Very excited after what has been a very productive and interesting summit, here you will find the first of a series of posts about the birth of ind.ie
I arrived in a sunny and wonderful Brighton the 3rd of july heading straight to the headquarters of indie-phone where Jo, Laura, Victor, Andy and Oskar where brilliantly handling the last details to prepare the event in an amazingly calm and positive ambience.
Aral was preparing his keynote speech, where he acted the head of the Schnail mail organization. A clear and figurative analogy to what Gmail does everyday to billions of emails.
After a quick but yummy stir fry lunch prepared by Laura we headed to the Sallis Benney Theatre to finish preparing the stage and all details for the summit. Aral extremely focused and sharp solved all problems like a breeze with a solid support from Jo and Laura.
The evening ended in a wine bar with all the speakers, and some inspiring discussions starting to shape the future of the ind.ie foundation, the global rating for programmable connected objects, the importance of design and user experience driven products, ethics and control over our data and software.
The 4th of july the declaration of the independence of the internet!
The summit started with a crazy dream in the offices of Schnail mail, the analogy with traditional mail of what gmail is doing everyday, is very clear and comprehensible, do watch it. Waking up form the dream/nightmare Aral started his keynote by recalling and highlighting the problems of a digital world where personal data is not owned by the people but by a few companies who as a consequence have full control over you.
In a digital world where your physical self is ever more represented by a digital persona, if you do not own and control your data, you are owned and controlled by those who do, and as a consequence we are no more than lab rats in a closed maze, this is what Aral defines as the business model of corporate surveillance: studying, understanding, predicting and manipulating you.
This is why it is fundamental to have an appealing alternative that is accessible and ethical, here comes into play the ind.ie foundation where the values are defined by the ind.ie manifesto whose aim is to help and inspire organisations to be independent, sustainable, with alternative business models that are not based on exit strategy but made for the longterm, design-led and diverse, in order to generate products that are holistically beautiful, free, social, accessible, distributed and secure as a core design feature for a future where we own and control our tools and our data and enjoy fundamental freedoms and democracy.
Coming next, the talks of the 4th of July
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