Should you be visiting the Belagaio area and deciding to have a pic-nic, remember that, while the area is full of horses (due to the maremman horse breeding facility managed by the Carabinieri), systematically beaten by wild boar and various other two- and four-legged animals, if you leave unattended your slice of ham while fetching your slice of bread, don’t be surprised if various hungry cats appear after counting to three. These are Gaido’s cats: they like to be cuddled, but the also like your food!
New interesting additions to the Farma Valley Community Map, with new place names and other background information provided by Scalvaia residents.
Thanks again to Remo Ganozzi for setting up the event:
Come to a quasi-unknown valley halfway between Siena and Grosseto and learn more about, community mapping, participatory light pollution monitoring with the BuioMetria Partecipativa project, nightscape photography, and stargazing.
NOTE: Given the peculiarity of the site and the conditions of the road to reach the castle, please pay extreme attention if driving to the area, especially starting from sunset. Before parking, ask for indication to the event staff. You are also invited to register in advance to the event (info@attivarti.org or +393511337020).
After the quick’n’dirty first setup of the Farma Valley Community billboard, here is our first update. You can find it entering the village of Torniella from the South, on your right, just after the post office.
In addition to an updated and enriched list of events, going through August, we added a proper title on the top left, and highlighted the palla a 21 ball construction course, scheduled for Saturday, June 17, in Torniella, as this is the first time for a very peculiar initiative.
We also remind you that the billboard includes both initiatives taking place in the central part of the vally (essentially, the hamlets of Torniella, Piloni and Scalvaia and their surroundings) in addition to events where organizations based in the valley are invited in other locations (at present, this applies to: Banda di Torniella, BuioMetria Partecipativa, and palla a 21 teams).
During the last International Open Data Day, on March 4, 2017, we presented the first draft copy of the Farma Valley community map, with two events in Scansano and Castelnuovo Val di Cecina as warm-up and debriefing events.
This map was the first result of an activity stated at the end of 2014, when we participated to the competition for location-based games launched by the INVOLEN EU research project. At that time we interviewed a group of residents from the hamlets of Torniella and Piloni, asking them do identfiy points of interest and place names which are no longer documented in the official base maps by the Regional government (you might want to read our article from the proceeding of the final INVOLEN conference to learn more about this: Integrating Culture, Environment, and Open Innovation for Awareness Raising: a Case from the Farma Valley, Tuscany).
The first round of the exercise led to recover 114 place names on an extension of approximately 8 square kilometers.
Between March and April we then received an additional set of points of interest reported by the community of Scalvaia, on the Northern side of the valley, with 63 place names over approximately two square kilometers. These have been added to the preexisting points. In the meantime we made contact with other experts from Piloni, who will soon receive a copy of the base maps to provide their input on the area of Montalto, in the Southwestern part of the valley.
The data collected through December 2016 was published on the Regione Toscana Open Data Portal. Meanwhile, ideas were starting to take shape on different ways to deploy the map in the “physical” world. The opportunity arose a couple of weeks ago.
The Attivarti.org association inquired with the Municipality of Roccastrada (administering the hamlets of Torniella and Piloni) about the possibility of revamping a wooden billboard which was installed several years ago as a support for an information sheet concerning the “Pietra” natural reserve. The board was lacking maintenance and not really readable.
having received an OK to proceed by the Municipality, we recovered the support, cleaned up the vegetation which was gradually covering the installation, and used the renovated board as a base for version 2 of the community map, protected by a plexiglass sheet.
At present the new map has a “square” aspect ratio, so we considered using the remaining space to provide additional information on the Farma Valley and its activities.
As a start, we posted the calendar of events (as of April 29) for June, July, and August, covering initiatives involving the Piloni, Torniella, and Scalvaia communities, the Band of Torniella, Attivarti.org, BuioMetria Partecipativa, and other communities we interact with (such as the palla a 21/palla eh! tournaments). You may also check this calendar online on http://www.pibinko.org/calendar, where you will also find the past trail of events related to the community map, and other interesting projects.
Furthermore, we are in the process of editing information sheets about the valley and more detailed descriptions concerning the map.
A peculiar aspect of the project concerns the materials and the assembly process. Since we expect to release frequent updates of the map and of the calendar during the Summer, all the graphics have been “spliced” to A4-size sheets. This will simplify -and make less expensive- subsequent edits (we found a few typos in the place names and will need to add new point batches), and will provide a form of live update on our initiatives for those who cannot follow us via internet, which are not few in the area.
So: where are we with the community map? The residents are extremely interested in the heritage preservation aspect of the project, which higher-level official sources would find very hard to follow. This interest does not just originate from nostalgic emotions (although it is intriguing to record the narrations which are triggered by simply exposing the map to any native). In fact, the map is helping the locals to re-think (or for some to actually think)about potential initiatives to protect and promote the valley.
