Relazione sulle attività 2016/en

This is an English translation of Relazione sulle attività 2016 ,
it may be not updated or may be different from the original

Wikimedia Italia Annual Report 2016

The annual report of WMIT activities for the year 2016 is organized in chapters highlighting the main goals reached within every programme developed by the Association.

GLAM - Libraries

The main objective identified by Wikimedia Italia with libraries for the year 2016 was to consolidate the existing relationships with italian institutions, in order to develop the activities on a larger scale in the future.

The training courses on Wikimedia projects addressed to librarians - the core activity of the Association on this programme - produced good results in 2016: 34 events were held, involving 1011 participants on the whole. These activities generated 42.195.419 file downloads, 5223 pages and 386,000 kb of text on the Wikimedia projects. Also the courses generated 84 new registrations and 25 new contributors on Wikipedia. Many of these courses were organized in collaboration with AIB ^[1] and, in particular, the local branches of the association in Toscana, Lombardia, Emilia Romagna, Puglia, Liguria e Marche. Unfortunately, despite the strong efforts of WMI on this side, the collaboration with AIB has not yet led to a formal agreement at national level. This is going to be one of the main objectives for the strategic plan drafted for 2017-2019.

Regarding the Wikipedians in Residence, the fruitful collaboration with BEIC^[2] - started in 2014 - continued and led to extraordinary results in 2016, including reaching an historical milestone: on April 2016 almost 17,000 photographs coming from the Paolo Monti photo archive were made freely available on Wikimedia Commons. It is the most important release in Italy by a cultural institution.

In order to promote its activities with libraries, the association also participated to various public events such as Smart City week in Trento (september) and Public Domain Festival in Torino (november). Also, the participation of WMI at Convegno delle Stelline in Milano was very important to get in touch with Italian librarians: 17 people registered as WMI members during the two-day conference and 60 people signed up to the Associations' newsletter.

Lastly, during the year 2016 the volunteers' activity on Wikisource continued. Besides organizing various educational and training events, an important goal was reached on December 6th with the presentation of the manuscript The city of the sun by Tommaso Campanella, digitalized and uploaded on Wikisource by the Municipal Library of Trento.

GLAM - Museums

In 2015, the activities with museums still represented an unexplored ground for our Association. However, the agreements adopted in 2015 with ICOM ^[3] and Museimpresa made possible to reach interesting results in terms of communication and prepared the ground for various Wikipedians in residence projects. 2016 was a year of consolidation in this direction.

Indeed, the activities of the Wikipedians in Residence, initally programmed for 2015, were officially launched in 2016 with 4 Museums selected through ICOM and Museimpresa channels: the National Museum of Science and Technology Leonardo da Vinci of Milano, the MUSE - Museum of Sciences of Trento, Fondazione Mansutti of Milano and Museo Galileo - Institute and Museum of the History of Science of Firenze, with whom Wikimedia Italia already started a dialogue since 2014.

Also the editathons - the writing marathons on Wikipedia focused on a specific topic and held in a specific institution - received increasing attention in 2016. This activity is very interesting for museums beacause on one hand it allows to gain visibility on the Wikimedia projects and on the other hand it represents a new way to make the collection accessible to a greater public. In 2016, the Association promoted for the second time the Europeana Fashion Editathon, organized a writing marathon in Trento at the MUSE as part of Wikipedian in Residenza project activated within the institution (April) and promoted another editathon at the festival of museums in the Archaeological Museum of Cagliari (July).

It is also worth mentioning the participation in Wikimuseums, the training event for museum operators and students organized by the Campania Museum Council and BAM! Cultural strategies, in collaboration with Open Cultuur Data and Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The event took place on the 5th and 6th of May at Villa Pignatelli in Napoli.

On the archives side, one important project developed in 2016 by the Association was Culture in movement in collaboration with Micheletti Foundation in Brescia. The project was launched in March with a press conference that involved the WMI President Lorenzo Losa, followed by a training course for the Foundation staff. The course was repeated in the month of June.

