Speakers

Rick Falkvinge

Rick Falkvinge is the founder of the first Pirate Party, and a political evangelist for its ideas of freedoms of speech and expression. In particular, he stresses how industrial interests of the 1900s are fighting the net’s core values, the ability for everybody to publish their ideas and creations, and how these industries drive us towards a Big Brother society. On this platform of civil liberties, his party became the largest in the below-30 demographic in the 2009 European Elections, beating the political competition on less than one percent of their campaign budget. This can be largely attributed to new ways of organizing large numbers of people that he created and applied while leading the party.

An entrepreneur at heart, he founded his first company at 16, and has remained a trailblazer since. Because of his successes in cost-effective management and changing policy, he has been named a Top Global Thinker by Foreign Policy magazine, as well as shortlisted as one of the world’s most influential people by TIME Magazine. When not making policy, keynoting about cost-effective management, or exploring technical subjects in detail, Mr. Falkvinge can usually be seen cooking, sampling a scotch whisky, or riding a fast motorcycle.