(lo slogan “dalla resistenza al contrattacco” è suo)The Liberation day gathering at Casa Cervi was great. Daniele and Franco of Fuori Orario told us that we broke every record of attendance (ten thousand estimated) and food and drink sold, and from the stage we could only see a sea of people of all ages and all colors, happy to be there together. The internet campaign was also a resounding success. We started off with the aim to get 100 bloggers involved: on April 24th we had 330 participants, which yesterday had risen to 347 and counting. If you look on Flickr or Youtube you find lots of photos and videos. A Second Life Mondine Museum has been started and has started to stimulate mondine-related inworld cultural activities. Casa Cervi also hosted a spontaneous meeting of the analogic network of partisan associations, mondine, Fiamma Fumana and Fuori Orario and the the digital network, the internet of the Resistance and Italy’s collective memory. Some influential bloggers turned up: Alberto, riding his motorbike and obviously happy (he created the slogan “from Resistence to counterstrike”); Antonio, smiling and optimistic (he created the slogan “from Resistence to counterstrike”); Marco; Fabio and Roberta, in representation of the Second Life mondine group; Franca, who posted a lovely chronicle-cum-photos; the invaluable Valeria and Freddy for Mondine 2.0 (Freddy even had to replace me for a radio interview).

At the end of our set, everyone, really really every single person, sang Bella ciao together with mondine, and the emotion melted into a very long applause. I was seized by a sense of gratitude and belonging. We really had this sitting right in front of us for a long time before I actually saw it: the “no spectator allowed, only participants” logic of social networks is the same as that of democratic participation. Which means: build relationships of respect and affection with people you share ideals with. Then work with them to “do stuff” (create a mondine choir, organize a music festival, paint the walls of a Casa del Popolo, whatever), and this “stuff” are building blocks of the world that those ideals depict. This building together is the most powerful force I know, a lot more powerful than just casting your vote once every five years. The counterstrike Antonio talks about, for me, starts here.

Di passaggio dalla Basilicata, tappa a Roma per fare un po’ di lavoro con il gruppo di Kublai. Stiamo lavorando molto sull’identità di progetto: dobbiamo trovare le parole per raccontarlo in modo semplice e comprensibile a tutti, e sentiamo molto la responsabilità. Quando provo a parlarne in giro, però, si vede che qualcosa si capisce, perché mi sembra di trovare molta simpatia, molta voglia di partecipare, da amici creativi come Alfredo, ai grintosissimi studenti del Master in Musica, Comunicazione e Marketing alla Sapienza, a intellettuali di rango come Marco Minghetti, alfiere del capitalismo sociale e visionario alla Adriano Olivetti e animatore del metablog Le aziende invisibili-Nova100 (anzi, con Marco abbiamo fatto anche un accordo di collaborazione Kublai-Nova100). Intanto abbiamo messo su un piccolo blog, tanto per scaldarci un po’ i muscoli.

Doriano Rabotti of the daily newspaper Il Resto del Carlino has been tracking Fiamma Fumana closely for years. This time, too, he devotes a lot of attention to the Liberation Day concert on April 25th at Casa Cervi. Admittedly, it is going very well: we started off looking for 100 bloggers, and 186 have volunteered as I write; meanwhile my friends Velas (in the picture), Asian and Joannes have started to spread the idea within Second Life. Outside of the great net, too, we feel a great turmoil: all over Italy rides are being hitched and coaches are being organized to reach the concert site; the municipality of Gattatico and Fuori Orario are organizing a canteen to feed hungry fans and are letting the weary unroll their sleeping bags in the local sports hall. We are all overwhelmed by such a great participation.

It always impresses me how differently traditional media and the net look at things. If you Google for “Radiciresistenti” or look at the From mother to daughter blog, which launched the initiative, you get a feel from a community: Valeria writes most of the FMTD posts, but the protagonists are legion: the 186 bloggers, the authors of the 300+ coments (more than 100 a week!) the many friends and fans sending photos, videos, thoughts and love. On the newspaper, on the other hand, the emphasis in on me personally. Ok, ok, I understand the mechanism in traditional media narrative building, and therefore Doriano’s (an excellent professional) choice. But, personally, I find myself more at home in the community spirit of the blogoand of the Net in general.

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Negli ultimi anni mi sono spesso ritrovato a usare la conoscenza accumulata lavorando a un progetto per coinvolgere altri nella discussione su quel progetto e quindi, in definitiva, il mio lavoro di consulente. Quasi sempre questo ha comportato la diffusione sul web di dati e fatti. In realtà è per questo che è nato questo blog! La cosa sembra funzionare: si vede molto bene nel blog del progetto Visioni Urbane in Basilicata: in cinque mesi abbiamo raccolto oltre 500 commenti da parte di esponenti della scena creativa locale, che ci danno il polso di ciò che accade. Senza questo strumento non sarei riuscito a decodificare la situazione. I miei committenti mi hanno sempre più o meno lasciato fare, con più o meno entusiasmo.

Ma c’è un problema, che è quello del diritto d’autore. Quando firmi un contratto in genere c’è scritto qualcosa come “I materiali prodotti nel corso del progetto sono di proprietà di Studiare Sviluppo, che si riserva tutti i diritti” eccetera eccetera. Naturalmente questa dicitura è una specie di fossile giuridico, i committenti non hanno intenzione di pubblicare best sellers con il mio rapporto di ricerca o di vendere a Hollwood i diritti per la realizzazione di un film (chi farebbe la mia parte? Dustin Hoffman? Joe Pesci? Ci vuole uno basso…). Nessuno obietta a che tu vada a un convegno a raccontare cosa fa. Qualche problema può però nascere se il progetto ha problemi (può succedere, eccome) e tu li dichiari onestamente. Questo può toccare varie sensibilità. Questo post, per esempio, mi è costato una diffida da parte di uno dei miei partners nel progetto Booster (per la cronaca: SMILE Abruzzo, l’ente di formazione professionale della CGIL).

