The board of trustees of OCLC meets at least five times per year. We usually meet in the headquarters city, which is Dublin, Ohio. Once per year we meet somewhere outside of Dublin. The last few such meetings were in Boston, Seattle, and Toronto. This year it was in Florence, Italy. My wife and I decided to go a few days early and spend some time in Rome.
The food, wine, Roman ruins, and hotel room at Cavalieri Waldorf Astoria were all great. The historical sites are amazing. I had seen them some years ago but was happy to see them again. Looking at 100 foot marble columns made 2,000+ years ago is mind boggling. The fountains all over the city deliver clear clean water with no pumps — an engineering feat to behold. The Pantheon, Colosseum, and the Roman Forum are among many other sites that make you wonder, “How they did they do that?” For transportation around the city we used Metro subway tourist passes and Uber. Uber reportedly has 200 drivers in Rome. They all used spotless Mercedes E Class cars and the rates were less than a taxi. Photos from Rome are here.
We took a train from Rome to Florence. It was a ninety minute ride and provided beautiful views of snow capped mountains. Florence is much smaller than Rome. There was no Uber service, but we could easily walk anywhere in the city. We had seen the David some years ago, and it remains a marvel. It is said that if you see the David, there is no reason to look at any other sculptures because none can equal the craftsmanship of Michelangelo’s great work. Photos from Florence are here.
A highlight of our time in Florence was the FryskLab. Bibliotheekservice Fryslân, a library organization in the Netherlands, developed FryskLab, a mobile lab facility from a former book mobile. The goal of the FryskLab is to bring digital fabrication skills to primary and secondary school students. The FryskLab bus made the long trip from the Netherlands to Italy and plans to continue on to Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Belgium, and France. The bus contains three 3-D printers and a laser engraving printer along with MacBooks and iPads to facilitate learning and making things. I could not resist using Doodle3D on the iPad and printing a 3-D image of Health Attitude.
See more about the exciting FryskLab project, sponsored in part by OCLC, here and on the FryskLab Facebook page.
The only disappointment during the trip to Italy was WiFi. Nobody made it simple. One restaurant had an access point named TELECOM-67583117 and the password was trattoriadavelentino00184. Could they make it any harder? Some of the passwords were annoying and unnecessary, but at least the service was free. Not so at the wonderful Cavalieri Waldorf Astoria. To get charged $25 Euros ($28.50) per day for WiFi was an insult. I consider it gouging. They charge the high fee because they know people want it. There rationale is that WiFi is free in the public areas of the hotel and if you want it in your room, you have to pay. Making matters worse, the consistency and the speed of the WiFi service was poor. The high-speed train to Florence offered WiFi for one cent for 24 hours. We checked into the Hotel Brunelleschi in the center of Florence. WiFi there was included in the price of the room. Our last night was at the Rome Airport Hilton. They charged 20 euros for WiFi.
I have always believed WiFi should be like the other things you expect in your room: heat, a/c, electricity, TV, and water. The Cavalieri obviously sees WiFi as an incremental profit opportunity. WiFi does have a cost associated with it, but in my opinion, that should be bundled in the price of the room. It is the principle of adding on the charge after you check in that I object to. As some airports and many hotels offer free WiFi, the high charges from those who do not stand out and leave a bad taste for what otherwise may have been a good experience.
