Between 6PM and 7PM CEST (Rome Time) on Friday April 7 pibinko, with the support of some colleagues, will be giving a webinar explaining “How Free/Open Source Geomatics can integrate in Rural Communities to improve Resilience and Quality of Life“. The event is kindly hosted by the American Society for Photogrammetry & Remote Sensing and promoted by the Open Source Geospatial Consortium’s Geo for all initative.
The presentation will provide a showcase on ten years of projects undertaken primarily in the Metalliferous Hills of Tuscany, about 100 km South of Florence, but very often with an international reach. The webinar will tell how free/open source geomatics -integrated with other skills- systematically helps to make our day and, with a little help from our friends (mainly, but not exclusively, residents), might also provide one of the assets to develop the area. Key highlights will be represented by initiatives related to ancient hand ball games (apparently disconnected from FOSS geomatics, but only apparently), light pollution, community maps, and biodiversity. We will also give some outlook on our plans for the current year, and make an invitation.
The presentation will be given by Andrea Giacomelli aka pibinko (www.pibinko.org):
MS Environmental Engineering Politecnico di Milano, PhD Politecnico di Milano
working with geographic information systems since 1993 and with free/open-source geomatics since 1994, being in the first generation of Italian users of GRASS. He is a documented contributor to Shapelib, and in 1998 was the author of the apr2html extension for ArcView (basically allowing a read- only but “open” access to ArcView projects).
Working in numerous GIS projects applied to environment, tourism, industrial sites, utility management and more, dealing with all aspects of a system’s life cycle.
In 2006-2007 he was part of the founding team for GFOSS.it, the Italian OSGEO Chapter, taking care of outreach and media relations through 2009. He then left the association and created in 2011 Attivarti.org, while in parallel working as pibinko.org
In 2006 he started proposing his own projects related to protection and promotion of lesser known assets in the fields of culture, environment, and open innovation.
Between 2010 and 2012 he acted as a facilitator for one of the working groups for the INSPIRE Directive data specifications.
Since 2011 he runs his operations from two small villages in the hills of Southern Tuscany (Torniella and Tatti), travelling when necessary and often hosting projects and organizing events.
Saturday March 11 the presentation given a Fa’ la Cosa Giusta (the largest Italian fair on sustainable lifestyles) about participatory mapping closed the Winter tour by pibinko.org & Attivarti.org: fifteen events between mid-December and mid-March, with presentation in four Italian regions, and scouting missions in four more (including Côte d’Azur, Corsica, and Sardinia).
The tour (or the episodes from a serial?)
A mobile office – January 2017
Eight out of the fifteeen events also had some form of musical score, spanning from real concerts, to jam sessions, to improvised poetry.
After the opening, represented by the Farma Valley Winter Fest, we logged some 5000 km, combining cars (due to the payload or the fact of having to reach off-the-beaten path locations), train, ferry, and feet. The tour was split in three segments, always departing from Torniella, our home base in Southern Tuscany, and was spiced up by interesting features, like extreme weather conditions blocking ferries for a week in Corsica, landslides in Sardinia, brasilian visitors looking for Italian ancestors, books on the bronze age read by shepherds, teleporting on Mount Amiata and involuntary re-enactments of parts of the “Vicky, Cristina, Barcelona” movie. Most of these stories have been documented along the way by pibinko in his News section (mostly in Italian on this occasion, so if you go to the News section and you see blog posts missing, try to switch to the Italian version), and many anecdotes have been embedded in the actual presentations during the tour.
The topics
This tour de force was partly engineered: the 2006-2007 Winter was the period when pibinko started proposing his projects intertwining culture, environment, and open innovations, and engaging teams to collaborate. Ten years after this phase, we wanted to share in a kind of interdisciplinary kaleidoscope the developments deriving from those early days. This was not done in a nostalgic mood, but to explain the collaborations, the services, the contents and the locations that we are proposing and which we would like to further develop in the future.
Sunbeams reflected from a wall – Ajaccio – January 2017
Among others, the BuioMetria Partecipativa Project on participatory night sky quality monitoring keeps finding curious and bewildered expressions of people learning about the at-times-tainted relationship between artificial light at night (lamp posts, billboards, and other man-made sources) and the natural light at night (reflected by the Moon and emitted by the stars).
The Farma Valley community map, first announced during the Farma Valley Winter Fest on Dec. 17-19, 2016, also raised great interest, both in the Valley where it originated, where it was presented during the Fifth International Open Data Day (march 4, 2017), and in the presentation given at Fa’ la Cosa Giusta.
