Institutions on the fediverse
This panel brings together experts who have helped bring prestigious cultural centers and public institutions on the Fediverse. Jonas Smith will describe how he set up a Mastodon instance for the National Gallery of Denmark (SMK), the country's largest art museum. Maxime Guedj will recount how he collaborated with the Service Numérique of the French Ministry of Culture, leading a 9-month experiment that brought prestigious museums and cultural centers to the Fediverse (including, most recently, the Musée d'Orsay). Manfred Zielinski will share his experience in establishing social.overheid.nl, the Dutch government’s Mastodon instance, which now hosts 50+ government organizations.
Manfred Zielinski is Project Manager for Digital Commons at the Dutch Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations. He leads the social.overheid.nl initiative, a government-hosted Mastodon instance in the Fediverse, enabling public sector organizations to communicate in a transparent, privacy-respecting, and interoperable way.
His work emphasizes public values like autonomy, trust, and open standards, ensuring that digital communication aligns with the principles of a responsible and ethical public sector.
At the Open Source Conference Luxembourg, he will share how Fediverse technologies can empower governments to uphold these values in their digital strategies.
Maxime Guedj is a software engineer and entrepreneur. In 2009, he created the Facebook page Je Ne Peux Pas Vivre Sans Musique, which grew to 1.7 million fans, followed by the music discovery and social networking site T’écoutes Quoi ? and the MailTape artist collective. He joined Deezer as a product manager in 2015, then became Director of Digital Strategy at the magazine Ebdo in 2018.
He is also the co-author, with journalist Anne-Sophie Jacques, of Déclic (Les Arènes, 2020), an essay examining the social, and democratic costs of dominant digital platforms. The book explores how free software, ethical design, privacy protection, and decentralized networks can help people reclaim agency online.
Today, as an independent consultant and founder of Pcfh Studio, he helps mission-driven companies and nonprofit organizations grow. His work with IndieHosters included contributing to Liiibre, a shared digital infrastructure and suite of free-software tools enabling organizations to replace proprietary platforms with open, ethical, and sustainable alternatives.
More recently, Pcfh Studio was commissioned by the French Ministry of Culture’s digital service to design and lead a program exploring independent social networks for the cultural sector. This initiative led to the creation of reseauCulture.fr, a Mastodon instance that Maxime now coordinates and moderates. It brings together institutions such as the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, Paris Musées, Palais de Tokyo, Musée d’Orsay, and Odéon–Théâtre de l’Europe.
Jonas Heide Smith is Head of Digital at SMK (the national gallery of Denmark). He has a PhD from IT University of Copenhagen and believes that cultural heritage wants to be free. @jonassmith@mstdn.dk on Mastodon.