Nodes, the network to enhance the skills of those who left and those who remain in Sardinia

Knots that bind people and communities, talents that leave and then return home, making knowledge and skills available. Nodi, the association that created the Sardinian Unlocked event, part of the Region of Sardinia's internationalisation projects, also operates in this scenario. 'In recent years, with Nodi and in partnership with individuals and communities throughout Sardinia,' emphasises Federico Esu, 'we have connected thousands of people who have stayed in Sardinia, left (and thus are part of the diaspora), returned after periods outside the island, and arrived on the island from other parts of Italia and the world, what we call Sardinia's human capital. And it is precisely by following this path that Sardinian Unlocked was conceived last year (at the end of November). An 'experimental and ambitious initiative that would allow us to turn on all these little lights, these dots that we have connected over the years'.

"In the field, 400 people connected from about 15 physical spaces across the island and in other European capitals, and also connected from their homes and offices in many other European cities," Esu recalls, "divided into teams, in about 70 teams, which worked for two consecutive days to generate proposals that they then presented and which basically represent a collective heritage that we are now reading, analysing, collecting so that it becomes a publication and is made available to all stakeholders on the island and outside.

A gamble that in some ways might resemble a hackathon, and in others a participatory process.

'It is a bit of both, even though it combines elements that are also apparently distant from each other,' argues Esu. 'First of all, the focus of Sardinian Unlocked was the generation of policy proposals, measures, initiatives, pan-regional programmes.

As for the future, the founders of Nodi are looking far ahead, starting from the event that was a starting point and not an arrival point. "What will follow is obviously to go beyond a simple weekend," Esu concludes. "We would not like Sardegna Locked to be remembered simply as a nice weekend, but fundamentally to become a new form of participation, a new experimental way of understanding and including people, guaranteeing maximum diversity of disciplines, ages, cultures, languages and even Sardinian and non-Sardinian backgrounds, so that these people feel they really count in the public debate and thus participate in new forms of democracy that we believe are fundamental in these times