From August 30 to September 1, Pirates from the three neighbouring countries Germany, Czech Republic and Poland met in Dresden for the first PP³ conference. As a real and productive surprise, Pirates from Austria and France also made the long trip to join the meeting.

The meeting included a video conference with a Czech pirates board member, Mikuláš Ferjenčík; the manager of the election campaign in Saxony, Mark Neis; and Zbigniew Łukasiak, the vice president of the Polish pirates. The fast approaching sequence of elections in Germany, Austria and Czech Republic, and the European parliamentary elections next year was the main subject of the discussions.

The focus was on the many practical details that the pirate parties can do to support each other and make the election campaigns more effective. From sharing know-how, equipment, graphics or posters to physically helping with putting them up – they discussed in detail how they might collaborate effectively and what could yield the most return.

To jump start the collaboration, the participants took part in a flashmob event that was part of the pan-European International Day of Privacy 2013 initiative. They discretely infiltrated a public square and at a given sign all fell down, then got their bodies contours sketched out on the pavement, finally filled these sketches with slogans about privacy and freedom. These body sketches were an effective way to attract passers by attention for a long time after the flash mob. This was a great support for the start of a new phase of the Saxony pirates election campaign and also a part of the “Freedom not Fear campaign that will culminate with a huge demonstration to defend privacy in Berlin on September the 7th.

Soon sharing was also initiated with the Saxon Pirates lending their badge making machine to the Czech Pirates for hand pressing short series of election campaign badges.

As a symbol for the collaboration, a t-shirt-on-tour was started. The idea is that this t-shirt from the Saxon pirates will travel around the world, changing hands wherever pirates from different countries meet.

The whole meeting had a pleasant, piratic mood.

The next PP³ will be held in Plzen, Czech Republic, in February 2014.

About Zbigniew Łukasiak

I am a 40 years old programmer from Poland. I am fascinated (and scared) by the way Internet changes our societies and I want to take a part in that. I believe the changes has only just begun and they will be deep. I have a degree in Computing Science – but I read a lot on psychology, sociology and other other related subjects. I am agnostic or even atheist but I am fascinated by Rene Girard. I am a Free and Open Source Software passionate (https://github.com/zby) and I joined Interenet Society Poland when there was a Free Software chapter, and I stayed there while ISOC Poland fighted the patent directive and retency laws in the European Parliament. I have been involved in reinstaing the Polish Pirate Party. Pollitically I am maybe close to libertarians – but I am not a dogmatic and I also believe that our new ways of communicating and working will also require new politics. I speak fluently in Polish and English and I can communicate in Russian and French and know a bit of Spanish. I joined your list mostly to look around – I am not a professional writer – but I am very interested in working on the Pirate pollitical dogma and I think this needs to be done internationally.
I have three blogs:
http://brudnopis.blogspot.com (general)
http://perlalchemy.blogspot.com/ (programming related)
http://brudnopispirata.blogspot.com (pirate related, in Polish)

 

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From August 30 to September 1, Pirates from the three neighbouring countries Germany, Czech Republic and Poland met in Dresden for the first PP³ conference. As a real and productive…