Getting social in the Swedish countryside

Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Getting social in the Swedish countryside

Have you heard of a summer camp for the social web? Neither had we. So when Google was invited to join the Sweden Social Web Camp 2012, we couldn’t resist.

Sweden Social Web Camp started out as an online community where people with different backgrounds and experiences shared a passion for the web. After a couple of years they decided to meet face-to-face and ironically chose the most offline spot imaginable - the small island of Tjaro in the archipelago of southern Sweden.

This year's event brings together more than 500 Internet evangelists, opinion leaders, social media frontrunners, bloggers, journalists, entrepreneurs and general web lovers. It's all about sharing ideas and initiating discussions on topics ranging from the challenges of the web and the future media landscape to technical developments and hands-on engineering challenges. There are no big keynote speeches or stages. Instead, anyone can invite participants to a presentation, discussion, or creative workshop on any topic related to the web. The sessions take place from early morning by the breakfast in the barn until late night by the campfire.



Besides listening and learning from some great talks and discussions, we took the opportunity to present the latest features of Google+ and share some of our thoughts on the social web. We also brought the event to all of the people who were not lucky enough to be on site by broadcasting some of the sessions live via Hangouts On Air on the Sweden Social Web Camp website and Google+ Page. Thanks to everyone who joined in!

We hope Social Web Camps will spread across Europe - bringing the passion of online communities together in the real world!