Jam session in Castelnuovo Val di Cecina (Pisa), March 5, 2017
Last but not least, in several of the events we had a professional photo coverage (day and night, given his feel for nocturnal photography) with Federico Giussani .
Links between places
What felt different, compared to past editions of this type of ramble (started in 2007), was the sense of relationship between locations: during the Winter we made a substantial effort to connect sites which are not traditionally related, where it not for local soccer championships (Farma Valley, Cecina Valley and Scansano hills). In response, we received not just expressions of interest, but also the first collaborations by local actors. Operating in network mode is no news for pibinko.org and Attivarti.org (it’s been like this for almost 25 years), but the feedback received by the Winter Tour in some areas was definitely something interesting and to be further developed.
Next steps
The March 11 presentation closed the pibinko.org/Attivarti.org Winter tour, and now we’ll take a couple of weeks’ break from the outreach side of things.
In parallel, over the past months we have been working on our Spring-Summer calendar, which we are planning to release before Easter (April 16, this year).
To make sure you won’t be missing the upcoming action, we recommend you to check out the Per essere sicuri di non perdere le segnalazioni potete seguire il pibinko.org calendar(and the Attivarti.org one to also learn about events by our partner organizations). Better still, you may subscribe to our mailing list, in order to receive our announcements by e-mail.
Then, if you really want to not miss at least one of our events: why not organize one together, in your home town? Maybe Southern Tuscany, or the other locations in the current version of the calendar are not easily in your reach, but we are willing to travel and can adapt our schedule to many variations (with adequate lead time). Contact us if you are interested.
Coming up next we have:
March 26 in Torniella, an info desk, during the visit of a delegation of and Italian trust for the protection of the environment (in collaboration with Pro Loco Piloni-Torniella)
Here is a patchwork of accessories used during my the three days at Fa’ la Cosa Giusta: press clippings on the Farma Valley Winter Fest, a map of the fair, a sky quality meter, a luxmeter, the palla a 21 ball, the guest pass, a guitar, the Farma Valley Community map (beta Version).
The name of the Valley was pronounced at least four times per hour for three days, sometimes becoming a kind of mantra (Maval Leyfar / Maval Leyfar…). It still remains a lesser known location, like many others around the world, but several people were enticed by our stories and they might come to discover it now that the Winter is fading away.
Supporting the pibinko.org + Attivarti.org operation
If you like the projects you see through the pibinko.org and Attivarti.org sites, you can support us. Please contact info@pibinko.org for more information on how to do this.
Acknowledgements
This list is not exhaustive (if you’re not here but should be, please write), but covers the core of the team which supported in different ways the pibinko.org + Attivarti.org Winter tour.
Antonella Pocci – secretariat and planning
Elisabetta Vainigli – more planning, permits, and coordination with the Torniella Band
Giulia Ceccarini (remote support) and Paola Bartalucci (local tortelli) at Casa del Chiodo
Andrea Bartalucci – we need him!
Mario Straccali – miscellanea and liaison with other organizations
Giorgio Panerati, Alberto Bartolini and Casa Bazar – print service
Carlo Nardi – mapping support
La Filarmonica di Torniella – spaces in Torniella and permits
La Pro Loco Piloni-Torniella – local promotional support
Federico Giussani e Riflessi Associazione Fotografica di Grosseto – spaces in Grosseto and photo coverage
Pietro Crivelli – live performances and paintings
Etruschi from Lakota – live music (rock!) and audio service
Attivarti.org – mailing list
Andrea Giacomelli / pibinko.org – whatever the others didn’t cover
Wolfgang Scheibe di Tatti Stampa – hand-made Winter Fest T-shirts, single string bass, washboard, and bread
Giulia Rabissi – drafts
Antonio Mori e Ilo Ferrandi – assistance with permits
Piero Panerati – video coverage
Enzo Panerati – historical notes
Fabiano Spinosi e Liano Cenni: audio service
Lucio Monocrom e Orsola Sinisi – video postproduction
Loriano Bartoli – Strawberry juice
Fernando Tizzi, Elino Rossi, Niccolino Grassi – Improvised poetry
Matteo Ceriola – Support in Scansano (Tuscany)
Gabriele e Daniele Sanna – Support in Sassari (Sardinia)
The title of the poster is: Analysis of socio-economic benefits of Earth Observation methods with a free/open source approach: the Summary of case from Southern Tuscany to Europe. The right side of the poster was edited “live” prior to the poster session, in about an hour.
To see the full-size poster and read the details, click here. Also, you may want to check the presentation made by Etruschi from Lakota during the poster session.
The poster is in Italian. If you don’t read Italian and require specific clarifications, please let me know.
