Event:Listening party: Decolonizing Structured Data

Whose Knowledge? is celebrating the 12th birthday of Wikidata with a listening party for the third season of Whose Voices?, a podcast series that is part of our work of centering and documenting our stories, voices, and knowledges online.

Whose Voices?

Last year, we published the Decolonizing The Internet – East Africa series, which brought together insightful and heartfelt conversations with feminists from East Africa about their work and ideas for an anti-oppression internet.

This year, we’re diving deep into Decolonizing Structured Data, featuring conversations with Wikipedians and Wikidata enthusiasts and builders about what structured data is, how, and why it’s important to apply a critical lens to its creation and use.

Decolonizing Structured Data episodes

In this season, we have five new episodes:

Episode	About	Listen	Read
Ep. 1 - “Nothing about us without us”: Dumisani Ndubane reflects on ways to decolonise structured data	“What are we teaching machines about us humans?” Our guest, Dumisani Ndubane, an open-knowledge activist from South Africa, asks this important question in the newest episode of Whose Voices?. Maari Maatreyi from Whose Knowledge? sits down with the prolific African wikimedian and community builder to discuss African anti-colonial perspectives on structured data.	A Whose Voices podcast episode from the Decolonizing Structured Data season - Ep. 27	Wikisource transcription
Ep. 2 - Cuestionando cómo los datos estructurados invisibilizan las realidades y narrativas LGBTQIA+, con Vic Sfriso	¿Cuál es la perspectiva epistémica que da forma a las estructuras del conocimiento y a las iniciativas de conocimiento abierto en los proyectos Wikimedia? Como lo expresa Vic Sfriso, responsable del Programa de Cooperación en Wikimedia Argentina, las formas de conocer y hacer vinculadas al Norte Global son predominantes en el wikiverso.	A Whose Voices podcast episode from the Decolonizing Structured Data season - Ep. 28	Wikisource transcription
Ep. 3 - Making structured data more accessible with Kira Wisniewski	What are the happy speculations that come up when we approach structured data as we know it in critical ways? What are the questions bubbling up to the surface for us as feminists and collectives?	A Whose Voices podcast episode from the Decolonizing Structured Data season - Ep. 29	Wikisource transcription
Ep. 4 - Alice Kibombo explores how librarians can use structured data.	Librarians are not strange to the wonders of structured data, even when they do not call it as such. With numerous catalogues, files, and archives to sort out and information to make accessible and findable, it is part of their day-to-day. Or, as Alice Kibombo, a librarian at the Goethe-Zentrum Kampala, in Uganda, describes its relevance: “On a scale from 1 to 10, eleven.”	Coming soon
Ep. 5 - Unpacking Wikidata’s possibilities with Lydia Pintscher	Have you ever wondered who is in charge of the Wikipedia infoboxes that pop up when searching about a public figure, place or a random question you have? In this episode, Whose Knowledge? speaks to one of the people who build the knowledge graphs that inform these info boxes [and many other applications!], through Wikidata. Lydia Pintscher is the portfolio lead manager for Wikidata and has been at the forefront of democratizing access to this open-source data repository.	Coming soon

At the end of the series, we’re gathering with friends and allies for a party to share highlights, feelings, thoughts and our enthusiasm for structured data.

Join us and stay tuned!

Illustration for Wikidata's birthday. Designed by Jasmina El Bouamraoui.

This listening party will take place on November 8th at 1 pm UTC via Zoom, co-held by our Decolonizing Wikimedia team, Mariana Fossatti and Sunshine Fionah Komusana, and our Radical Communications team, Priscila Bellini and Youlendree Appasamy.

Register to the event on the top of this page, and you will get the Zoom link and receive email notifications about the launch of each episode.