Finally, it is important to highlight the participation of the Association in the Seventh National Convention of Small Museums in Monselice, a strategic occasion to get in touch with small museums. Also, thanks to Andrea Zanni in 2016 WMI started an interesting dialogue with big institutions by sending a letter to the 20 Directors of the major Italian museums explaining the potential of collaborating through the Wikimedia projects. Thanks to this initiative, Andrea Zanni met the Director of the Uffizi Eike Schmidt in Florence: the meeting led to an editathon at the Uffizi Galleries in January 2017.

Educational programme

The goal for the educational progamme in 2016 was making Wikimedia Italia recognizable as an important partner for schools and universities at national level. In order to reach this objective, at the end of 2015, WMI created the role of regional and thematic coordinators, with the aim of strengthen the presence of active volunteers on the national territory in the educational field.

Courses and projects in schools and universities

Several courses were held in 2016 in junior and senior high schools, in some cases within the school-work alternation framework introduced in 2015 by the DDL "La Buona Scuola". In addition to these, other courses were held in Lombardia as part of the project "Wikimania Esino Lario", involving approximately 1300 students and 230 teachers.

Overall, in 2016 WMI promoted 54 educational projects (5 in junior high schools, 26 in senior high schools and 23 in universities) in 11 Italian regions that involved about 2380 students and teachers who participated in various activities, from frontal presentations to workshops. The projects led to the registration of 280 new users on Wikimedia projects.

A project worth mentioning on the high school side is the one delevoped at Liceo Maffei in Verona that represented the first "school-work alternation" experiment conducted by WMI. Several members of Wikimedia Italia were involved, two of which internal to the institute itself (teacher and student).

In the university field, a project of particular relevance is WikiTim, that in 2016 involved several students from the University of Urbino and Politecnico Milano, in its branches in Milano, Como and Lecco.

Lastly, in May 2016 was held in Verona the first interregional coordinators' meeting organised by the regional coordinator in the educational field for Veneto Marco Chemello. The meeting was attended by the WMI coordinators from Veneto, Lombardia, Trentino-Alto Adige, Toscana and Lazio, but also by other WMI members and teachers who wanted to develop new activities based on Wikimedia projects into their schools.

Charity SMS

In 2015, also thanks to the fundings received from Wikimedia Foundation, Wikimedia Italia had the opportunity to organize a charity SMS campaign aimed on one hand at increasing the interest and awareness on the Associations' mission from the general public and on the other hand at raising funds to support projects in the educational field. The campaign involved all the mobile companies operating in Italy; also, a 30-seconds commercial was realized to support the campaign and broadcasted on the associations' website and on two major national TV networks (Sky and La7) from 10 to 24 July. The entire investment for the video and the campaign's production was financed entirely in 2016. Although this activity allowed Wikimedia Italia to reach a larger audience through the TV commercial, fundraising did not fully met the initial expectations.

OpenStreetMap

From the beginning of 2016, thanks to the ex-WMI Vice President Simone Cortesi, Wikimedia Italia was recognised as the italian chapter of OSM Foundation and OpenStreetMap officially became part of the projects promoted by the Association.

One of the first effects of this formal recognition was a semplification of the relationships between the OSM community and some institutional interlocutors such as the italian public administration.

A dedicated OpenStreetMap project manager was hired in 2015 but, due to his unavailability, he was replaced in September with another person: that determined some delays in the project development.

However, the Association managed to organize a massive mailing campaign in order to promote the project towards italian public administrations, schools, universities, freelance professionals such as surveyors and architects and civil protection. Schools and civil protections responded in a positive way to the campaign, so WMI was able to promote a 44-hours course in a junior high school in Brugherio and a course in a senior high school in Vicenza. Also, two courses with civil protections were organized, inolving 20 participants on the whole.

