HiQ Magazine 2016 (English)

75 SE K / 8 €

PRIZE WINNING PIONEER

MEET PERNILLA ANDERSSON

ANONYMOUS

WHAT'S HIDDEN BEHIND THE MASK?

JOBS OF TOMORROW

DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY HERALDS BIG CHANGES

BIG NAMES ON THE NET STARS OF THE DIGITAL AREA

ALSO: CUPCAKE ATMS, VIRTUAL REALITY AND ROBOTS IN THE CLASSROOM 1

2

ADVERTISING AGENCY Kärnhuset EDITORS Pernilla Ahlsén, Peter Häggström Lindecrantz PHOTOS Jonas Bilberg (unless otherwise specified), Gettyimages (p. 42, 45, 62), iStockphotos (p. 32, 35, 38, 43, 46-47) Bo Dahlbom private (p. 36),

Corbis (p. 37), Johan Sanneblad press photo (p. 44) Mia Breitholtz private (p. 63-65), Ola Jansson press photo (p. 21), Karin Lundqvist private (p. 46-47) ILLUSTRATIONS Josefine Bärjed TEXT Pernilla Ahlsén, Peter Häggström Lindecrantz, Laura Manninen PRINT Fridholm & Partners 3

TECHNOLOGY FOR A WORLD THAT IS BETTER – AND MORE FUN, TOO! Welcome to the fourth edition of the prize-winning HiQ Magazine – a magazine in which we focus on the wealth of opportunities created by digital technology and discuss simplicity with people who want to make a difference.

With successes like Minecraft, Battlefield and Angry Birds, Nordic gaming companies have conquered the world. At a time when many totally different businesses are finding inspiration in the gaming industry, we take an in-depth look at the phenomenon known as gamification. We also meet some of the superstars of the digital era and visit a high-tech classroom in Finland. As always, there is plenty of music and also a meeting with a woman who is just as much at home in the boardroom as she is beside the woodpile.

What the internet should be used for and by whom has been a subject of debate for a long time. So HiQ Magazine takes a look at Anonymous, the collective behind the Guy Fawkes mask. We also investigate the jobs of the future and visit New York and Silicon Valley to find out about the very latest trends. And there’s a lot more besides!

At HiQ we see technology and communication as tools to create a better world. For us, innovation is all about simplicity – developing services and products that make everyday life simpler and more fun.

It´s when we connect technology, people and business that we create results that really make a difference.

Welcome to our adventure!

WANT TO SEE MORE? Scan the QR-code or visit our YouTube channel: http://bit.ly/1riaDzX

4

10 22

10 20 22

28 32

28 32

28 38 48

38 44

56

48 56

TWO IMPORTANT LETTERS

UX puts the user centre stage

CAN FILING TIME REPORTS BE FUN?

Sure, with a little inspiration from the world of gaming

THEY LAUGHED WHEN THEY SAW HER MIXING RECORDINGS ON HER LAPTOP

But “Sweden’s most analogue musician” was one of the first producers to work with digital technolog y DIFFERENT STROKES FOR DIFFERENT FOLKS

Diversity drives creativity in a group CYBER TERRORISTS OR DEFENDERS OF FREE SPEECH?

We look closer at hackers who take the law into their own hands

DIGITALISATION GIVES CAREERS ADVISORS A HEADACHE

How can schools prepare students for tomorrow's labour market?

COMMERCIALS ARE SO LAST SEASON

The rise of VR opens up brand new opportunities to market your company

GETTING OTHERS TO GROW AND EXCEL A unique interview with Gunnel Duveblad, HiQ’s new Chair

BIG NAMES FROM THE NET

Do you know today’s megastars?

5

WHEN I COME OUT OF REHEARSALS, I’M ON CLOUD NINE Lars Stugemo is one of the founders of HiQ. He is also a father, rally driver, rock guitarist and music-lover. Meet him in an interview in which he talks about his early career as a flautist, David Bowie and the joy of doing things together.