[…] vi chiedo di formalizzare all’interno [sic] del verbale della riunione odierna […] la “diffida” a tutti i partners ad effettuare attività di mainstreaming/diffusion/comunicazione a chiunque indirizzati [sic] che non siano stati preventivamente e collegialmente autorizzati dalla Partnership di Sviluppo [cioè da loro].

Traduzione: non posso scrivere sul mio blog che il progetto va male. A parte che vietarmelo mi pare illegale, mi sarebbe sembrato più costruttivo intervenire nel dibattito e spiegare perché, secondo loro, mi sbaglio. Comunque. Potete trovare qui una scansione integrale della lettera.

Conclusione: sto partendo con un nuovo progetto, ve ne parlerò presto. Il mio committente è il Ministero dello sviluppo economico, e più precisamente l’Unità di valutazione degli investimenti pubblici del Dipartimento politiche per lo sviluppo. Sul contratto ho fatto inserire questo articolo:

Tutti i materiali prodotti nel corso del progetto sono di proprietà di Studiare Sviluppo. Essi verranno rilasciati sotto licenza Creative Commons Attribuzione - Non Commerciale 2.5 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/2.5/deed.it).

Traduzione. Quindi io o voi, o chiunque, possiamo postare, riprodurre, diffondere o citare quella roba, purché ne indichiamo la fonte e non vendiamo le riproduzioni. Credo sia la prima volta che un progetto del Ministero usa questo tipo di licenza. Grazie a Mirko Ceci, Simona Pastorelli, Francesco D’Amato e Elvira Berlingieri aka Night Thursday per la consulenza.

In the last few years I got really interested in social web both as an economist and as a musician. My music experience - with the major role taken on by the web in the music industry - got me thinking pretty hard about how to use the Internet to communicate “many to many” rather than “one to many” as in the old times of mass media; these reflections, in turn, made me want to be a more active user of the web as a tool for my job as a musician. I gave a talk about this at the EBA Forum, as you can see in the video below. Here’s a summary of what we did:

• at the end of 2005 (just about to start recording Onda) we launched the first FF blog, the one on Blogger. Jessica and I got a taste for the kind of commitment that keeping a blog implies, though looking back on it we were blogging in a “1.0″ fashion, telling stories but not really trying to get readers involved in a conversation. In July 2007 we replaced our old website with the present “glorified blog” - which runs on a blogging platform, WordPress - and migrated the old blog here onto fiamma.org. Since then the new blog was visited more than 11.000 times and “narrowcasted” more than 37.000 pages. In these two years we wrote exactly 300 posts (this one not included) which spooled 469 comments.
• in may 2006 we opened a myspace band profile. We did not really know what to do with it, but everyone and their dog was doing it. That profile rounded up more than 10.000 visits with almost 8.000 song plays. Friends are 1.122. Above all, we found out that someone is indeed out there: when we tried to use our myspace identity as a tool to find someone to cooperate with a lot of people showed up. On Myspace I am here.
• onething that we did not do, it just sort of happened on its own is FF taking roots in Last.fm. “Scrobbles”, or plays, of FF music on Last.fm turn out to be just short of 10.000, about the same as my beloved Mouth Music or Cisco, much more than Italian folk royalty like Riccardo Tesi (2.115) or the Nuova Compagnia di Canto Popolare (4.759), but much less than U2 (24.196.768). FF listeners on Last.fm are 1.183, enough to fill a very large theatre. Another nice feature of Last.fm is a radio sounding like Fiamma Fumana. In theory it should play artists “like” us; in practice it is based on tags eneterd by listeners ( (”electro folk”, “world”, “italy,”, “female vocals”…), so it starts of well with FF, FF, Varttina, Tesi, Mouth Music, Modena City Ramblers, then the “Italy” and “female vocals” tag kick in and it trails off towards improbable Italian female pop singers. If you are or plan to be Last.fm users, please visit our page and tag us sensibly… let’s save the radio. I am here on Last.fm.
• finally, I must mention the From mother to daughter blog, relaunched a few weeks ago after a false start… we will see.

Davide Ferrario and Andrea Zambelli, producer and director of “Mondine - From mother to daughter” (the documentary about Mondine di Novi and Fiamma Fumana. I write about this here and here) have decided to move the film premiere from the spring to the Fall 2008. And for a very good reason: there is a lot of very high quality footage, they need extra time to edit it and make a wonderful film, that will make people laugh and cry. So we decided to reform and relaunch the project’s blog: also, we will do several things with the Novi choir from here to the Fall. We have a new domain (mondine.it) and a new group, with my old friend Valeria Carletti as the main blogger and a more recent friend, Freddy Mascheretti, to take care of the relevant technology. We have a guru too, Luca “Vanz” Vanzella of Daimon and Maestrini per caso: he has been so kind as to give us some good advice over dinner (Eritrean restaurant), but of course he bears no responsibility over our modest, utterly unprofessional blogging efforts. And good luck to us! You can find the new blog here./

This man is Ricardo Franco Levi, the internet communication genius who had the idea to draft a bill to regulate blogs that no one feels the need for. Typical: Chris Anderson showed that the world is a better place when physical bottlenecks to diversity (of information, in this case) are removed, Ricardo Franco Levi replaces them with regulatory bottlenecks and we are back were we started. This is bad policy, arrogant and ignorant, and will not be tolerated. Please, would everyone sign the petition to kill the bill that would take independent blogs away from us. This has nothing to do with FF, but I just felt I had to blog it.