In 2016, 21 events and training sessions involving OSM members and volunteers were organized by the Association, reaching on the whole 613 participants and 14 new OSM contributors in different cities in Northern and Southern Italy: Milano, Cagliari, Trento, Vicenza, Taranto, Catania, Genova, etc. The event that registered the bigger participation was the 2016 edition of OSMit, the annual conference of the OSM Italian users, held in Milan in the month of May: more than 93 people took part in the event and 15 participated at the mapping party. OSMit created a new impulse in the relationship with Italian public administrations that brought WMI to organize various "unprogrammed" events such as Archeofoss in Cagliari and Mappalonga in Genova. Also, WMI partecipated with OSM presentations and mapping parties to events like Wikichnusa in Cagliari, BAM! in Napoli and MappiaM in Rome.

During the year, some contacts with regional administrations interested at collaborating were carried on: an agreement with Molise was signed and the dialogue with Liguria and Emilia Romagna continued.

Also, it is worth mentioning the work done on addresses, that represents very useful data for public administrations: the data collected more than doubled, passing from 970.099 on December 4th 2015 to 1.957.503 to March 3rd 2017.

Finally, the agreement signed in 2016 with CAI ^[4] is particularly significant and opens the path for future collaborations on the mapping activity of Italian mountain routes.

Wiki Loves Monuments

Wiki Loves Monuments is the leading initiative for Wikimedia Italia both in terms of media visibility and dialogue with national institutions. In fact, the competition has a dual purpose: on one hand it is aimed at enhancing the Italian cultural heritage by sharing on Wikimedia Commons free licensed pictures of monuments (even the less famous ones), on the other hand the contest has the objective to promote a positive dialogue with the institutions in order to overcome the restrictions imposed by the Italian law on the publication on the web of free licensed images of monuments.

The numbers

The 2016 edition of the competition registered a great success in terms of participation and shared contents:

978 photographers published a total of 20.573 images (+ 61,84% compared to the previous edition) making available to everyone the images of 6.033 Italian monuments (+ 16,74% from 2015, when they were 5.168), that represents the beauties of the national cultural heritage;
569 institutions (municipalities, associations, etc.) collaborated with Wikimedia Italia in promoting the contest by providing the authorizations for the reproduction of monuments;
in September, thanks to the support of the municipalities, associations and local authorities and with the help of numerous passionate volunteers 51 wikigite (photo tours) were organized in 13 Italian regions.

Image's quality

For the second consecutive year, one of the photographs of Wiki Loves Monuments conquered a preminent position in the global ranking of the contest. The picture "Luci al tramonto" by Lara Zanarini - sixth classified in Italy - gained the fourth position in the world ranking, confirming the success and the international recognition of the quality of the images proposed by Italian photographers.

Sponsors, partners and awards

The network of sponsors and partners of WLM in Italy became wider and stronger: while Euronics Italia e Canon Italia confirmed their support for the 2016 edition as principal sponsor of the competion, Enegan Luce e Gas - supplier of energy from renewable sources - joined the initiative as sponsor for the first year.

The network of partners also expanded: BASE Milano, WWF Italia and Fondazione Gran Paradiso joined FIAF, ICOM Italia, Toscana Foto Festival, Touring Club Italiano and Bandiere Arancioni, Comune di Massa Marittima, APT Emilia Romagna and the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism for Emilia Romagna and the media partner Archeomatica.

The support of the sponsors and partners consisted not only in giving visibility to the initiative through their media channels but also in promoting 7 special awards for the participants:

Special award Euronics-Canon
Special award FIAF
Special award ICOM
Special award Gran Paradiso
Special award Enegan Luce e Gas
Special award BASE Milano
Special award WWF Italia

Also, several local team were involved in the organisation of 7 Wiki Loves Monuments contests at regional level:

Monumenti stellati (exceptional monuments) of Emilia-Romagna
Wiki Loves Piemonte (#WLPiemonte), with a special mention was attributed to the best photograph of Guardia Piemontese, a town in Calabria in the province of Cosenza founded by Piemonte emigrants;
Wiki Loves Lombardia, an evolution of the historic award dedicated to Busto Arsizio, which this year extended to the entire region;
Wiki Loves Tirreno Cosentino (#WLTC);
Wiki Loves Trentino (#WLTrentino), one of the 2016 news, which calls all the enthusiastic photographers of the autonomous province of Trento;
Wiki Loves Basilicata;
Wiki Loves Toscana.