“I’ve always found energy in music. Energy and joy. I was a big Beatles fan when I was around eight or nine years old, so that’s probably when it started. I used to drive my classmates crazy by constantly playing Beatles songs in ‘fun hour’ at school. There was always music at home when I was growing up. Cornelis Vreeswijk and Fred Åkerström, of course – they were big names back then.

But also a lot of Abba and a fair amount of classical music.”

Did you play any instruments yourself at that age?

“I played the flute, from second grade in school right up to eighth or ninth grade. It was a rather odd combination. I played ice hockey and had my sights set on becoming an NHL professional, so when I cycled to the rink with my hockey bag, there was always a flute sticking out of it next to my hockey stick.”

Why did you choose the flute? It’s an unusual choice for someone who spent most of his time listening to the Beatles.

“Well, I started with the recorder, as you did when you went to school music classes.

Later on we were allowed to choose an in-

6

strument and I chose the guitar. But they needed more players in the woodwind section, so the teacher cajoled me into playing the flute instead. Playing with the orchestra was cool, but as time went on I realised I didn’t have the talent or the enthusiasm to take things any further.”

So when did you take up the guitar?

“That didn’t happen until I was around 30. I found a guitar teacher and started to take lessons. I’ve always loved guitars and I wanted to learn how to play – to see if I could do it. I can honestly say that I’ve never played better than I am doing right now. Being part of the band gives me so much.”

What with your ice hockey, the school orchestra and now the rock band, solo pursuits don’t seem to be your kind of thing. Would you say you’re very much a team player?

“Very much so. Especially as far as music is concerned. It’s about connecting with people, sharing an experience, whether you’re playing in a band or going to a concert together. Or like we used to do years ago, recording a selection of music on a cassette that you could then share with your friends. I’ve met many of my best friends through music.

7

MUSIC – A BIG PART OF HiQ Several offices have bands and at HiQ in Stockholm there is a rehearsal room in the basement.

LARS STUGEMO JOB:

CEO and President, HiQ

PLAYS: Guitar

Led Zeppelin’s Physical Graffiti (the answer comes with lightning speed). “It has both hard rock belters, such as ‘Kashmir’, which is epic, but also a fair bit of folk music. And it also has one of the world’s coolest album sleeves.”

A RECORD EVERYONE SHOULD HAVE IN THEIR COLLECTION:

8

I remember, while I was doing my national service, another guy and I were thrown out into the corridor because we were both listening to the punk band Docent Död. Music like that was frowned on. But the two of us became firm buddies because of our shared interest. We’re still friends today.”

The band you play guitar in, HiQ Experience Orchestra (HEO), consists of a number of HiQ consultants. Are you the “big boss” in rehearsals, too?

“No, certainly not. For a start, I’m by no means the best musician in the band. That in itself says it all. But the band is a totally different context. In HEO I don’t want to be in the spotlight. I’m just a cog in what is, for me, an extremely enjoyable and rewarding piece of machinery.”

What’s the best thing about playing in a band?

“It’s such good fun. When I come out of rehearsals, I’m on cloud nine. I might be hot and sweaty, I might have played a few wrong notes and played a tad too loud, but I’ve learned something new from the others. During the day, you think about the challenges of your job, but all that disappears when you go into rehearsals together.”

Why is that?

“Because everyone is upbeat. Everyone is there because they want to be there. Everyone has a real passion for the music. Then, when it all comes together as it should, that’s a really cool feeling. When we’re on the road and gigging, there’s something of a competitive spirit, too. We practise and rehearse and have a clear goal – a point in time when we need to deliver and make everything come together.”

… as a team?

“Absolutely. It’s about putting in the time and effort. About being prepared. It’s the same with HiQ in a way: HiQ is only as good as the people who work here. If you want things to go well, you need to surround yourself with good people. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a band or a company. You need to like people, to have fun together. Things work well when you’re doing what you like to do. You need to make everything come together, to make sure everyone is doing what they’re supposed to do at the right time. That’s when things go well. And that’s when life is fun, as well.”

