[Ica-osgeo-labs] presentation to the list

[Andrea Giacomelli]

Hello to all -

Clara Tattoni (ciao Clara!) made me realize that I subscribed to this list
without introducing myself.

I am re-posting the message I initially sent in response to Suchit's call
for organizations in the general OSGEO discussion list, sometime last week.

Some of you may have read this already...anyway: here it comes, with a
couple of revisions...

one addendum I am glad to make is that our next dissemination event in
Milano (on July 30) has recently been inserted in the International Year of
Light calendar [1], so, if any of you will be in the Milano area next week,
we will be glad to meet you.

.......

Dear Suchit,

I am writing you as the President of Attivarti.org.

I am occasionally contributing to this discussion list, mostly to advertize
initiatives we manage in Italy/Europe, and more occasionally commenting on
"policy issues".

a) Attivarti.org is a small non-governmental organization, just for years
old (formally an "associazione di promozione sociale" in Italian
legislation). You may check out www.attivarit.org and its English language
sections for more information, or I can send you separate fact sheets.

b) Now (July 2015) we are starting are first two internships for new
graduates.
This is happening in the context of MoUs signed with Italian Universities,
and we are also active in a EU COST Action where more tutoring and student
exchange activities are happening.

c) In fact, the association is the current formal status of a team which
has for some members over twenty years of experience in geomatics.

Personally I created and managed what we could define as "geospatial labs"
in 1994-1996 (Politecnico di Milano, Dept. of Hydraulics, being probably
one of the first five people to administer GRASS in Italy), and then in
1997-2002 at CRS4 (a research lab part of the Science and Technology Park
in Sardinia).

please see http://www.pibinko.org for details

note: we work in Italian, English, French, and are at ease with Portuguese
(in general: we like languages a lot)

d) about geospatial labs:

Between 2002 and 2010 I have been working for the Milan, Italy, branch of a
US corporation, where I was in fact managing the GIS resources for a team
of 25 (and involving also survey work)

In terms of topics, I have been working on GIS / remote sensing / web
projects applied to various issues

e) Since 2007 I have started to develop my independent stream of research.
Key topics include

- capacity building and development in rural areas
- participatory processes
- lean methodologies
- intertwinining of cultural and environmental issues as a social driver

this is on top of international experience in GIS for water resources,
facility management, contaminated site investigations and remediation ec.


f) Our current flagship project is called "BuioMetria Partecipativa", which
we translate to the English-speaking world as "participatory night skiy
quality monitorigin".

We started this in 2008 as a tiny VGI project. We are now just over the
seventh birthday for the project, and have seen a stable growth for it.


g) A peculiarity of our work is that this has -to date- taken place with a
neglectable component of public funding, and with a very limited support by
academia, at least nationally...so, in a way, I could say we have an
example of a community which operates with an independent R&D group.

h) Note that we are not shy, nor do we refrain from constantly seeking
partentships...In almost ten years of "civic hacking" I have met quite a
large number of stakeholders from three continents., and from all levels
(from small local communities to global organization managers), and for
some reason things have proceeded with some stakeholders, and less with
others.

i) now: I'd like to understand if Attivarti.org (or its members in its
"precursor" activities) may

(1) contribute to your initiative with tutorials and, potentially (2) open
a new geospatial lab (to be based in Southern Tuscany).

If this idea is of interest to your initiative, I'll be glad to discuss
this further (probabily on a separate private thread). In any case I
thought it may be of interest also to others to open the discussion with
this message.

Best regards

Andrea Giacomelli
http://www.pibinko.org
http://www.attivarti.org
info at pibinko.org
+39 347 15 33 857

[1]
http://www.light2015.org/Home/Event-Programme/2015/Symposia/Italy-mapp-ear-ing-the-upper-half-of-the-landscape-in-Milan.html
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