[pp.int.general] PPI congress - meeting

[Ole Husgaard]

Hi,

Having participated in the first four PP international conferences, I
can tell you that the conferences are generally quite open. At the first
two conferences PP.dk was not even founded, so I attended as an
interested private person.

I think what has been done at the conferences so far can be split into
three groups:

1) Public meetings. Typically panel discussions discussing pirate
politics, with both pirate politicians and other interested (politicians
or non-politicians) in the panel. These have been announced as public
meetings.

2) More internal discussions. Here we have discussed pirate politics. It
is a great way of coordinating politics. Often we have split these
discussions up into smaller subject groups that discuss various topics
more focused for about half a day before we all meet again and present
the result of the discussions to plenum. Although this is meant to be
internal, the discussions are not really secret. At the Uppsala
conference we even allowed a journalist to observe our internal discussions.

3) Smalltalk and getting to know pirates from other countries
face-to-face. This is often during lunch and dinner, and if we go to
have a beer in the evening.

But please remember that even though the conferences have been quite
open there is no guarantee that all (or any) national parties will adopt
any ideas or texts coming from the conference. One example is the
Uppsala declaration (about EU-Parliament strategy) from the Uppsala
conference that all conference participants agreed too: This text was
strongly rejected by an EU PP that did not attend the conference.

I also have to say that I think these conferences have been very
valuable. All the people attending bring the best ideas and arguments
from their national parties, and we are all inspired by this. And
getting to know pirates from other countries by meeting them
face-to-face is imho also very good for the international cooperation
between the international conferences.

Best Regards,

Ole Husgaard.