The Conference

During our recent travels in Sweden, we were lucky enough to get invited by the highly creative and inspiring people behind Media Evolution to their annual conference called - that’s right - The Conference.

The Conference ran for two days and gathered 40 astonishing international speakers and 900 participants to discuss the future of the media and society. Among the speakers were several great names such as Ben Hammersley (editor-at-large at Wired UK), Ole Ruch (Airbnb), Öjje Holt (Spotify), Lauren Anderson (Collaborative Consumption), Caroline McCarthy (Google) and Jeremy Fisher (Wander). Kllective was also proud to see several of our members there.

For us, this year’s topic was of high interest: factors that are affecting all media industries. Ben Hammersley kicked it off by discussing Human Behaviour - how our behavior have changed radically over the last couple of years due to technology and the web. After that, topics ranged from Access Over Ownership to New Technology to The Future of Interaction Design.

All in all The Conference was an incredibly inspiring event, and we would like to send a big thank you to Sten and Magnus at Media Evolution for inviting us over. The Conference clearly shows that Sweden is a global leader when it comes to creativity and media, and we can’t wait to see what the future holds. It also makes us very proud to have so many Swedish creatives as Kllective members.

Please see the photos below for a little glimpse of The Conference:

Smiling faces greeted you in the morning.

And some accordion music…

The anticipating crowd catching a cup of coffee and breakfast before the show.

Inspiring keynote by Ben Hammersley.

And afterwards Kllective got a private chat with Ben Hammersley himself.

Tricia Wang using immersive ethnography to create commercially relevant insights about how people use digital tools in their everyday lives.

Famous musician, entrepreneur and Kllective member Stellan Colt was there of course.

Inspiring leaders, creative minds and friends of Kllective. From left: Ann-Sofie Sydow (Educational coordinator at The Game Assembly), Per Strömbäck (CEO, Swedish Games Industry) and Sten Selander (Business Development Director, Media Evolution/Nordic Game).

Inspiring keynote by Kate Hartman about physical computing, wearable electronics and conceptual art.

And it all went on into the night with beers and funk music.

Sweden Social Web Camp 2012

As a site and community that aims to foster creativity and collaboration, Kllective is always on the looking for new inspiration and talent from around the world. And during the last months of the European summer, we had the opportunity to travel through the beautiful country of Sweden.

Creativity is alive and well in Sweden, but there is also a big web and tech scene going on. Kllective was lucky enough to get invited to a couple of cool events, and we would like to give you all a little flavour of what it was like.

First we visited a unique and very Swedish event called Sweden Social Web Camp - there was even a floating sauna! For 3 days in mid-August, 400 participants gathered on the small island of Tjärö in Blekinge to camp and discuss the future of the Web around the fire.

Sweden Social Web Camp is an unconference and it’s agenda is entirely created by the participants. The agenda is set on location, and during the 3 days roughly 60 highly interesting presentations were held on topics ranging from “Bank 2.0” to API trends to IP rights in digital media.

All in all, Sweden Social Web Camp was a truly unique and inspiring event. We learned a lot, got the opportunity to meet with some of our members, and we made some new valuable contacts in the process. We would like to thank all of those who made the event possible, and we encourage you all to travel to Sweden next year to try it out for yourself. It is one of those events that’s only going to get bigger.

See below for a couple of photos that we took during the event:

On the ferry on our way out to the island.

Approaching Tjärö.

The floating sauna.

The idyllic walk to the unconference.

The main square.

The program.

The main campsite.

For those who didn’t like sleeping in tents, there were 18th-century Swedish sleeping blocks instead.

The staff had dragged fiber optics all across the island just for the event. And computers need power in tents too :).

One of the conference rooms :).

Another conference room. In the middle of discussing how to best disrupt the banking and financial services industries.

Kllective members Patrik, Anton and Henrik of Istudios were employed to shoot the official SSWC movie. Good work guys!

Google were there to demonstrate how much fun you can have with hangouts.

The obligatory group shot.

Returning to the mainland after a long and inspiring day.

A great video by Topic Simple on why designers shouldn’t undervalue their work. Thanks to Freddy Nager of Atomic Tango for letting us know about this video.

The Swedish Affair

As you might have seen, we traveled to Los Angeles last week to attend and present at an event called The Swedish Affair.

Inspired by their time at SXSW, the organisers of The Swedish Affair wanted to put together a mini networking event which would focus on bringing together the creative industries of Sweden and America. Being an Australian Swedish project, we were very enthusiastic to join this cultural mashup and see what’s going on in Hollywood and Trollywood (if you don’t know, that’s the Swedish Hollywood).

Given that this event was entirely focused on creativity, it made sense that it should be hosted in a unique place - and the folks at The Swedish Affair did not disappoint. The unusual architechture, design and furnishings of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Sowden House

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The Swedish Affair Competition

As you might have seen, the Kllective team is going to Los Angeles to present at The Swedish Affair. This event will be hosted at Sowden House in Hollywood during the week of 4 June and will be a meeting of creative businesses from both Sweden and the United States. As there will be some serious players at the event (including DICE, Massive Entertainment, Avalanche Studios, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Sony, Warner and many more ), we want to show them how awesome our members are.

Therefore, we’ve decided to run a competition for our members with a grand prize of US$250 for the winning team!! Yes that’s right! US$250 just to get on Kllective and create an awesome project.

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Here’s the first collaboration produced by the Kllective family. We’ve had a lot of fun making this video, but it’s time to let this bird fly. Enjoy!

In Search of the Future of Creative Collaboration

The Kllective team believes that collaboration is a great thing, especially amongst creatives. However, we thought it was worth investigating what other people think. The following is a blog from Daniel Nyrén, our (Swedish) co-founder and head of business development, on the current state and benefits of creative collaboration. Enjoy! 

Is creative collaboration, as we know it, dead? 

I recently stumbled upon an article by Patrik Forshage in the Swedish lifestyle magazine Nöjesguiden discussing the romantic concept of “one for all, all for one” in creative collaborations. This philosophy used to be common amongst collaborators, especially the Rock and Roll bands of the 1960s and early 1970s. Bands such as the Beatles, Rolling Stones and Doors, where formed around a tight group of friends who made all important decisions about the band together – whether it be song arrangement or public relations.

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