronics Italia and Canon Italia.

Thanks to the close collaboration with our partners, volunteers and local authorities WMIT activated some special awards:

Special Award “La Memoria dei Luoghi”
Special Award ICOM:
Special Award FIAF
Special Award Wiki Loves Via Emilia
Special Award Colline Metallifere
Award Wiki Loves Piemonte
Award Wiki Loves Genova
Award Wiki Loves Fiumefreddo
Award Wiki Loves Busto Arsizio

2015 was a remarkable year even in terms of communication and involvement of the national press:

A new website for the event promoting Wiki Loves Monuments Italy as “WMIT's project” was created;
The members of WLM newsletter increased from 500 in 2014 to 1543. Over 20 newsletter have been sent from June to December;
The WLM Facebook page reached 4600 subscribers;
4 press releases about Wiki Loves Monuments were launched;
WMIT increased and improved the mailing list with contacts of specialised press.

These results were achieved also thanks to the positive dialogue and collaboration started with the WMF communication team, who helped WMIT with precious suggestions on how to reach as much people as possible and maximize our targets, socializing posts, etc.

The attention of the press increased, also thanks to the press conferences we arranged: after a first one in Florence, a press conference at the presence of our partners took place on September 7th, to officially present the new edition of the contest: about 30 journalists and some Wikimedia Italia members participated in the event, which took place in the Tiepolo Hall of Dugnani Palace in Milan. Lots of news articles about Wiki Loves Monuments have been published by national and local press: here you can find some examples.

The award ceremony of Wiki Loves Monuments took place in December 2015 in Milan, in the prestigious Palazzina Liberty, and was followed by a concert. At the ceremony some authorities were present, such as the member of Congress Veronica Tentori and the Council member of Milan Cristina Tajani. Our sponsors, Canon and Euronics, offered the prizes to the winners.

Besides, the award ceremony, the event was the occasion to show a preview of the exhibition of the pictures that won Wiki Loves Monuments in Italy. In 2016 the exhibition will be on tour in various regions, such as Toscana, Emilia Romagna, Trentino Alto Adige, Piemonte, Lombardia, in Esino Lario during Wikimania 2016 and Milan within the International ICOM Conference. The realization of the exhibition has been funded by the Massa Marittima City Council, thanks to their participation in a public announcement.

Before the concert WMIT had a meeting with the member of Congress Veronica Tentori, during which we suggested a law amendment aimed at introducing the freedom of panorama and the CC BY-SA Licences in the Italian landscape. Some days later she started a petition for introducing freedom of panorama in Italy.

WMIT made many steps forward in making national governing bodies aware of all the problems contained in the current laws about cultural goods (the so-called Codice Urbani). In addition to the meeting with On. Tentori, we had a meeting with the General Secretary and the deputy manager of the legislative office in MIBACT (the Minister of Culture) in October, where we presented a draft of a particular interpretation of the article dealing with the reproduction of cultural goods.

Wiki Loves Monuments 2015: special projects and other achievements

Special project with the Superintendence of Emilia Romagna

Thanks to the partnership with the Superintendence of Emilia-Romagna Cultural Heritage and the Regional APT Services (the touristic promotional service), WMIT has associated the ID codes of the monuments participating in the contest with the ID codes referred to the monument available at www.patrimonioculturale-er.it, which is a open OSM based data base of monuments under the protection of the Superintendence. The next step will be to put all this information in Wikidata, to create a centralized free database.

Special project with Touring Club Italiano and WW1 - dentro la Grande Guerra

On the occasion of the launch of the current edition of Wiki Loves Monuments, the above cited Historical Archive of the Touring Club Italiano shared some historical images of Italian monuments on Commons.

Wikipedia in Italian

Some of the actions included in the Wikipedia in Italian program, especially the ones related to the improvement of user retention and to the increase of the number of users, were unfortunately postponed to 2016. As regards the contents and the increase of their quality, two interns supported this activity by editing some articles.

WMIT have also worked for raising awareness about the gender gap and involving as much women as possible in our GLAM initiatives: we have signed an agreement with the Italian Touring Club to release, among the others, some images of women during the World War One taken from their archive and we have participated in “Cortina tra le righe”, an event dedicated to the figure of some heroic women lived during World War One. Moreover, we would like to highlight that, during the Second GLAM Libraries conference in Florence, of the 90 participants 80 were women. The absolute value of bytes added to or deleted from Wikimedia projects related to Wikipedia program is of 581,448 as of December

Volounteers

The geographic distribution of WMIT volunteers differs from one region to another. There are regions where WMIT’s our presence is strong and deeply-rooted, others where the presence is close to zero. For these reasons, the need for regional coordinators became pressing over the time, especially in regions with a strong presence of our members. That’s why the selection of regional and thematic coordinators was been a significant achievement for our organization across 2015. The coordinators were officially introduced to our community during the second annual assembly in October 2015. After the positive response of our members to the training days dedicated to GLAM projects (April, 2015) and WLM (June, 2015), WMIT decided to focus on coordinators by arranging a first meeting with them on December 12th in Bologna in which they addressed some specific training needs.

External communication

The external communication played a leading role during the second semester of 2015. Indeed, one of the strategic goals of WMI for the year 2015 was strengthening the brand awareness. WMIT worked very hard at every level to become more recognizable for its activities and position. In this perspective WMIT realized a new website of the organization, with a blog and a web page for every project. Also, for the 10th anniversary of the organization WMIT arranged a Christmas concert. The event took place on the 11th of December at the Palazzina Liberty in Milan, where we offered a classic music concert. Before the concert the award ceremony of Wiki Loves Monuments competition took place. About 100 people participated at the event: members, local authorities and also some music enthusiasts. Thanks to this event we have been able to introduce ourself to the city of Milan, that will host WMIT’s new offices starting from March 2016. The Ensemble Seicentonovecento, directed by Flavio Colusso, played the concert. Every song played was copyright free and was video-recorded. A few video were uploaded on Wikimedia Commons with a free Creative Commons License. The first video is the “Happy birthday” song that the ensemble played surprisingly for the 15th Wikipedia’s Birthday.

Other important events for our organization were the inauguration of our new offices in Milan in July - a good number of our members participated - and the second general assembly in Rome in October. The assembly took place in the afternoon, while in the morning we arranged a seminar - together with the La Sapienza University - called “Far(e) Open”.

WMIT also signed a one-year-contract with Eco della Stampa, in order to control news articles that talk about Wikimedia and to strengthen our relationship with the press.

FOCUS: Wikimania Esino Lario

The external communication program for 2015 included also the promotion of Wikimania Esino Lario 2016. According to an agreement signed with the Wikimania organizing institution, Wikimedia Italy in fact was guaranteed an in-kind grant forthe work of the staff in communication. The overall WMIT communication plan was aimed at linking national or local events to Wikimania so as to spread the word and the value of this initiative in every possible way. Some specific actions were planned to strengthen the communication of the conference. Apart from the short term target of spread the word and reach as much people as possible, the main medium term target in Wikimania communication was make people stay active even beyond Wikimania on Wikimedia projects: the best way to do this is to talk with people in meetings and events before and after the conference. A project manager for Wikimania (Dario Crespi), was hired in October and was responsible for reaching some significant targets linking Wikimania to the activities usually carried out by WMIT with the institutions and the community (for example, the organization of courses and events in schools, libraries and public institutions preparing to Wikimania 2016).