And what about the feedback by visitors? We will find out in the coming months, with the tourist season approaching. Even just yesterday, with the arrival of relations and friends for the upcoming First of May celebrations, several of them noted the map, where you can locate chestnut drying facilities, WW2 shelters, hunting points, water springs and other points of interest which you may get to know better if you will decide to explore the valley.
For the creation of the new billboard, in addition to thanking the Municipality of Roccastrada for allowing the use of the board, it is important to acknowledge the support by Andrea Bartalucci, Giorgio Panerati / Casa Bazar, Sara Canu and Bianca Costea.
With a few days of delay due to minor technical issues, please see the recording of the April 7 webinar I gave together with Etruschi from Lakota on the subject of : “How Free/Open Source Geomatics can integrate in Rural Communities to improve Resilience and Quality of Life“.
The title came out somewhat convoluted, but the talk is definitely more linear. The video was published on the YouTube channel of the Geoforall Network, an international consortium of open-source geomatics labs (if you are not in the field: folks working with lots of multi-coloured maps on computers). With repect to the thumbnails of the videos from other webinars, you might note a difference: instead of the typical slide with a flowchart, or a map, or a bullet list, you see young rockers in action. This is in fact because the presentation, about 45 minutes overall, combines the talking part with a couple of songs performed live during the webinar, on topics related to rural issues, together with some short intervals when the topic was changing (allowing the main presenter to recover some stamina). An introduction to the webinar, providing some of the rationale is provided in a blog post from April 6.
Please enjoy, and let us know if you like the geomatics and music combination:
Thanks again to Geoforall (Rafael Moreno-Sanchez) and ASPRS (David Alvarez) for inviting us.
Experts in Tuscan hydrology might be puzzled recalling that the confluence of the Farma Creek and the Cecina river does not exist. In fact, they are not even part of the same catchment, so what’s up?
However, at times confluences may be created among territories and people. Unlike water, these occasionally flow not following the currents and -without having to oppose the flow – will propose thoughts and actions dealing with environment, resources, and culture.
Tomorrow, Friday Apr. 7, from 6 to 7PM CET, there will be a webinar by Andrea Giacomelli, aka pibinko, PhD and MS in Environmental Engineering with over twenty years of international experience in geographic information systems together with Dario Canal, Simone Sandrucci, Pietro Marini, and Luigi Ciampini (i.e. four out of five of the Etruschi from Lakota).
Ray Daytona and the Googoobombos, Roselle (Tuscany), August 2012
The presentation will review activities conducted over the past ten years, which from 2015 saw growing interactions among the authors in the area of outreach and dissemination intertwining scientific topics and music.
Mixing science and music or other performing arts is not innnovative in general, nor for the authors, who have been dealing with music for years: Etruschi as professional musicians and pibinko as creator of events and producer of projects with varying levels of musical presence. Indeed, the peculiarity of this experiment is in the process through which it started, i.e. connecting territories which are not far away but are normally disconnected, and outside of “traditional” scientific or artistic research.
After about a year of brainstorming, things went operational in December 2016, with the Farma Valley Winter Fest, where Etruschi from Lakota were the main act of the event, in parallelo with the presentation of the “alpha version” of the Farma Valley Community map.
Castelnuovo Val di Cecina, 5-3-2017
This first gig paved the way for a subsequent poster presentation at the FOSS4G-IT conference at the Faculty of Engineering in Genoa, Italy, on Feb. 9, and the closing set related to the presentation of the updated Farma Valley Community map as one of the events in the International Open Data Day in Castelnuovo Val di Cecina. Now we wait for tomorrow’s webinar.
This originates from a call for topics by two international networks: GeoForAll, composed by over 100 open-source geomatics labs (if you are not in the business, figure folks working with multi-colour maps on large computers) spread across five continents, and the American Society of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ASPRS).
The webinar will be in English, and since a significant part of the audience is expected to be in the USA, the time will be from 6 to 7PM CET.
To follow the webinar you may register and be online tomorrow, or see the recording which will be published by GeoForAll after the event.
Politecnico di Milano, maggio 2015
This is not the first international presentation we have on our BuioMetria Partecipativa project on participatory night sky quality monitoring, open-source mapping, or promotion of unknown parts of Tuscany. Since 2007 we gave presentations in the USA (Illinois and California), Scotland, Germany, China, United Arab Emirates, Romania, and for the European Commission. Furthermore, we invited international experts in the Farma Valley in 2012 and 2015. Still, there is interest from the hosting organizations to hear experiences from our “lesser known” territorities and -vice versa- we are curious of the feedback we will have from a very remote audience.
In the presentation we will also give some highlight on the Spring-Summer calendar of events representing the promotinal part of our team’s activities. After the webinar the information will be added as an update for pibinko.org’s calendar.
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)
