Open Culture initiative existed in Matera long before we arrived here, in the form of Emmanuele’s open museum and Luca’s open memory archives. They even own the openculture.it domain name. We all need to align our efforts with theirs. The Piccianello project is a de facto materialisation of that. Let’s work together to support this local initiative?
Definitely!
Yes Emmanuele owns the www.openculture.it domain, and is a core supporter of open data. It is through conversations with Emmanuele, Silvana, Francesco, Casa Netural and many others in Matera that the Festival of Growing project developed into the idea of a more general celebration of local culture with a living growing map of open data at it’s core. I’m really happy that you are coordinating this work now, and that Maria is taking a lead on the festival at the end of May. That frees our time up to work on other aspects of the project. Let’s work out how we can coordinate these efforts so that what you are organising at the end of May can be built upon in the future.
Amen to that 
Emmanuele has some interesting thoughts about how to apply the open data concept onto his own discipline, archaeology. Be sure to demand he showcases that in Piccianello
Building Synergies
I’ll definitely be exploring this with Emannuelle on Saturday. The general approach that I think works here is to view the EdgeRyders pilot in Matera as an example of a sustainable festival and celebration of open culture that can be replicated in other cities and countries.
It seems to be well received: I had a great meeting with Francesco Morano (a colleague of Emannuelle’s at the University), and I hope that the Piccianello event, the forthcoming Open Source Day, and other local projects, can lead towards an annual event on Open Culture.
We’ have the domain www.openculture.cc - and I’m proposing to use this as an umbrella for a Edgeryders-supported community festival that can take place anywhere. Working in Matera, Edgeryders would support the University and other groups in developing content around the www.openculture.it domain.
All the content of the festival would be open, free and released under Creative Commons Licence. You could call this - festival in a box. Apart fro being a good party this event would motivate and support an annual program of education and training.
Does that sound good? Anyone else want to create an Open Culture Festival?
Open Street Map Italia
Chatted to Emannuelle Curti about the proposed confluence of one or more of the Open Street Map Italia (OSMI), LOTE4, and Stewardship of Digital Assets event here in Matera. It looks good. Here were the main points:
- Check the dates of OSMI 2014 - October or 3rd week of September) - @Alberto
- Promising idea to use www.openculture.it as the umbrella to bring together the open data / creative commons / open street map / open source crowd
- Keen to give it an international (pilot) perspective using www.openculture.cc
- Keen to establish links to Georgia, Egypt, Armenia etc and not just look up to northern Europe
- Important to establish the economic sustainability angle (not just cool culture projects)
- 3rd week in Matera is Materadio - prefer to do Open Culture Festival just before or after
- Important to build momentum through a series of events and workshops leading up to September / October Open Culture Festival.
Next steps are to describe more clearly the event, workshops and how a local open culture / open source server can make the package sustainable and concrete.