The events connected to WLM 2016

In 2016, an exhibition of the winning images of Wiki Loves Monuments 2015 in Italy touched many cities in the national territory. The exhibition previewed on the occasion of the Christmas concert promoted by WMI in December 2015 and then was hosted in Toscana, Piemonte, Emilia Romagna, Trentino, Lombardia and Sicilia.

Many preminent locations hosted the exhibition, including the Modena Photography Foundation - at the presence of the famous photographer Franco Fontana, who participated in the vernissage - and the Museum of Science and Technology Leonardo da Vinci in Milano. The photographs were also exposed at Taobuk, the VI edition of the International Festival of the book of Taormina.

During Wikimania Esino Lario, Wikimedia Italia also promoted the conference "GLAM and cultural heritage in Italy - free culture and Wikipedia”, in Varenna (Villa Monastero). The conference was addressing the issue of the free use of the cultural heritage images, trying to reflect on the limits imposed by Italian law. The Directors of many important museums and archives in Italy, Francesco Giovanni Albisinni (Vice Chief of the Legislative office of MiBACT^[5]), Veronica Tentori (member of Italian Parliament) and Juliet Barbara (Communication Manager of Wikimedia Foundation) took part in the event.

On September 6th WMI organized a press conference to launch the contest in BASE Milano, the new headquarter of the Association. The representatives of Wikimedia Italia, Enegan Luce&Gas, Euronics, Canon and BASE Milano partecipated in the event. On this occasion, some of the winner photos of the 2015 contest were exposed. Also, Cristian Cenci (Wiki Loves Monuments project manager for Wikimedia Italia) presented the competition in a series of events including OpenDataSicilia 2016, Public domain #OpenFestival in Torino and a training course in Gorizia.

Institutional meetings with the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage

In 2016 Wikimedia Italia had several meetings with the representatives of the MiBACT in order to overtake the restrictions imposed by the so-called Codice Urbani and the Art Bonus. In particular, the WMI representatives had the chance to encounter the Minister Dario Franceschini (February 2016), the Legal Department of the Ministry for giving some suggestion in the drafting of a ministerial circular (April 2016) and the Vice Chief of the Legislative Office of the Ministry and the member of the Parliament Veronica Tentori, on the occasion of the conference "GLAM and cultural heritage in Italy - Free culture and Wikipedia".

Volunteers

The main objective of this programme, as written in the strategic plan 2014-2016, was stimulating in the volunteers a greater sense of cohesion and of belonging within the Association. A first important result in this direction was accomplished in 2015 with the creation of the role of "coordinator": 15 coordinators (8 regionals, 7 thematics) were appointed to support the volounteers in organizing activities at local level and promoting the Wikimedia projects.

Within the year 2016 several training moments were organised with the help of a coach that supported the new coordinators. Two different meetings were held in Rome in February and in Bologna in April, the first one focused on team building and the second one on assertive communication. Due to the geographical distribution on the national territory and the lack of interest by some of them, many of the volunteers couldn't participate in these moments. That's why WMI organized a few educational peer to peer sessions aimed at developing the knowledge of Wikimedia's projects and encouraging the members of the Association to become more active.

In spring 2016 WMI promoted a participated process of strategic planning: many members of the Association, especially the 15 coordinators, helped the Executive Director in the definition of the strategic objectives of the Association for the 2017-19 triennium. The process featured individual calls with coordinators and members and a working session on june 11th that allowed the Association to define the plan adopted by the second annual Assembly in Trento of 10th december. The June working session was followed by a serie of group conference calls about specific topics with the Associations' Project Managers aimed at defining specific guidelines for certain activities. Thanks to these process, WMI defined the main objectives for the activities planned for the coming triennium. These moments of discussion were very important not only to design the future but also to understand the status quo of the Association and identify the errors made in the past in order to avoid them.

WMI coordinators and members also continued to promote activities aimed at involving new volunteers and members organising for example six "WikiAperitivi" (informal meetings) in Bologna. Also the group of active volunteers in Bologna promoted three informative meetings called the Wikipedians answer at Salaborsa library, trying to stimulate the interest in people curious about the Wikimedia projects but still not WMI members.

