Reimagining Collaborations: Communities Beyond Wikimedia

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Reimagining Collaborations: Communities Beyond Wikimedia

Wednesday 24 December 2025, 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm IST

36th DCW Conversation Hour

This conversation hour features Pavan Santhosh, an experienced Wikimedian and open knowledge practitioner who has been actively contributing to the Telugu Wikipedia and its sister projects since 2015. He has worked extensively across Indian Wikimedia communities, supporting community growth, capacity building, and collaboration. From December 2015 to July 2018, he was associated with the Access To Knowledge (A2K) team, in the capacity of Program Manager, where he played a key role in strengthening Wikimedia communities in India. He was the part of the Wikimedia 2030 Movement Strategy process as a Co-Coordinator for Community Health. Currently, he is the Program Manager for the Open Knowledge Initiatives at IIIT Hyderabad, continuing his work at the intersection of open knowledge, communities, and institutions.

In this conversation, Pavanp will focus on reimagining how Wikimedia communities engage and collaborate beyond the movement, moving past traditional outreach models toward more meaningful, reciprocal partnerships. The discussion will critically examine MediaWiki as a Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) platform and explore why parts of the wider FOSS community do not fully recognize it as such, highlighting gaps and possibilities for alignment. It will also emphasize the importance of understanding the needs, priorities, and contexts of external communities—rather than merely inviting them to contribute—so that collaborations are built on shared goals and mutual benefit. Further, the conversation will address open licensing, re-licensing, and knowledge sharing practices, with a particular focus on how academic institutions, archives, libraries, and galleries can be encouraged to participate willingly in open knowledge creation by responsibly opening up their collections. Through these reflections, the session aims to foster dialogue on sustainable, inclusive, and two-way collaborations that strengthen the open knowledge ecosystem beyond Wikimedia.

Mode: Online Mode
Location: Zoom

Link (if applicable): Copy link – or download calendar item (.ics)

Keywords: DCW Conversation Hour

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