Dear Denny,

Thanks for your great letter, and I'm sorry to learn that you're leaving Wikidata, and as one of its 3 core developers as it was launched over the past months, with all its major contributions to Wikipedia/Wikimedia and online knowledge co-generation, multilingually! Hearty congratulations, though, in your new position at Google, and I hope you can bring the logic of Ps and Qs computationally, and data-wise, into that great coding company. (Let's stay in communication vis-a-vis World University and School, - which is, as you know, like Wikipedia with MIT OCW, with free, online university degrees planned in many languages, - and the many enjoyable coding possibilities therein :).

With friendly regards,

Scott

On Thu, Jul 11, 2013 at 8:35 AM, Luca Martinelli <martinelliluca@gmail.com> wrote:

2013/7/11 Denny Vrandečiă <denny.vrandecic@wikimedia.de>:
[...]

> Besides Wikipedia, Wikidata can be used in many other places. We just
> started the conversations about sister projects, but also external projects
> are expected to become smarter thanks to Wikidata. I expect tools and
> libraries and patterns for these type of uses will emerge in the next few
> months, and applications will become more intelligent and act more informed,
> powered by Wikidata.

[...]

Dear Denny,

I was in Haifa when there was the very first announce of Wikidata, and
I was in Washington when Wikidata was definitely announced as a
project.

I still remember my excitement when I asked if the coats of arms of
municipalities and states and whatever could have been put into
Wikidata, and you guys said "yes, they will". I was so naive at that
moment that I couldn't have imagined what this project would have
turned into, yet it was this little answer to convince me to join the
community.

Now, along with some fellow wikipedians/wikimedians, we're in talks
with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Istituto_Centrale_per_il_Catalogo_Unico,
the Italian institution that oversees a large part of the Italian
public and private libraries. They are willing to give us their data,
but also to establish a more thorough cooperation, involving
librarians to contribute to Wikidata and the other Wikimedia projects.

We could have set up a cooperation with the institute anyway, but
Wikidata was the perfect key project to make this cooperation come
true, because they were fascinated by the work on the authority
control we're doing with VIAF and other institutions. If we managed to
reach this stage, it was also because of your work. So, I'd like to
thank you and all the Wikidata developers for having helped us with
that.

Good luck with your new work at Google and good luck with your family.
:) Hope to see you at Hong Kong.

Cheers,

--
Luca "Sannita" Martinelli
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utente:Sannita

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http://scottmacleod.com

--

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