At the beginning and throughout 2016 the geographical distribution of volunteers and active members of the Association remained uneven on the national territory. For this reason, at the end of 2016, WMI decided to strengthen the coordinators model by opening new positions, with the appointment of 32 coordinators for 2017 (17 more than the previous year).

Also, in order to stimulate the active participation of members and volunteers within international events WMI offered 12 scholarships for Wikimania Esino Lario.

Italian Wikipedia

The main objective for 2016 was to "improve the quality of Wikipedia articles and involve new users", with particular focus on women.

One of the actions that had a greater impact on the Italian Wikipedia development was the launch of the projects GLAM/Wir. Particular attention on this year was also given to the gender gap issue. On March 8th, the International Women's Day, Susanna Giaccai and Manuela Musco organised a Wikihackathon to write bibiographical voices about women. Equally important was the event held in Rome 100 women against the stereotypes, promoted by the European Commission with the participation of Camelia Boban. Also the collaboration with the group Female Toponymy led to the realisation of two courses at the University of Roma 3 and a partecipation to the editathon HerStory of the ONU, where 27 people were involved and wrote more than 15 new Wikipedia voices. Finally at the end of the year WMI promoted an Italian version of the edithaton BBC 100 Women, at the International House of Women of Rome and two online editathon in collaboration with WikiWomen, within the global project Women in Red.

Regarding the involvement and recruitment of new and active users, an interesting initiative was The Wikipedians answer, already mentioned in the section dedicated to Volunteers.

The activity of improvement of the quality of the contents of the free encyclopedia in Italian continued also thanks to the help of 5 university students that Wikimedia Italia hosted in its office during 2016: Pasquale, Manuel, Manuel S., Camilla and Esther worked at enriching Wikipedia voices related to their hobbies or the subject of their studies. Also, Pasquale worked at n the Infobox section of Wikipedia as a practical part of his final thesis and participated in Wikimania Esino Lario by winning of the scholarships made available by the Association. Then Pasquale continued his experience at Wikimedia Italia until December 31 with an extra-curricular internship, after which he was reconfirmed as collaborator for the year 2017.

The improvement of Wikipedia's voices and the creation of new ones was also the focus of the various editathons promoted in 2016 such as the already mentioned Europeana Fashion Editathon and the writing marathon dedicated to Giuseppe Verdi in Rome.

With regards to the 'OTRS service' , a ticket service through which the Wikimedia community meets the needs of its users, WMI tried to answer to some difficulties in responding to some technical and legal requests with an online training session with the lawyer Marco Ciurcina that was held in March: six operators participated to the webinar that was focused on topics such as copyright, Creative Commons licenses, etc. As already mentioned in the volounteers section, Wikimedia Italia also introduced an activity of peer-to-peer tutoring on specific questions: on December 2016, the staff members and a volunteers took part in an introductory session on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects.

A more conscious use of Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia projects was also at the centre of many public presentations involving the President, Executive Director and members of the Board of Wikimedia Italia. As an example, the ones made by Lorenzo Losa within the annual meeting of ICOM Italia, on the occasion of the Meet Me Tonight event at the Museum of Science in Milan or among the Varenna conference within Wikimania Esino Lario.

Lastly, in 2016 various events were promoted by WMI volunteers in many italian cities, for example the ones organized in the framework of the celebrations for the 15th birthday of Wikipedia.

External Communication

The external communication activities of Wikimedia Italia for the year 2016 were aimed at enhancing the awareness on the mission and the projects carried out by the Association towards different audiences such as cultural and educational institutions, the mass media and the Italian citizens in general.

