Right now the top trending hashtag for Sweden on Twitter is #SSWC and SSWC stands for Sweden Social Web Camp. It is an unconference taking place on an island (Tjärö) in Southern Sweden, to which you need to travel on a small ferry. The ferry is so small it usually takes 5-10 round trips to bring all the participants to the island.
On the island this year there are approx. 450 participants and there you can find freelancers, consultants, programmers, web hosting companies, CEOs, marketing officers, regular employees, government agencies, senior advisors to the Swedish government, media folks, PR folks, live national radio and hundreds of sheep running around. You can even find a couple of families.
One cool thing is that there is barely any internet on the island. For this event they connect key spots on the island using plain old wire, and at the key spots there are routers hung in trees so that the participants can enjoy a (free) broadband wireless network (mostly used to publish images to Instagrams and to check the Twitter feed).
Being an unconference each participant has a chance to host a session. There is a grid that is somewhat filled with sessions (voting online before the event) but it is a large grid and plenty of room for everyone. If you do not make it to the grid there is always Twitter where you can announce a session off the grid.
Among the sessions this year you can see the new Memoto lifelogging camera, you could enter to win one of 40 seats to fly over the surrounding landscape in a fullsize helicopter (courtesy of web hosting company City Network), you could have been sailing for a week prior to the event, on one of two large vessels and during those trips worked to raise money for youths with cancer.
In the evening you can enjoy one or several beers and glasses of wine, listen to the music from the small dancefloor, eat some hot dogs (courtesy of web hosting company FS Data), hang out with old and new friends, run away into the night for a swim, make out in a tent or go to sleep early.
I attended the event last year and it was great. I missed my family but I pushed through and feel a bit sad this year since I am not there. I am home with my daughter because my wife is at a large fair in Stockholm, selling WoodWick and Bridgewater candles. Maybe next year?