"IT’S THE SAME WITH HIQ IN A WAY: HIQ IS ONLY AS GOOD AS THE PEOPLE WHO WORK HERE." Music is a big thing at HiQ. Several offices have their own bands. HiQ in Stockholm has a rehearsal studio in the basement and an annual music festival. How did music become a part of the company?

“Years and years ago there was a consultant who asked if he could have a rehearsal space somewhere. I said yes, but I told him he would have to run it himself. I can make sure that certain conditions are met, but the initiative has to come from the co-workers.

It’s the same with everyone in HEO. They all have their own motivation. They’re not doing it for money or because someone is telling them to. They are extremely good role models – and the same applies to them as consultants. They have the same sense of commitment. And, if you ask me, that is important. A company rock band should reflect the values of HiQ , just like everything else in the company should do.”

Apart from the Beatles, what other musical influences have you had?

“After the Beatles, Bowie was my big idol.

I must have been about 12 when I got the Ziggy Stardust album for my birthday. There was a period from The Man who Sold the World in 1970 to Scary Monsters in 1980, when every record, every year was something new and cool. Bowie changed and challenged the whole time.

I was deeply moved by his death. In a way he had always been part of my life. It feels as if a friend is just suddenly no longer there. And the way he bowed out! It was all so incredibly deliberate and well directed. Typical David Bowie, of course! So Bowie was definitely a great influence. I’ve always liked Led Zeppelin, too. I can still get carried away listening to Jimmy Page’s counterpoint guitar skills.”

Together with HEO you have had the privilege of playing with Dregen, one of Sweden’s leading rock artists. What is it about him that you like so much?

“Quite a lot. Not least the fact that he’s a damned good musician. But he’s an entrepreneur, too, and one who is passionate about what he does. Dregen also has a way about him that I like. He’s generous, he has the energy of an entire nuclear power plant and he’s a natural leader.”

In what way is Dregen a leader?

“He doesn’t lead by pointing out the way and telling people what to do. He just steps out on stage and gets others to be better through his own personal energy. It’s awesome. He always delivers and he gets others to up their game. That’s exactly how I want us at HiQ to be with our clients. That kind of behaviour inspires me.”

9

TWO IMPORTANT LETTERS Today the buzz is all about user perspective. Even so UX advocates still meet resistance from some quarters. HiQ Magazine investigates the issue and looks at why those who neglect the user experience risk getting left behind.

10

VÄSTTRAFIK IN YOUR SMARTPHONE Scan the QR-code to watch a film about the collaboration between Västtrafik and HiQ.

YOUR TRAVEL TICKETS IN YOUR SMARTPHONE Västtrafik’s new app “To Go” simplifies ticket purchases.

I

n March 2016 Swedish public transport company Västtrafik launched its new mobile ticketing app.

Work on the application had begun three years earlier with a pre-study into the travel habits of the company’s potential customers.

A large number of commuters were asked about how they use public transport and how they would like to pay for the service.

While the app was being developed members of the travelling public were given more opportunities to test it and share their thoughts on it. How easy was it to pay?

Were there any hitches? Did the purchase process seem logical? Bus, tram and train

drivers and customer service staff were also asked for feedback about their experiences of checking tickets on smartphones.

Before Västtrafik’s To Go app was made available in the App Store a hundred customers had already been using and evaluating it for eight months.

For Västtrafik this was a brand new way of working.

“Previously here at Västtrafik we had tended to put the emphasis on internal development, delivering what we thought customers wanted. Now we’ve reversed the process. We’ve focused on the customer, identified what the customer actually needs and then created an app to fit the bill,” says

Samuel Nygren, Digital Business Developer at Västtrafik.

“If we had chosen the traditional approach, the app would have looked very different. But now we know this is an app that really works for users,” he explains.

F

ocusing on the user and the user’s needs is very much the name of the game today. Of that, David Dinka a UX expert and senior user experience strategist at HiQ , is convinced. David also has a PhD in user-system interaction.

“UX stands for user experience and includes all aspects of a product or service as

11

perceived by users. On a philosophical level it’s all about adopting the perspective of the user when creating products and designs,” he explains.

Why is that so important? Simply because the only people who can decide whether an app or a service is good or not are the people who pay for it and use it.