Communication channels and materials

After creating a new institutional website in 2015, WMI decided to strengthen the communication activities through this channel by increasing the blog posting activity. Also, WMI decided to intensify its presence on social networks (Facebook and Twitter), with to communicate to a wider audience the various projects and activities conducted by the Association. In 2016, WMI reached more than 12,000 followers on Twitter as a result of a promotional activity carried out in 2015, while the interactions (on their own tweets) amounted to 7909.8. Even the number of likes on Facebook pages grown, both for Wikimedia Italia and Wiki Loves Monuments fan pages. During the year, thanks to the support of a specialized graphic studio, WMI also created various new communication materials such as brochures, infographics, etc. Lastly, the video commercial realised in occasion of the charity SMS campaign was used by the Association to raise awareness on the educational activities promoted by WMI.

Relationship with press

With the aim of strengthening the relations with the media and monitoring the results of press releases, the Association renewed its subscription to the media monitoring service Eco della Stampa and activated a subscription to Mediaddress, an online database of press contacts organized by area and topic.

Wiki Loves Monuments was reconfirmed as the project that most attracts the attention of mass media: indeed, on a total of 433 press articles on WMI collected in 2016, 337 are related to WLM (277 of which refer to a reference to Wikimedia Italia as the promoter of the initiative). A press conference to launch the project was held on September 6th at BASE Milano.

Among other activities that received good feedback from the media we can mention #WikiTIM at Urbino University and at Politecnico di Milano, that generated a great number of articles on national and local newspapers. Also, the activity of Marco Chemello - Wikipedian in Residence at BEIC and Museum of Science - was the focus of various interviews on Repubblica, La Stampa and Corriere della Sera.

Events

During the year 2016 the Association promoted several events with the aim of involving and strengthening the Wikimedia community in Italy. Among these, we can mention “Wikipedia, free maps and museums”: a 2-days initiative dedicated to free culture which included the national gathering of the Italian OpenStreetMap community, an editathon at the National Museum of Science and Technology in Milano and a mapping party.

The event also coincided with the inauguration of the new headquarters of Wikimedia Italia at BASE, a new cultural hub in Milano. The decision to place the Wikimedia Italia headquarters in an important center for culture and innovation in Italy is motivated by the intention to strategically position the Association as national point of reference for free culture both towards the city of Milano and the main national cultural institutions. 2016 was also the year of Wikimania, the international gathering of the Wikimedian community, that was held in Italy, in Esino Lario (Lecco), from 21 to 28 June.

Wikimedia Italia supported the initiative with dedicated communication activities through its channels (newsletter, website, social networks, etc.) and by organizing public events such as the conference “GLAM and cultural heritage in Italy” at Villa Monastero of Varenna. Also, the Association provided support to the initiative through its press office.

Fundraising

In 2016, efforts were made to strengthen and structure the Associations' fundraising activities.

In particular, key actions regarded the improvement of the interactions with members and donors through an update of the website and database. Also, in order to improve the effectiveness of WMI fundraising campaigns three landing pages providing informations for the donors were created: 5×1000; Charity SMS and Dona, a generic one .

In 2016, the fundraising campaign that absorbed most of the energies of the Association was related to the tax donation 5 × 1000. In addition to sending e-mails to accountants and assistance centers (about 28,000 contacts) and to all the donors in WMI database, 20,000 information postcards were distributed to families in Milan. The graphic design for these postcards was created pro bono by a communication agency. In addition, WMI promoted a dedicated AdWords campaign related to this fundraising activity and also received the support of Wikimedia Foundation, that sent e-mails to its donors who live in Italy and published a central notice banner for two weeks (May 14-18).

Another fundraising campaign was focused on the projects promoted by WMI in the Italian schools. In July and December Wikimedia Italia sent dedicated e-mails to its donors, inviting them to support its educational activities.

↑ Associazione Italiana Biblioteche, the national association for Italian libraries
↑ Biblioteca Europea di Informazione e Cultura, European Library for Information and Culture
↑ International Council of Museums
↑ Club Alpino Italiano, Italian Alpine Club
↑ the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism

[1] Associazione Italiana Biblioteche, the national association for Italian libraries

[2] Biblioteca Europea di Informazione e Cultura, European Library for Information and Culture

[3] International Council of Museums

[4] Club Alpino Italiano, Italian Alpine Club

[5] the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism

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