With pibinko, Carlo Nardi, and some of Etruschi from Lakota we presented at FOSS4G-IT 2017 a poster on “Analysis of socio-economic benefits of Earth Observation methods with a free/open source approach: a case study between Southern Tuscany and Europe“.
I have been interacting now almost two years with a team which partly does geomatics and land planning, and partly writes music about their territories…are we on the verge of geomusic? or of musimatics? Only playing will tell.
Two of the co-authors, Luigi Ciampini and Pietro Marini, were missing in action (for today).
Some highlights of the presentation
The warm-up during the “GFOSS.it birthday”, with some riffs following After Dark by Tito & the Tarantulas.
…zzogiorno di grano (See the full version from another set Mezzogiorno di grano)
The proceedings paper on our presentation made at the fourth conference on Artificial Light at Night was published on the International Journal of Sustainable Lighting.
Fa’ la Cosa Giusta is the biggest and most widely known Italian Fair on sustainable lifestyles. Between 3 and 4PM on Saturday, March 2017, you can find us there with an event which, as usual, will be considered too long by communication and marketing experts.
This is not the first time that I participate in this event.
In 2008 I was invited to present the experiences of Palla 21 in Chicago and m(‘)appare Milano for the tenth Avanzi anniversary.
A couple of years later I was part of the Ortinconca team, a group of milanese citizens committed to urban gardening with ancient seeds (for whom I created an open-source web map of the seed distribution map).
But this is the first time that we have an event in the cultural events section of the fair, together with team we work in since 2006, and completely focused on our own projects.
a) The fair’s web site has an event description in Italian . which we are translating here for your convenience:
When: Saturday, March 2017 Where: Piazza Viaggiatori Event type: meet-up
This will be your next chance to get to know the map of light pollution (BuioMetria Partecipativa) and the community map of the Farma Valley, created by the residents of this lesser known corner of Tuscany, 45 minutes South of Siena (or two hours South of Florence, you choose).
With: Andrea Giacomelli, plus two or three mappers of Earth, Sea, and Sky
Andrea Giacomelli (aka pibinko), since 2006 has been creating and managing projects on interdisciplinary protection and promotion of lesser resources.
The other guests will be active members coming from the communities which are participating to the BuioMetria Partecipativa and Farma Valley Community Maps.
Organised by: pibinko.org Admission: free (but you need to have a ticket to enter the fair) For information and reservations: info@pibinko.org
b) Read a short presentation concerning the event, by Giancarlo da Miele:
Some call the maps, some call them charts. Whichever way, we use them to save a trace, to understand a context, to inspire a walk, to plan a military strike of the remediation of a contaminated site, to decide where we should irrigate more, an where we should irrigate less. Maps in relation to space are like calendars in relation to time: they are tools to provide boundaries and references in one or more dimensions. As any tool, we can find maps which are designed and produced “top-down” or “bottom-up”. You can build a jet airliner or a paper plane. With both you can make a journey. What will change is how much you spent to reach your destination.
Map of Corsica with Carasau bread (self-created). January 2017
The presentation will propose some of the experiences in creating maps by a team which, since 2006, has been collating experiences from very diverse paths.
Some are “high-level”, and some are “low-level” (according to the concepts of “high” and “low” circulating in Europe in the past 70 years: PhD grants in hydrology, sledgehammer grants in construction sites, Science and Technology parks in Southern Italy, timber men working right next to natural protected areas in Southern Tuscany. Put all these experiences in a cultural blender, mix them for ten years, and apply the result to map making, pouring a little each year. Our survey is not yet complete, but we have parts of Earth, Sea, and Sky to show, and we need a hand to keep on tracing our rout to the Valley that’s not there.
c) Since we need to be in Milano on March 11, we expect to reach the city at least one day in advance, and will not have to rush back to Toscana, so we might stay one or two days after the event. If you are not able to attend on March 11, but are interested to take up our challenge on participatory earth, sea and sky survey, let us know (info@pibinko.org or +39 351 133 7020).
Il luogo non è scelto a caso, dato che è praticamente equidistante da tre centri importanti per lo svolgimento della recente missione sulle isole: Tatti, Torniella/Piloni e Roccastrada.
L’appuntamento è dalle 18 alle 20 tutti e due i giorni, al bar da “Giannino”. Ci sarà modo di vedere un po’ di foto e filmati, degustare modiche quantità di formaggi e vini procurati durante il viaggio, al netto di qualche salamino già consumato nella preparazione degli eventi (…non si vive di solo pane…ci vuole anche un po’ di salame).