“It is satisfied users who buy the next version and give us good reviews in the App Store,” Dinka adds.

Not so long ago the greatest challenge was the technology itself. Today, when it has become possible to construct just about anything, we are no longer constrained by technology. Now user experience has become more of a competitive criterion.

“He who offers the best experience wins!

Those who don’t embrace the UX perspective will soon get left behind,” Dinka says.

The first and most important question is to ask what type of user the developer has in mind. Once that is clear, the next question is what these users want and why. At this stage you might wish to conduct interviews, as Västtrafik did.

“These separate stages are absolutely crucial. If the purpose isn’t clearly defined, the product will never become really useful. There are lots of people who want to produce a cool app simply because they can, but what good is that if it is of no real benefit to the user?

An app that doesn’t meet a real need will

never be more than a fleeting fad,” David Dinka says.

User studies help us to understand the target group, its circumstances and its needs.

The Swish mobile payment service is a good example of a product that successfully meets user needs and circumstances.

“When people no longer walked around with wads of cash in their pockets there was "HOW THE STORY IS FORMED VARIES, BUT WE MUST BE FULLY CLEAR ABOUT HOW WE GUIDE THE USER THROUGH THE STORY" no safe, practical way to transfer money between friends. Who can possibly remember all their friends’ account numbers and clearing numbers? On the other hand, the same friends’ phone numbers are all neatly logged in our phones. So it was a brilliant solution to link payments to phone numbers.” A good user experience requires a clear, logical structure and a hassle-free online process.

A frequent challenge for UX designers is to create an interface that is so intuitive that the user is hardly aware of it. This prompts David Dinka to explain the need for storytelling, leading the user through an anticipated pattern of behaviour.

“Focusing on user experience is actually a shift in focus, as the main aim isn’t to get

the user to buy something, but to lead the user through a story. How the story is formed varies, of course, but those of us who design the app must be fully clear in our minds about how we guide the user through the different chapters of the story,” he explains.

HiQ has, for example, helped to develop an app that works like a digital roadworthiness inspection checklist for a vehicle inspection company. By studying every stage of the inspection process and calculating the most efficient work flow, the app reduced the time taken to inspect a vehicle from 30 to 20 minutes.

“This is a case of where we really have succeeded in leading users through a process in the best possible way. If we hadn’t worked closely with the users, it would never have been possible. We used their needs as our starting point and let them test the app repeatedly during the development phase,” David Dinka says.

U

X design can, of course, also be a matter of creating a form that is so attractive that it, too, contributes to a positive user experience. Apple demonstrated ten years ago that you can earn money by being outstanding in terms of design and user experience.

“They were very quick to latch onto the UX concept. Everyone else has been forced to follow in their footsteps. Today, when every-

DR. DINKA Experience strategist at HiQ.

12

one has a smartphone, user expectations have risen and we all have our own reference framework for what constitutes good and bad design. Companies can no longer offer a product with a second-rate user interface. With so many solutions to choose from, consumers will simply turn to another supplier.”

It all sounds rather obvious. Yet advocates of the UX perspective still have to struggle at times to make their voices heard.

How come?

We asked Jan Miettinen, UX Design Lead at HiQ Finland.

“Many of our clients continue to claim that they don’t have time or that it’s too expensive and long-winded a process to carry out masses of user tests,” he says.

But those who neglect the user perspective are doing themselves a disservice.

“More often than not it turns out to be more expensive in the long run. The tests help to identify problems and put them right at the earliest possible stage. That cuts costs and saves money when it’s time for updates.

Also, it reduces the risk that users will reject a product because it’s not needed or fails to live up to expectations. There’s no doubt that time spent on groundwork saves time later on. But despite this we are constantly having to convince clients of the importance of adopting a user perspective,” Miettinen says.

David Dinka agrees.

“It’s starting to become more widely accepted, but it’s still a discussion we have to enter into far too often,” he adds.

S

amuel Nygren at Västtrafik needs no convincing about the benefits of user tests.

