User:Iopensa/Application GLAM conference 2018 Scholarship

Application form to request scholarship for the conference GLAM WIKI 2018, Tel Aviv, Israel.

Expertise/Skill/Activities

Experience in working in the non profit cultural sector; art historian and professor of art economy and heritage management. Focus on Italian, Swiss and African cultural institutions and heritage (specific interest in the challenging Italian cultural heritage regulation). Scientific director of the project "WikiAfrica" and "Share Your Knowledge: Wikipedia and Creative Commons for cultural institutions" (involving around 100 institutions on Wikipedia and the Wikimedia projects). Here the projects and initiatives I have been working on related to Wikimedia https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Iopensa/Past

What are your plans for the conference?

I would like to do 3 things: 1. I would like to research and better understand the potentialities of WikiGLAM projects on territorial development. 2. I would like to discuss with people at the conference the development of the project GLAM Visual Tool https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:GLAM_visual_tool focusing on how to use the Wikimedia projects to evaluate the work of cultural institutions (I made a first presentation of this topic at Wikimania 2017 https://wikimania2017.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/It_is_not_a_matter_of_visibility:_GLAMs_contribute_to_fill_the_knowledge_gap._New_metrics_for_GLAMs_and_GLAM-Wiki_cooperation) 3. I would like to present the idea that to have a wide impact on GLAMs we need to focus on grant-makers and in changing their application forms (including open licenses). I am submitting a proposal on this topic.

Motivation

What is your motivation for wanting to attend the conference?

I am extremely interested in understanding the capacity of the Wikimedia projects to enhance territorial development. I trust open knowledge and online collaborative projects can have a beneficial impact in particular in more remote areas: they allow to bridge distances, to connect the so-called "local knowledge" to universal multilingual knowledge and to trigger exogenous resources. I am specifically interested in attending the GLAM conference with this focus in my mind, to try to understand if current and past experiences produced territorial development, if these experiences are scalable and which are the most successful patterns to activate WikiGLAM cooperations at a territorial scale. Furthermore I trust the GLAM conference is an excellent opportunity to meet potential partners for joint projects and the right place to discuss new ideas to check their applicability.

Why should we sponsor you?

I am asking for a scholarship because I trust I can provide an active contribution to the conference and I will follow up on the discussions at the conference in my volunteer work and in my work in university (as senior research and as head of the research area "culture and territory" - producing research in Switzerland and at an international level). My involvement in the Wikimedia projects is volunteer-driven, the GLAM conference is not an academic encounter and – even if I my volunteer work often produces fallouts in my research work and viceversa – I value very strongly participating in the Wikimedia activities in an independent way without a working agenda. I would not be able to attend the conference without a scholarship.

What do you want to learn?

I want to attend the conference with a focus on methodologies and territorial development. I want to talk to people who worked on projects related to https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiTerritories and learn what they did, the methodologies they used, what worked and what didn't work. I will record small audio interview on this topic for the radio station Usmaradio; I have a radio program under cc by-sa on the topic of "School of Thoughts" https://www.spreaker.com/show/scuola-di-pensiero (volunteer).

What GLAM projects are you involved in?

• Cultural heritage and Wiki Loves Monuments in Italy, also supported within Wikimania 2016 (volunteer)
• Involving ecomuseums in contributing to the Wikimedia projects (volunteer)
• Advisory member of WikiAfrica and Wiki in Africa (volunteer)
• Founder of the Italian association InFormAzioni focusing on involving communities and GLAMs in particular in Italian peripheral and mountain areas (volunteer)
• Training for cultural professional at my university SUPSI (work)
• Working on a certification system for Wikimedia contributors at my university SUPSI (work)

Who are your GLAM partners in your GLAM activities?

• Public administrations in Italy (city councils, mountain community, province, region); small museums and ecomuseums
• The Ticino Canton in Switzerland and the institutions liked to the observatory of cultural institutions promoted by the Canton.
• Within the projects "WikiAfrica" and "Share Your Knowledge" (2011-2012) I involved with our team a group of 100 cultural institutions: foundations, art centres, museums, festivals, NGOs.

I am currently very interested in the role of grant-makers (foundations, public administrations, agency for cooperation and development...) in promoting the use of open licenses and the synergy with the Wikimedia projects.