Particolare attenzione sarà data al tema dell’accessibilità: come fare a lavorare fra Toscana, Corsica e Sardegna d’inverno? Traghetti che saltano un giorno sì e uno no, frane tra Baunei e Dorgali, che quelle in maremma al confronto sembrano castelli di sabbia sulla spiaggia di Follonica, turiste fai da te che si perdono viaggiando con mezzi poco sicuri in territori non sempre sicuri (dal punto di vista idrogeologico), metri di neve in Corsica che fanno saltare appuntamenti di lavoro. Il Tirreno sarà pure il santuario dei cetacei e uno dei paradisi estivi per i turisti, ma per un trasfertista può essere un purgatorio tendente all’inferno: d’inverno condizioni difficili, d’estate tariffe e traffico che spesso ignorano esigenze di residenti e lavoratori.
In tutto ciò…non ci si incupisce: come sempre, e in particolare a partire dal Festival d’Inverno in Val di Farma del 17-18-19 dicembre 2016, la musica troverà un proprio spazio, non definibile a priori, ma nemmeno negabile, stante la quantità di musicisti passionisti e professionisti che stanno gravitando attorno a questi eventi.
Nel corso della “due pomeriggi” si daranno inoltre gli aggiornamenti sul calendario eventi e iniziative 2017 del gruppo pibinko.org + Attivarti.org + affini, consultabile anche online alla pagina: http://www.pibinko.org/calendario/
Ultimo, ma non ultimo, almeno per il sabato: le schiacce e i prodotti da forno disponibili a 40 metri dal ritrovo, tra i più buoni nel raggio di 50 chilometri (a detta di uno che di forni e di bar ne frequenta diversi per spostamenti di lavoro). La domenica il forno è chiuso, e quindi regolatevi.
La partecipazione all’evento è libera e gratuita, ma la capienza è limitata: è quindi gradita conferma della partecipazione scrivendo a info@pibinko.org o chiamando il 351 133 7020
Stamani verso le 05:30 ora italiana nelle campagne attorno a Torniella (GR) è abboscata (non si può dire ammarata, ché il mare non c’è, ma di boschi quanti vi pare) la capsula lanciata il 9 gennaio scorso dalla base di Sureplain, Farma Valley, per la missione esplorativa m(‘)appare la Sardegna.
Al timone del monovolume, il buionauta Giancarlo da Miele, che ha percorso nei 21 giorni di spedizione circa 2300 km in auto, più tratte di traghetto per circa 700 km. Raccolte misure buiometriche, campioni di formaggi e salumi, e guide a varie risorse del territorio che saranno successivamente analizzati con i cluster top down dei laboratori di pibinko.org e attivarti.org.
Jack O’Malley, direttore scientifico della spedizione, ha commentato a proposito del buionauta , soprannominato precario o “il preca”: “Il Preca ha fatto quello che doveva essere fatto”. Il da Miele, contattato per un commento, per il momento non si esprime dovendo smaltire una fase di recupero, ma ha inviato un link al filmato di Gianni Bugno quando vinse il mondiale di ciclismo.
Da Miele ha anche raccolto varie testimonianze fotografiche e video (per tacere di quelle orali e di testa). I circa 2 Gb di video e svariate centinaia di foto , tutto materiale rigorosamente in bassa definizione, sono state trasmesse al centro di elaborazione dati dei pibinko labs…una relazione completa sulla missione sarà disponibile solo tra qualche settimana, ma nel frattempo potete rivedere i messaggi spediti durante i momenti di contatto radio (cfr. tag M(‘)LS sul blog di pibinko).
The presentation will provide a showcase on ten years of projects undertaken primarily in the Metalliferous Hills of Tuscany, about 100 km South of Florence, but very often with an international reach. The webinar will tell how free/open source geomatics -integrated with other skills- systematically helps to make our day and, with a little help from our friends (mainly, but not exclusively, residents), might also provide one of the assets to develop the area. Key highlights will be represented by initiatives related to ancient hand ball games (apparently disconnected from FOSS geomatics, but only apparently), light pollution, community maps, and biodiversity. We will also give some outlook on our plans for the current year, and make an invitation.
This will be your next chance to get to know the map of light pollution (BuioMetria Partecipativa) and the community map of the Farma Valley, created by the residents of this lesser known corner of Tuscany, 45 minutes South of Siena (or two hours South of Florence, you choose).
Some call the maps, some call them charts. Whichever way, we use them to save a trace, to understand a context, to inspire a walk, to plan a military strike of the remediation of a contaminated site, to decide where we should irrigate more, an where we should irrigate less. Maps in relation to space are like calendars in relation to time: they are tools to provide boundaries and references in one or more dimensions. As any tool, we can find maps which are designed and produced “top-down” or “bottom-up”. You can build a 
