BSDBMP – ep. 5 – astro[philes|nomers|logists] …and we are not from Rome(*)

[NOTE FOR ENGLISH READERS: the translation of this article’s title into English is not immediate…I will be glad to explain the part about Rome if we will meet]

As the Summer was gradually fading, we had started to collect our own “buiometric” measures.

In the meantime, our quest for contacts to trigger the participatory component of the story was active. The interview with RAI Radio Due back in June had been an exciting moment, but it didn’t yield all that much promotion…maybe because it occurred too early, or maybe because it was on a Saturday morning…who knows!

With Francesco we were elaborating on how to get in touch with various communities (which you may call “community” also in Italy, if you like calling it that way) which were known to be more or less active in the mitigation of light pollution (or in the “fight for dark skies”, if you like calling it that way).

Francesco is also partly an astrophile, a stargazer, he swings by star parties…so: he knew that environment before. Just like, from before I knew other environments, like the free/open software environment or the palla 21/palla eh! environment.

So, following our inspiration, we kept trying to propose our project. The peculiarity with stargazers is that, since they are “star lovers”, they would sound in principle one of the communities which should be most interested to the BuioMetria Partecipativa.

With the stargazers to which I sent the letter below we are actually collaborating today: we are in touch once a week, and we are considering future collaborations.

With other associations we were less lucky…and not just stargazer associations. At the end of the day, my overall view of the relationship between the BuioMetria Partecipativa and the non-profit world is positive. However, we did get into a couple of major misunderstandings. Some of these have been clarified, some of others are in the “clarification queue”. We are working on it!
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Buongiorno …-

thanks for the quick call

as I was saying, our interest in contacting you comes from a series of activities
that we are managing for some years now, and that starting from 2008
has generated an activity concerning the execution of [night] sky quality
with an extremely grassroots approach (see link [1])

between April and August we took various measures.
Since we [Francesco and myself] are both environmental engineers
we have also been thinking about measurement protocols, monitoring optimization,
and other aspects of the activity.

at the same time, the team with which we collaborate is configured
more like a cultural association, with an awareness on
general themes related to our territory and our environment.
we do not yet have a formal strucutre.
but in early June we organized a conference to explain a little of our idea [3].

we have, anyway, good links with various local communities in the XXX province, we
have received attention by various local bodies. We also had
support of a national association dealing with this [4]

In parallel we are looking for contacts with other contexts, hence the call you
received.

as said: it should be interesting to meet in order to better present our activities,
and then we’ll see what happens

around Oct. 4 I will surely be in your area, for the assignment of the prize for a
photographic contest that we promoted during the Summer [2], so this may
be a good excuse for a coffee.

In particular, it will be interesting for us to check if any of you are interested
to collaborate by collecting a couple of SQM measures during the night of Oct 25.

We have two instruments and are organizing the “inner Maremma” activities

I thank you for your attention and a I will be looking forward to your feedback

Andrea Giacomelli, aka pibinko – info@pibinko.org –             3XX-XXX XXXX

http://www.pibinko.org – idee e progetti
http://pibinko.splinder.com – notizie e curiosità [NOTA: SITO NON PIU’ ATTIVO]

[1] http://www.pibinko.org/bmp
[2] http://www.pibinko.org/cail
[3] http://www.pibinko.org/lepallinesullecolline
[4] http://www.gfoss.it e soprattutto
www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZOQSn5tyqQ per un’introduzione video