Sweden’s ‘Internetdagarna’ delves deeper into ICT content


    Internetdagarna (“The Internet Days”) has long been one of the highlights of the Swedish tech calendar. Last year, I recall meeting a number of amazing start-ups at Internet Discovery day. Some, like Memoto, have since gone from small Swedish fry to global sensations. Apart from meeting a number of ICT entrepreneurs, I was also privileged to hear Lawrence Lessig, a Harvard law professor and one of the founders of the Creative Commons, speak.

    This year promises to hold the same kind of appeal – but with new speakers and a new format. First, the organisers have decided to create a “streamed” approach to the event, with several smaller, specialised whole-day streams running concurrently. According to organiser Niklas Seren of .SE, the idea is to “go deep” into several streams, while still catering to a wide variety of interests: “the Internet Days has the aim to be a conference for everyone that works with or care for the Internet as a big part of our present and future lives. So to make the conference more available we keep the width but add the depth. That way we hope more people will be attracted and more knowledge and network will be shared. That is also the reason we have substantially reduced the price.” Some of these streams include:

    • IT and entrepreneurship
    • Open Data
    • Internet in Schools
    • Digital Participation
    • IPv6
    • APIs
    • Security

    Of course, the same Internet Discovery Day that I met Memoto at last year will be one of the streams available again this year. Participants then come together to hear for presentations by big international names in IT.

    Second, those big names. Which big names, you ask? .SE, the organisers of Internetdagarna, have arranged for several big international names: Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia and the Wikipedia Foundation and Jane McGonigal, the game designer known for her TED talks, who believes in the power of games for more than just entertainment, are just the first two. Jono Bacon, the community manager for Ubuntu will also be speaking, as will former CNN journalist and founder of Global Voices online, Rebecca MacKinnon.

    If this sounds like your kind of conference, .SE have also been kind enough to send us a code for a reduction on the ticket price here. Hope to see you there!

    .SE have also kindly offered ArcticStartup readers a 20% discount on the ticket price. Quote the code IND13 (in capital letters) when booking, to take advantage of it.