The second day of The Internet Days conference brought interesting keynotes by Harper Reed and Annie Machon. The conference gathered many of the people in Sweden working with IT in Sweden. The Pirate Times was there to listen in on some of the sessions.

The Swedish political party Feministiskt Initiativ – FI (Feminist Initiative) described how they used social media effectively during the last election campaign. 

Creating positive circles is important. Retweeting everything about them creates positive reinforcement, showing transparency and promoting the activists that are doing things. Promoting when someone mentions them also works for the media; if they notice a lot of readers, when they write about FI, they will write more about them.

The tone needs to be warm with messages that “throw a punch”. Personal stories, adapting symbols, feelings and sharing tips are all part of a successful strategy. Most of the time a short and concise message is enough (e.g. a completely pink picture with the text “stay pink”).

Imitate what works and do exactly that. Adapt current happenings, put your own spin on it and involve/notify the stakeholders. Celebrate as often as you can. Numbers work wonders and are shared a lot.

Most importantly is to have fun inside your organization. Let it show through and your followers will have fun as well. Dare to say YES more often than no. Deliver and do it often, more important that something comes out that can be corrected instead of waiting for the perfect message.

Surveillance and some of the problems

Amelia Andersdotter (former MEP for Piratpartiet) was one of the persons debating surveillance and net neutrality. There is an assumption that the police ought to work for our safety, not that they should invest in tools that threaten our safety. Over-criminalizing problems creates new problems since there is an expectation that someone else should take responsibility. We have an insecurity industry around IT safety today.

Being anonymous is uncommon on the net, however, believing that you are is common”

The need for state control on the net increases with more crimes happening there. The net was compared with the woods as a place that is a bit mysterious and hard to explore.

During a debate about net neutrality one of the representatives mentioned the platitude about being for a free and open internet, hard to say you are against that unless you’re in complete control. One of arguments against net neutrality is that some people feel the need to prioritize certain traffic, the backside of this is that everything else needs then to be down-prioritized . One of the representatives mentioned “exciting possibilities”, implying a desire to bend the concept of net neutrality to their own gains.

“The way to make people free in the 21st century is through free, fair and open information infrastructure” – @doctorow

Analogue stress and the public sector

“Best freudian slip  today by @mosseby? ”analogue sector” instead of ”public sector”…

One of the terms discussed during the talks about digitalizing the public sector was the concept of “analogue stress”. It was defined as the cognitive friction in a person when, used to doing something online,  has to go back to some more inefficient method offline. Hacking the public sector (in a good way) was discussed. How to make use of information to improve the situation. Consistency is key and any “unwanted variation is a sign of poor quality”. A lot of elders feel a re-socialization when they “return to society” through the use of Internet.

“What does combo of robotics + AI imply for our lives and society? Jobs will disappear”

Featured image: CC-BY, Pirate Times

About Josef Ohlsson Collentine

I’m a dual citizen (American/Swede) and try to integrate my reflections from a more global perspective if possible. I’m the organizational leader for Pirate Times and work actively to strengthen the pirate movement through this work as well as being the international contact for Piratpartiet (PPSE). Elected board member of PPSE for 2015-2018.
If you would like to ask me something I speak English, Swedish and Spanish. Find me on the links below

 

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The second day of The Internet Days conference brought interesting keynotes by Harper Reed and Annie Machon. The conference gathered many of the people in Sweden working with IT in Sweden….