Inspiration

Yesterday I went to an inspiration day hosted by the aid organisation Diakonia. To be fare I mostly went because my father who is an activist persuaded me to come so that we could do something together. But all the same the day was not completely wasted from an inspirational point of view. I don't think that I will start to work with international aid just yet but it was interesting to get to meet so many engaging and active people.

From the speakers I found two quite interesting. David Orlic talking about his thoughts about the way to use Internet in campaigns and how successful campaigns work. Unfortunately there is quite a step to go from an analysis of how successful campaigns work to how you construct a successful campaign. The claim that you do not need money to create a successful campaign is true but I doubt that it implies that money can't buy you better chances to have a successful campaign.
We got to hear about the ideas that one should try to go from talk to action, message to news, and from audience to participants. You also have to fit your launch to what he described as the cultural calender. Over all it was an interesting talk and you might actually have heard of one of his accomplishments. The very strange idea that the Swedish government should give up their twitter account to more or less random Swedish people for a week each, made it to news media in China and the US. In the US it was mentioned in the New York Times and the Colbert Report. (The following interview with Paul Krugman is also worth watching.) Although I guess that of those two it was only the New York Times that wrote something about what the campaign was about, getting people to notice that Sweden is a progressive country.
The talk also put a lot on stress on who the audience trust and I came to think of the old saying “What the audience wants is sincerity, once you can fake that you got it.” Though David did not recommend that you try and fake it.

The other speaker was one of the entertainers, a guy with really good material in a mix of stand-up, spoken word, and songs. His name is Emil Jensen if you have an opportunity to see him, do that!