Projekt:Podcast/Avsnitt 341
Avsnitt 341
Inspelningsdatum: 30 januari 2026
Publiceringsdatum: 2 februari 2026
Lyssna:
Extern länk: https://wikipediapodden.se/wikimedia-futures-lab-derk-jan-hartman-341/
Programanteckningar
Programledare är Jan Ainali.
Special episode
This is the first episode in a series of ten short interviews recorded at the Wikimedia Futures Lab in Frankfurt. In the first episode, recorded on day one before the opening, we meet Derk-Jan Hartman, User:TheDJ, member of the Product and Technology Advisory Council.
Transcript
Welcome to Wikipediapodden and this series of interviews from the Wikimedia Futures Lab in Frankfurt the last weekend of January 2026. My name is Jan Ainali. Here we will meet participants, panelists and organizers to give you an idea of what happened at the lab. The interviews took place over three days with the first one just before it started and the last just after the closing ceremony. So you will get to gauge where the attendees were at each point in time. This is the first episode of ten.
My name is Derk-Jan Hartman or User:TheDJ. I'm a member of PTAC which is our product technology advisory council for WMF and I'm a long-term volunteer developer for MediaWiki.
Nice to have you here on the podcast and on the Wikimedia Futures Lab which is in Frankfurt. What made you want to come to this I guess conference or workshop lab? We don't really know yet.
We don't really know yet but I think for me I'm a little bit of a generalist so I like to get into a little bit of everything even though I'm very much a technology focused person within the organization. I like to put out feelers throughout the organization and see what is going on and understand how that affects what we're working on and how we can do that for more people than the few people that I usually see within my circles. My English Wikipedia circle, my development circle.
And this conference or event is sort of vaguely painted as we need to react to the world around us. Do you also feel that there's an urge to do something now?
I think there's always the need to do that but there does seem to be some sort of like urgency or like more profound sense of yeah we need to come up with a new thing or the next generation of things simply based on what is happening around us. Not only in the technology with AI and everything but also with the political and the more polarized world that we live in. A lot of other interests that people have outside of the old internet. So I think that there is especially at this time a little bit more of a sense of we need to really start thinking about what to do.
The conference is sort of focused also on three different goals. It's discussing the key global trends and their impact on Wikimedia. It's foster movement belonging and propose and adapt strategies to stay relevant. Which ones of these do you make like more excited? Oh here I want to contribute. I have some ideas already.
I'm interested in all three but the one that really interests me is like how can we engage people and bring them into what we do? Make them enthusiastic for what we do? Like is there new ways we can think of that would motivate people to contribute to become part of the movement so to speak? So that's where my interests are. Like is there something we can do to motivate more people to find these people and make them part of what we do?
Perhaps the last question. Now we're just before the opening of this so we don't have any answers of anything yet but what are your expectations? What do you hope come out of this?
I hope a lot of new fresh ideas that can be explored. It's always really difficult with a conference like this. You get so many ideas so much happens. A lot of it sort of goes like the wind. It's gone again immediately but a few things will stick and I hope there will be a lot of people sort of like taking notes and trying to incorporate that into their work later on and the main thing that will happen I think is that everybody will have a sore throat from talking at the end.
And is there some final thought that I didn't happen to ask you about this because you also volunteered to talk to me? Maybe something to pass along to the people listening to this afterwards?
Well I love that there's people making podcasts around Wikipedia and around our movement. I really wish that we would have more people do that actually. I'm personally a terrible presenter and like I'm not very good at all these kinds of things but I love listening to it. I love watching it so I wish we could have like more of these kinds of shows or podcasts or YouTube series. I think it would be really great and hopefully someone can find a format that really strikes a chord with people.
All right, thanks to Derk-Jan. This was the first interview out of ten. When all are published you will find them on Wikimedia Commons both in the Wikimedia Futures Lab and Wikipediapodden categories and of course on Wikipediapodden.se under the Wikimedia Futures Lab tag. There you can also find other episodes in English.