Projekt:Podcast/Avsnitt 342
Avsnitt 342
Inspelningsdatum: 30 januari 2026
Publiceringsdatum: 3 februari 2026
Lyssna:
Extern länk: https://wikipediapodden.se/wikimedia-futures-lab-mayur-%e0%a4%ae%e0%a4%af%e0%a5%82%e0%a4%b0-342/
Programanteckningar
Programledare är Jan Ainali.
Special episode
This is the second episode in a series of ten short interviews recorded at the Wikimedia Futures Lab in Frankfurt. In this episode, recorded about noon on day one, we meet Mayur मयूर, Senior Director for Movement Communications at the Wikimedia Foundation.
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 second episode of ten.
Hello, I'm Mayur. I'm from the Wikimedia Foundation.
And we're here after the first day of the Wikimedia Futures Lab. Why is this happening now?
Well, you know, we're living through a time of great change, both in the world, but also in our movement, in our projects. And the Futures Lab is an attempt to try and get us all together to discuss what does the world need from us now? You know, with all this change, how do we adapt, iterate, improve, stay the same? What are the things that we should do together?
This is a collaboration between Wikimedia Deutschland and Wikimedia Foundation. And we're in Frankfurt. So how does this collaboration come together?
I mean, if I were to describe it, it's sort of like a Wikipedia page. It has two editors working together. We write different parts, improve each other's work, help catch things. And yeah, it's been a great collaboration working together, the Wikimedia Foundation and Wikimedia Deutschland, but also not just our two organizations, because in the run up to the event, we had Wikimedians from around the world give us like helpful advice, tips, what to discuss, how to discuss it. And during the next three days, we'll have lots of Wikimedians coming on stage. You heard some of them earlier today, like Alek was there, and there'll be lots more. Just sharing, you know, their perspective and helping us all think differently and hopefully experiment.
And you have defined three goals for the ones and I'm going to repeat them here. It's foster movement, belonging, it's discussing the key global trends and their impact and propose and adapt strategies to stay relevant. How did you come up to these three goals of all different things that we could have done and talked about?
I mean, the first one really speaks to, I think, who we are as a movement. This is a movement made of humans, we all connect, we all, you know, we are doing this together collaboratively. And so to feel like you belong to something bigger than yourself, I think is really powerful. Earlier today, one of the panelists talked about collective intelligence and how, you know, the projects of Wikimedia are an example of people coming together, sharing knowledge and the sum of the total being bigger than the parts. So that movement belonging one, that's why that's the first goal. Because us coming together, that's the most important thing. The second goal talking about, you know, how do we deal with these future trends that we're all experiencing and whether it's declines in contributors that we might be seeing on our projects, you know, there are fewer friends around. How do we bring new friends on board and new people to contribute to Wikipedia? Whether the trend is, you know, how do we respond to AI? Or how do we think about reuse of our content? You know, these are all trends that we have to think about together. So that's why that second goal is like, preparing ourselves for the future. And that last part, preparing ourselves, that's what that third goal is about, is coming up with experiments we can all do when we go back, whether that might be on the project we contribute to or the organization we're a part of. What can we do differently? Yeah, how do we adapt?
What are your hopes that the participants here, it's about 100 people who have applied to get to go here and talk and listen. What do you hope they will bring back to their communities?
So I'm gonna make this joke later on day three, but I'll give it to you now. I'm a big Star Trek fan. I know I'm amongst my people when I'm with Wikimedians. The one thing all Star Trek captains had in common, whether it's Kirk, Picard or Janeway, is that they all kept the captain's log. I am hoping Wikimedians in this room will be keeping their own captain's log, that they then go back out to their communities and share with people. We're also going to be doing work to bring this event to different regions, different communities, in a virtual format, because not everyone can travel and it's actually a better way to get people thinking, meeting, doing virtually. So we're going to have some virtual outreach from this event, but also we're hoping all the participants here can go back and share from their captain's log.
And finally perhaps, if you already know or not, is this plan to be a repeating event? Is this a one-off maybe every fifth year or tenth year or is there other plans for that?
So this is an experiment, an experiment that's hoping to generate lots of experiments. So we don't know. That's the honest answer right now, is it's the first of its kind. What shape it takes in the future, I think we have to experiment, we have to see the results, measure it, etc. and then see where we go, whether it's in the same format or a different format, to be seen.
All right, thank you Mayur.
Thank you very much.
This was the second 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.