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This is not going to be a thesis on the most philosophical of all the questions: it is more a sort of short story about what led me to open up this website many years ago, the ideas around it (on which I'm still working) and some thoughts about it's future (that I honestly wish to be quite bright).
Some bits of its history
To start from the very beginning I might say that a rough idea of the site popped in my mind in 1994 when the Internet as we know it nowadays was almost a dream for many (me included) and many others didn't even know about its existence. At the time, chit-chatting on a BBS that I still remember with a bit of melancholy (the unforgettable "AmigaLink" in Grosseto) I thought about creating one that could serve the needs of the citizens from Maremma. Unfortunately the time was damn wrong and I was way too young to invest so much time or money into it (you know... studying at school was useful but really time consuming!): so all these projects remained what they were: just some megalomaniac thoughts.
The change in the technologies and the internet golden age switched my brain back on and well... no more personal silly homepage with CV, pictures and Bio. The time was finally right to produce the first static pages that turned to be a hopefully well done marriage between my love for technologies and the places where I grew up.
 "Non tutte le ciambelle escono col buco" as we say when things happen in a way they're not supposed to: from 1999 that I opened the doors of this website many changes have been done and some of those haven't done much good to it: from the handcoded (hardcoded!) html pages with a text editor on the Amiga (may this computer always teach how computing should be!) to the super-cool (and "super-get-old-in-a-year") commercial dynamic systems up to the wanna-be-hackers defacer, all this brought Butterodargento.it to a new era of computing and communication.
Thoughts, hopes and wishes
There is still a lot to be done: new services, better and usable design, more articles to feed the ever growing user-base but still the will to make Butterodargento.it a small cyber-heaven for the citizens of Maremma and for the many tourists that come to enjoy our country, it lives on.
The system on which Butterodargento.it relies (the Joomla CMS) is strong enough to grow with it and it is widely adopted and supported not to get old that soon (open source really matters sometimes!). By the way putting together a community and bring them the needed informations at the right time requires time, patience and a spoon of good will.
To spit it out completely I would like to decide the future of Butterodargento.it together: anyone can support it, participate with his or her contribution and knowledge. Some might have an easy time writing or translating high quality contents; some might just feel like hinting a friend about the website before a trip to Italy. What I truly wish to see is a growing up community of folks falling in love with this fascintating land like I did a long time ago.
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