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Dellai2.0: Italian politics in time of Web

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Dellai 2.0Sunday it was election day here in Trentino. Since Trentino is an autonomous region in Italy, local elections have a much larger impact on the region than national politics. Luckily enough, Lorenzo Dellai won with a large percentage and he will be once more the president of the province. Before the election day, there was the fear of having even here in Trentino a success of Lega Nord, a racist and obscurantist right-wing party.
I’m very happy Lega Nord didn’t win and I believe Dellai and its coalition (left-centre) will keep making Trentino an happy island in the context of Italy, but what interests me the most is the use Dellai made of Internet and Web2.0 phenomena for his campaign.

The tools used by Dellai:

  1. WordPress Blog on WordPress.com http://lorenzodellai.wordpress.com/
  2. Twitter Heavy twittering http://twitter.com/lorenzodellai (it was extremely interesting to read a twitter around every 30 minutes during the campaign: these short messages can give you an idea of what Dellai was doing such as “appena arrivato in ufficio 10:35 PM Nov 6th“, “ritorno in città per l’incontro con il circolo anziani 5:35 AM Nov 5th“, “vado all’incontro sul tema della scuola nella sede di Teatrincorso Spazio 14 in via Vannetti 8:10 AM Nov 3rd”, “Lunga e amichevole telefonata con il collega Luis Durnwalder.”, … Once I read that he was going to meet some people in Piazza Duomo and I had the temptation to go in Piazza Duomo to check if this was true, a strange feeling I must admit
  3. Facebook Facebook www.facebook.com/people/Lorenzo_Dellai/: at the moment Dellai facebook profile has 997 friends. Many of them requested the friendship after the success (in Italy we say “saltare sul carro dei vincitori” (jump on the winners’ bandwagon)) which is interesting as well. While most of the Web2.0 tools were used more as a direct but online communication channel, with Facebook, Dellai tried also to move the online networking to offline discussions. In fact, he organized an real-world aperitif in a bar of Trento. See the Dellai Facebook Aperitif page. This event had 95 confirmed guests and around 80 people (very young on average) shown up in the bar.
  4. Youtube Youtube channel http://www.youtube.com/user/lorenzodellai
  5. Flickr Flickr profile http://www.flickr.com/photos/28475218@N02/ and he even asked to Flickers the permission to report their photos of course respecting their copyright. In the message he even wrote the word “watermarking” which sparked some discussions about the fact Dellai would really know what watermarking is, which is in my opinion very unlikely.
  6. Netvibes and more Even a netvibes page http://www.netvibes.com/lorenzodellai!!! Very Mashuppy!!! A Mashup of all the other tools basically. With for example a public todolist (with done things checked as he was doing them ) and even dopplr (http://www.dopplr.com/traveller/lorenzodellai)!!! And Skype, and google talk, and gmail, and liveblogging events with scribblelive, …

      7. Well, besides this impressive list of Web2.0 tools in use, there are at least 2 interesting points I would like to briefly examine.
      First, is this an example of politics becoming more transparent? I guess the real question should be: “will Dellai keep twittering/facebooking/blogging/… that heavily now that he is elected and, in this way, give to (tech-savvy) citizens a way to follow what he does daily and maybe even contribute with comments and suggestions? If yes, to which level will he dare to push this? Only messages about what he did or posts about strategic decisions even before they are already made?
      Of course maintaining such a structure requires lots of resources, both in term of time (his time and his collaborators time) and money (people working on this aspect mainly since most of the tools used are free to use for now).
      That’s something I’m terribly curious to see how it develops. In the message in his blog after his election, there is a Youtube video in which he states he will keep experimenting with the network (“Adesso la campagna elettorale si e’ chiusa pero’ (…) per me non si chiude l’esperienza della mia presenza nella rete.” and even “abbiamo bisogno della vostra amicizia (little esitation) su facebook”). But I think a twitter every 30 minutes is something he is not going to keep and this is a pity.

      And the second key point is: is it possible to scientifically measure the impact of this approach, of this use of Web2.0 tools on the outcomes of the electoral competition? The more general question would be: can we identify numeric indicators of success? Are there around experiences in this sense? Research labs on Politics2.0 and its quantification? I guess that the are a lot of people working on the campaign of Obama so there might be some work already published (in papers or blogs). Are you aware of any of these?
      The effects should be both on the number of votes collected by online tools, their general impact on the aura of the candidate, the changing relationship of the candidate with traditional media (newspapers, tv), …
      Anybody trying to foreseen how big will be the impact of such strategies in the next elections (let’s say in 5 years)?

      (logo created with http://creatr.cc/creatr/)

Tools for finding conferences and journals

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There are some aggregators for Call for Papers. The ones I use for finding conferences and journals are:

Check them. The amount of conferences organized every month is really amazing!
Do you use other services? Maybe with a recommender system in it so that they are able to directly suggest you the conferences relevant for you?

Learning Processing

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I’m learning Processing, a programming language for artists. Extremely cool!
The goal is to build things cooler than the following ones:


Metamorphosis from Glenn Marshall on Vimeo.


Solar, with lyrics. from flight404 on Vimeo.


Mæve table demo from Maeve installation on Vimeo.

Processing has a great infrastructure with hardware too (http://hardware.processing.org/) but I haven’t started digging into it yet.

Learning a language in a hacking group is a lot more fun so if you are around Trento and you want to join us, please let me know! This is going to be awesome!

