Wikimedia news/numero 21/en

W i K i M e D i A N e W s no. 21 - November 4th, 2008

Official monthly bulletin from Wikimedia Italia Association.

Editorial
This issue of Wikimedia News opens with a few important events for our association, such as the launch of a new WMI project (the *Music* project) and the decision to call for an extraordinary AGM in March 2009. Indeed, that AGM will mark a crucial step for the future of the association, since it will allow, hopefully, to change our Bylaws; this is an essential condition to engage the long route to obtain ONLUS (charity) status. I sincerely hope all our members will do their best to be present to this important time for our association's life.

Senpai

Last month's events
·      10 October, Milan: we participated to the conference *Forme e paradossi della democrazia digitale: protesi cognitive, social networking, blogosfera e wikiscenza* (Forms and paradoxes of e-democracy: cognitive protheses, social networking, blogosphere and wikiscience) organized by Università di Milano Bicocca with a talk titled "Wikipedia is not democratic!". The conference was interesting for its format (the public was involved via blogs, Facebook and live online stereaming) and for the contributions (very philosophical in the first part, very concrete in the second). Our talk has been particularly and can be viewed online on YouTube

·      16 October, Perugia: because of our invited speaker's health problems we took part to the conference *Ma che vuoi sapere tu.. Verso la rete dei servizi culturali, bibliotecari e informativi per i giovani* (What do you think you know... Towards the network of cultural, library and information services for young people) organized by AIB-Umbria in digital form, by sending a video talk. the contribution is available here

·      18 October, Milano: we took part to Forum Umanista Europeo 2008, which was a good success, since around 1,000 people were present to the event at Bicocca, thanks to the huge organisation machine and to the ample range of proposals such as workshops, round tables, conferences and associations' tables. For us it was a "contamination" experience we initially had some doubt on, but that turned out fruitful; indeed, beyond explaining Wikimedia projects to a few tens of people (either chatting or giving away information leaflets) we contacted people we may collaborate with in the near future. (See also the full report.)

·      25 October: as usual we took partto Linux Day  in 10 Italian cities and a few other events. The Milan event was the occcasion to get to know key people, particularly to improve the administrative management of the association and to produce videoguides about Wikipedia; Crotone's LD was staged in a school and a lot of teachers were interested (full reports can be found here).

·      23-26 October: we participated to Festival della Creatività. Here's Senpai's report:

For the second year in a row our association took part to the Festival of Creativity in Florence, and this year as well, as was the case last year, the festival has probably represented the most important event (definitely for attendance) WMI participated in 2008.

Together with the classical sale of gadgets and Q&A activity we do at every fair, we managed to initiate a new way of participating to important events, integrating in our traditional activities a project of reportage and interviews. Thanks to the guys of Wiki at Home and some of our members (in particular Kaspo), we managed to collect some exclusive interviews to publish in wikinews.

An activity of this kind highlights more than ever the importance W at H has towards Wikinews exactly because, at the moment, it is one of the few projects that manges to realize interview specific to WMF's news website and that, as a consequence, allows the latter to have contents other news media cannot have.

Monday morning we also participated to a round table (*Verso il web 3.0: l'evoluzione di internet*- Towards Web 3.0: the evolution of internet) organized by Firenze Tecnologia.

To sum up, this festival as well concludes on a more than positive balance, both as a mediatic and promotion event, and on the merely economic side.

Next month's events
·      5 November: Marcok will intervene to a meeting about *Wikipedia, Palladio e i contenuti liberi della rete*(Wikipedia, Palladio and the free contents of the net) in the framework of (Telematic Square Wednesdays) in Schio, Vicenza, following what started on September 20 at the Software Freedom Day in Schio as well.
 * I mercoledì della **Piazza Telematica*

·      28 - 30 November - MEI 2008: For the second year in a row we'll participate to MEI (Meeting of Independent Labels). This year we'll officially present our new project dedicated to music; furthermore, we'll greatly appreciate the presence of the guys from W at H and of the users of wikinews, above all because of the many important people that will be there. To confirm your attendance, please refer to the coordination page on the association wikiand to the page on wikipedia .

News from WMF projects in Italian
·      *Wikibooks*: The page Speciale:Raccoltawas activated; it allows to download as a PDF Wikibooks' modules and to join them in collections  for the press.

·      *Wikinews*: 2000 registered users milestone.

·      *Wikipedia*: Conclusion of RevertBot cleanup festival<http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Festival_della_qualit%C3%A0/Settembre_ottobre_2008>, during which about 1300 possible copyright violations out of 3500<http://it.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=19875428&oldid=18401321>were dealt with.

·      *Wikiquote*: 7700 entries milestone.

·      *Wikisource*: 2400 registered users milestone.

·      *Wikiversità*: 600 pages milestone.

·      *Wikizionario*: 4000 registered users milestone.

News from the association
We decided to call for an extraordinary AGM in March 2009. In that occasion we'll have to modify our Statutes; since we need as many people as possible, we opened this page<http://www.wikimedia.it/index.php/Discussioni_associazione:Assemblea_WMI_marzo_2009>for proposals about location and dates.

News from WikiAfrica
In a quick meeting in Milan at Lettera27's office, a few ideas for future activities of WikiAfrica were generated: a WikiAfrica Academy, the next Literature Festival in Mantova, the Festival of African Film in Verona, Capetown Book Fair, Milano Film Festival, an event about to be organised by the Griot Bookshop in Rome (provisional title *Afrilinks*).

News from W at H
·      We're about to publish a few videointerviews realised at the Festival of Creativity we really participated to. We also started a debate with the community of it.wikinews who expressed the wish to be more involved in the project's activities, and with that aim two interviews are being prepared on Wikinews (to Odifreddi<http://it.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinotizie:Storie_in_preparazione/Intervista_a_Piergiorgio_Odifreddi>and Roversi<http://it.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinotizie:Storie_in_preparazione/Intervista_a_Patrizio_Roversi>) we hope to finalize soon.

News from Musica (the new music project)
We officially started the "beta testing" of project *Wikimedia Musica*. All the members are invited to participate to the activities necessary to officially launch the website, by discussing, editing and positively contributing to the birth of this new copyleft project. The project will be officially presented at MEI 2008 (Faenza end of November). Homepage<http://musica.wikimedia.it/wiki/Pagina_principale>.

Board resolutions
·      Buying the URL www.commons.it<http://www.wikimedia.it/index.php/Associazione:Delibere/Acquisto_dominio>

·      The board followed up on the request of a former member to be excluded from the association<http://www.wikimedia.it/index.php/Associazione:Delibere/Esclusione_socio>

·      Buying stickers and business cards<http://www.wikimedia.it/index.php/Associazione:Delibere/Ordine_materiale_ottobre_2008>

Editorial committee:

·      Luca Sileni;

·      Frieda Brioschi;

·      Marco Chemello;

·      Nemo (section "News from our projects")

·      Aubrey (section "News from Biblioteca")

·      DracoRoboter and Elitre (section "News from W at H")

to contact the editorial committee please write to: redazione@<redazione at wikimedia.it> wikimedia.it or to its members:

·      Luca Sileni - wikisenpai at gmail.com

·      Frieda Brioschi - ubifrieda at gmail.com

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