Following the post I just made on the OTS group about inviting people nationally and internationally to teach at the unMonastery, I had a conversation with @Marc about how we promote events. Our current approach is to use Facebook, Newsletters, Twitter and our Website, it’s a bit distributed. However in Matera the main way to promote an event is word of mouth, it’s a cultural thing but it has it’s limitations, Matera lacks a centralised information point for what happens in the city.
This was one of the key challenges we identified during our early workshops with the city and it might be time to revisit it. It’s not uncommon for a city to have a central information point, screens in malls, town squares, regularly frequented places. Something like this:
This feels like a no brainer, so I wanted to make a post to see if we can make it happen as an unMonastery project in collaboration with Matera2019 - there’s nothing better for winning fans than creating a service like this and it seems like a project that fits with Matera2019’s remit. Also it could make for any interesting collaboration for the unMonastery with groups like CasaNetural (@andrea.paoletti).
In general – and even as a move towards that challenge – I would encourage unMonasterians to fly close to the wing of the MT2019 web team: they can help with local (Basilicata and Puglia) communication in the Italian language.
Practically anything you write on the community will be amplified by the official MT2019 social media accounts and by the private ones of the web team. I noticed they don’t seem aware of what you are doing – which is really a shame (and a mystery, given that the official accounts are manned by Raffaella, whose desk is 30 meters from the unMonastery). For example, the Family Day generated great pictures, it would be useful to spread them.
You could even think of using this initial axis between the unMonastery and MT2019 to start prototyping this service. If you make something useful for yourselves, maybe other people will want to use it too…
@Marc we could also think about hacking one of them with solar panel (+tracker), wlan access point and LCD (from old laptop?) showing evens… we could even turn them in photo booths with webcam which would print on a screen URI + QR code of taken photos
That’s the attitude!! You could even add a small printer so people can select the event they like and get a note printed (there are cheap Arduino controlled thermoprinters, like used in cash registers, printing without moving parts on 50 mm wide thermo paper rolls). Oh and while you’re at it, add some USB charge outlets for mobile phones. The youth in the city will love it when chilling on the city squares
of course we need to account for vandalism, on the other hand we do want to support growth of a culture where we take care of our common wealth.
on the other side, we could setup some sensors for intrusion detection which would activate webcam(s) and notify unMo crew. if we find a drone then we could fly it there with another webcam and LED projector to have a chat with a possible intruder