Kickoff meeting and public presentation for LiveMemories project with Ricardo Baeza-Yates from Yahoo! Research

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livememories Wednesday October 22th 2008, in Trento there will be the kickoff meeting for the LiveMemories project, Active Digital Memories of Collective Life (in which I’m involved). The public workshop is open to everybody (it will be at least translated in Italian).
UPDATE: Now with blog in Italian http://lamemoriaaltempodiinternet.wordpress.com.
Check the program of the workshop or read it here below copy and pasted. There will be Ricardo Baeza-Yates, Director of the Yahoo! Research labs at Barcelona speaking about the Impact of Social Networks, Alessandro Cavalli – Professore di Sociologia, Università di Pavia, speaking about “La Costruzione Sociale della Memoria Collettiva”, Simon Delafond – Web producer – BBC, UK speaking about “BBC Memoryshare initiative” and presentations from the project partners and a collective discussion about “Quale modello per la libera circolazione della Memoria?”

I’m really looking forward for the event! If you are interested or you are coming, please let me know! See you!

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Two new joint projects with MIT

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Fondazione Bruno Kessler, the research institute where I work, started two joint projects with MIT Mobile Experience Laboratory, not bad!

1) Sustainable Connected House (http://mobile.mit.edu/en/sustainablehome), FBK-MIT Mobile Experience Lab alliance.
The MIT Mobile Experience Lab, within the Design Laboratory, signed a 3 years strategic alliance with the Fondazione Bruno Kessler on July of 2008. The alliance has been promoted by the Province of Trento, Italy. Our goal is to advanced research in sustainable connected homes, including subtopics of renewable energy systems, sustainable architecture, and also social sustainability and connected information system to optimize home behavior and peoples’ life. At the end of the project, we want to build a full-scale prototype of a sustainable home with new technologies, materials, and applications.

2) Green villages (http://mobile.mit.edu/en/zambana), Re-defining the sustainable green village of the future.
In partnership with Trentino Sviluppo division of the Provincia di Trento, Italy, we wanted to investigate how to transform the village of Zambana into a Sustainable Green Village. The main goal of the design workshop was to creatively redesign the village of Zambana, from an urban planning perspective, as well as from architectural and new media design perspectives. This exercise, more than giving specific directions for the implementation of the project, has opened a variety of ideas, scenarios and concepts that need to be further explored. In July 2008, the Design Lab and Mobile Experience Lab renewed our partnership with the Provincia di Trento and the Fondazione Bruno Kessler to continue the study for at least three more years.

Still looking for a PhD student for LiveMemories project

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There is the opportunity for a 3-years PhD scholarship at the University of Trento working with my group (SoNet) on Web2.0 and social networking at Bruno Kessler Foundation in Trento. Please, consider contacting me about it!
The project you will work on is LiveMemories (http://livememories.org), Active Digital Memories of Collective Life. From the project web site:

From a scientific / technical perspective, LiveMemories aims at scaling up content extraction techniques towards very large scale extraction from multimedia sources, setting the scene for a Content Management Platform for Trentino; using this information to support new ways of linking, summarizing and classifying data in a new generation of digital memories which are `alive’ and user-centered; and to turn the creation of such memories into a communal web activity. Achieving these objectives will make Trento a key player in the new Web Science Initiative, digital memories, and Web 2.0, thanks also to the involvement of Southampton. But LiveMemories is also intended to have a social and cultural impact besides the scientific one: through the collection, analysis and preservation of digital memories of Trentino; by facilitating and encouraging the preservation of such community memories; and the fostering of new forms of community, and enrichment of our cultural and social heritage.

Our involvement is about how Web2.0 tools can support a community in this collective building of memory. The idea is to offer a contract at FBK for around 8 months with the research institute I work on and, if we like each other, to start the PhD. If you are interested please send me an email: massa AT fbk DOT eu (if I don’t reply, it is because your email ended up in spam, please try to find other ways to contact me).

You are invited at the DolomitiCamp, a BarCamp in Trentino mountains, 24 august 2008!

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Together with my friends, napo, ket and franz, we decided to organize the first DolomitiCamp, just as a BarCamp but in a mountain hut in the wonderful Dolomites in Trentino, Italy! Because geeks need some physical exercise too. And some fresh air sometimes. ;)
So please, register in the DolomitiCamp wiki page!

When? Sunday 24th August 2008. A bit close in time and space there is the BlogFest which is going to be an amazing event in Riva del Garda, 12, 13, 14 September 2008. But we thought we would organize the DolomitiCamp anyway, the DolomitiCamp would be perfect if you are already close to Trentino in holidays. But also for coming just for this weekend. As written on the the DolomitiCamp wiki page, the day before, Saturday 23th August there is a free concert by Tetes des Bois in Val Rendena in the Suoni Delle Dolomiti festival, great musicians playing outdoor in the Dolomites.

Where? Rifugio Segantini (see the map at the end of this post). In Alta Val d’Ámola, Presanella, (mt. 2371), Trentino, Italia. One hour and 19 minutes from Trento.


Is there Internet connection? Yes, it was recently installed. But, since we need to make the final tests, it would be great if you can register in the DolomitiCamp wiki page.
There is also a dolomiticamp user on facebook who you can friend and the dolomiticamp event on facebook which you can subscribe to and the DolomitiCamp group on Facebook which you can join.

I see you on 24th August 2008 on Trentino mountains, ok?


Visualizzazione ingrandita della mappa

The Rules of DolomitiCamp (derived from The Rules of BarCamp)
* 1st Rule: You do talk about DolomitiCamp.
* 2nd Rule: You do blog about DolomitiCamp.
* 3rd Rule: If you want to present, you must write your topic and name in a presentation slot.
* 4th Rule: Only three word intros.
* 5th Rule: As many presentations at a time as facilities allow for.
* 6th Rule: No pre-scheduled presentations, no tourists.
* 7th Rule: Presentations will go on as long as they have to or until they run into another presentation slot.
* 8th Rule: If this is your first time at BarCamp, you HAVE to present. (Ok, you don’t really HAVE to, but try to find someone to present with, or at least ask questions and be an interactive participant.)