Olivettiani – Online Community

A community united around shared experiences and ideals

The “Olivettiani” community was born in 2008, on the initiative of Mauro Ballabeni, with the objective of maintaining and increasing relationships between those who had a work experience at Olivetti, a company that was a worldwide anticipator of themes related to social sustainability, still indicated today as a model from which to draw inspiration and stimulus. Amapola joined Olivettiani by virtue of the past professional experiences of some members of its team. For Olivettiani, Amapola created the website and supports, also with its video storytelling team, the organization of the annual gathering, which has been held in Milan uninterruptedly since 2010. These initiatives aim to collect the testimonies and ideas of former Olivetti employees, an experience that still today represents for many, in Italy and in the world, a binding element capable of promoting and cementing, even at a virtual level, important personal and professional relationships. In 2019 Amapola also supported the promotion of the conservation activities of the “mythical” Elea 9003, the first fully transistor electronic computer in the world, made by Olivetti in 1959. A specimen of this mega-computer (as big as a tennis court) is preserved and kept alive in Bibbiena (AR) by a group of technicians, now elderly, who participated as very young people in the design and commissioning of this precursor. The agency launched a crowdfunding campaign in 2020 to make a documentary about this extraordinary story.