08-09, 14:00–14:55 (Poland), Istanbul (10)
Language: English
The panel will aim to review current advocacy strategies in the free knowledge movement and identify ways in which they need to be adapted. We are in particular interested in understanding how an expanded view of free knowledge – that takes into considerations new challenges around concentration of power, surveillance, market competition or emergent technologies - requires us to revise our advocacy strategies.
The panel session at Wikimania on free knowledge advocacy will aim to review current strategies and identify ways in which they need to be adapted. We are in particular interested in understanding how an expanded view of free knowledge – that takes into considerations new challenges around concentration of power, surveillance, market competition or emergent technologies - requires us to revise our advocacy strategies. One of our key concerns is addressing the paradox of Open: the fact that open and free sharing remains a key way of challenging concentrations of power, but sometimes also enables these concentrations.
The panel will be organized by Melissa Hagemann from BOAI and Alek Tarkowski Open Future, and we will be inviting additional speakers engaged in advocacy work both on behalf of the Wikimedia Movement and partner organizations.
We will discuss what are the key challenges to free knowledge that we can address through advocacy; how our advocacy strategies need to adapt to new challenges, and what are new narratives that are best suited to support succesful advocacy work.
The aim of the session will be twofold:
* to present our previous research on new advocacy strategies for free knowledge, including Open Future’s “Shifting Tides” study and a series of online workshops organized together with SPARC.
* and to get input from participants on new advocacy strategies and related narratives.
The session is part of a longer series of research, workshops and conversations on the issue of free knowledge advocacy, which the co-speakers have been organizing in the last two years. This includes the “Shifting Tides” research project (https://openfuture.eu/publication/shifting-tides/) and a series of online workshops organized in the first half of 2024.
Session recording: https://youtu.be/LWWUXW1O3Q4?list=PLhV3K_DS5YfJ1xyY0LNDNX3RKyRQEXOdB&t=17511
Our work on knowledge sharing advocacy is by design collaborative – we believe that sense making and strategies have to be done collectively to be meaningful – especially with regard to advocacy, where pooling capacities and efforts is crucial for success.. We are also doing this work under the assumption that shared strategies are a way of making our movement stronger.
What is the experience level needed for the audience for your session?* –This session is for an experienced audience
How do you plan to deliver this session?* –Onsite in Katowice
What other themes or topics does your session fit into? Please choose from the list of tags below. –Collaboration
Alek Tarkowski is the Director of Strategy at Open Future. He is also a member of the Board of Directors of Creative Commons. He has 20 years of experience with public interest advocacy and movement building. He is a sociologist by training and holds a Ph.D. in sociology from the Polish Academy of Science. Previously, he was part of the Wikimedia Movement Strategy process as a member of the Partnerships working group.
Melissa has been a leader of the Access to Knowledge movement for over twenty years. She managed the Open Society Institute’s (now Open Society Foundations) work to define Open Access through the Budapest Open Access Initiative and went on to support the development of the global Open Access movement. To mark the 20th anniversary of the BOAI, she spearheaded the development of new recommendations which emphasize that Open Access is not an end in itself, but a means to further ends, above all, to the equity, quality, sustainability, and usability of research.
Melissa served as a member of the WMF’s Advisory Board and WMF’s
Selection Committee for Executive Director and Board of Trustees.