Умный регион/Идеология/en

Smart Region.RU
Using possibilities of Wikimedia projects for supporting regional development of the Russian Federation

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“	Culture is not just preservation of tangible and spiritual (intangible) heritage, but also about shaping values that unite people, about creation of new cultural products. Modern level of cultural development requires integration with education system, tourism, sports, archiving and libraries. Culture should not only look back, but is also about looking into the future, being in line with current demands. This is especially true for the youth, who don't accept comparisons with the past and are prone to accept novelties, are very much sensitive to issues of trust and social justice, values opportunities realization of personal potential, benchmarking everything against best international practices. With all due importance to developing citizen responsibility, patriotism and following traditional values, government bodies must at the same time also prioritize developing effective models for early engagement of youth into professional pathways, projects-based activities, internalizing prospective competencies. The environment itself must be shaping value orientations and fashion for being successful, entrepreneurial spirit, mastering unique knowledge and skills, aspiring towards greater development. Needs of creative, talented youth and its associations deserve our special attention: it's important that we develop centers of creative industries, different resource centers. These usually attract people generating interesting unique solutions contributing towards raising quality of life. The experience we have developed around establishing similar sites in large cities of the Republic should be spread to all our municipalities. Our colleges and other institutions of educational institutions should be the key link in this work. Let me underline that our youth should be able to see attractive personal future within the Republic beginning in elementary school years, sense our interest in developing them, creating decent conditions for life and work.	”
— Rustam Minnikhanov (2017)

This page is about why bother doing this in the era of Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, automation, optimization and other cost-cutting for labor.

Innovative potential

Truly valuable things in the era of attention economy and knowledge economy are not goods and services, not even specific content, but the skills of conscious choice of information sources, critical perception of available information and generation of added value — new knowledge. In such an environment, maximizing abilities of regions' citizens and guests to engage own creative potential for common good start becoming increasingly important, and this requires effective transfer of maximum social authority to the level of separate individuals and respective preparation and training thereof for living in such conditions. Innovations transform established cultural perceptions, generate new traditions and approaches. Ability to innovate, capacity to reconsider and change one's world are indeed the things that make humans human, filling people's lives with joy from being co-creators of the new world.

Cooperation in the digital society

Global attractiveness of any territory is defined by the amount of joy and other utility that residents of any region bring into life of all other humans. Against different types of information overload, as well as politicization of аll sorts of questions painting things as either black or white all over the world, Wikimedia projects stay as best platform for constructive cooperation of unlimited number of representatives from various cultures. Teaching respective skills to the old and the young in all regions of Russia and wider around the world, inviting them to engage into similar collaboration to serve their settlement, region, country, culture etc. would both raise their self-esteem, levels of satisfaction, as well as quality of life.

Volunteer-supported Wikimedia projects are recommended for further use because it has no requirement for username registration, relies on user moderation, uses widely acknowledged types of free licenses for content, whilst existing community of participating volunteers, Wikimedia Founding principles as well as specialized ones within each project (see on the example of Wikipedia) provide for continuous improvement of available materials even on disputed topics. In Russia this project is developing by wiki-volunteers in the regions (under the aegis of "Wikimedia RU" Non-Profit Partnership, country chapter of the volunteering Wikimedia movement) in cooperation with local civil, educational, municipal and state institutions, and other interested partners.

Regional development

The intensity of Wikipedia community's presence and activity within specific region, or a language is a litmus test for the degree of civil society strength within related environment, as well as its prospects for developing intellectual capital, creative industries and middle class.

Bright future

Successful implementation of the project is an important part of building Wikimedia world, which will become a significant reality when its principles will be an important part of life for a good share of people in various regions of the planet. Some actions for achieving this reality in Russia can be also seen in the document titled Wikimedia roadmap.

References