“We knew we were getting a product that was proven to work. That gives the app a higher customer value. Doing what customers want us to do gives us more satisfied customers,” he says.

"DOING WHAT CUSTOMERS WANT US TO DO GIVES US MORE SATISFIED CUSTOMERS,” HE SAYS." Another value of user tests is that they make users feel part of the process. Those who tested Västtrafik’s To Go app acted almost as ambassadors for the app.

“Because they were part of the process, they spoke to their friends and colleagues about the app in very positive terms. They have built up

JAN MIETTINEN UX Design Lead at HiQ Finland.

positive expectations,” Nygren says.

Västtrafik is currently reviewing ways of making its entire digital platform, homepage and ticket machines more user-friendly in order to improve the customers’ experience.

“We are also looking at how to make our services more relevant to our customers by making them more personal. Digital technology enables us to construct solutions based on individual needs rather than those of a more diffuse target group. For example, you could see specific travel options, tickets and any disruptions to services that are relevant to you. It’s a way of building up a relationship with a customer, something that is known to create customer loyalty,” says Henrik Strömberg, a digital strategist with Västtrafik.

So what does the future hold for UX? Henrik Strömberg and Samuel Nygren are convinced that Västtrafik will soon have its own UX experts in the team, simply because these skills are so vitally important.

David Dinka sees the same trend: “The UX perspective can only get bigger. I think it will move higher up in the organisational structure. It will be essential to have someone with UX competence among corporate decision makers.”

"THE UX PERSPECTIVE HERALDS A REAL DEMOCRATISATION OF TECHNOLOGY." Another development is the way UX is opening up opportunities for people with functional disabilities. Fejjan för alla, a Swedish app that enabled blind and deaf people to use Facebook, was a good example of that.

“We’ve only just begun to scratch the surface. The UX perspective heralds a real democratisation of technology. Just consider the opportunities awaiting with the Internet of Things. What can we do there to offer users real value? Now that it’s possible, there is no reason not to make it available to everyone.”

13

Photo: Gamestop.com

THE NORDIC

GAME SUCCESS With games such as Minecraft, Battlefield, Candy Crush Saga, Angry Birds and Clash of Clans, Nordic games developers have conquered the world.

One in ten people worldwide has played a Swedish game. With export sales of over 900 million euros, games have become Sweden’s biggest cultural export. This is largely due to the success of games such as Minecraft, Battlefield and Candy Crush Saga from the companies Mojang, Dice and King.

According to the trade association Swedish Games Industry, the games industry is continuing to grow in Sweden. Clear evidence of this is the US games company Activision Blizzard’s purchase of King for a phenomenal 5 billion euros in February 2016.

Finland also stands out internationally, with successful games such as Angry Birds and Clash of Clans. When earnings for games giant Rovio began to fall last year, some feared that the Finnish games bubble was about to burst. However, the trade association Neogames sees no such signs.

Ilkka Hietala, the new Service Manager at HiQ Finland, comes from a successful career with one of Finland’s biggest games companies. He believes the future is bright for the Finnish games industry.

“Major investments are being made in games, and interest in working in the games industry is growing,” he says.

How come we are so good at designing games in the Nordic region?

“Both Sweden and Finland were quick to start offering courses in game programming and development. Our education systems are generally good and we have a culture of working hard. We’ve also been blessed with many very gifted, skilled individuals who are passionate about games and games development. And, of course, it’s not the first time we’ve been successful in developing mobile solutions,” says Ilkka Hietala.

14

NINTENDO GAME BOY

A Nintendo Game Boy console cost 90 US dollars when it was launched in 1989. The first 300,000 units sold out in two weeks in Japan. All in all, nearly 119 million of the consoles have been sold worldwide. Game Boy was also the first console to be used in space. The Russian astronaut Aleksandr Serebrov took his Game Boy with him and played Tetris whenever he got bored.

LJUSA UPP/KONTRAST

FUN FACTS

SALES

50 billion In 2015 global games sales totalled almost 50 billion euros.

It cost 500 million US dollars to produce the video game Destiny.

This makes it the world’s most expensive ever game production.

DESTINY

BEST-SELLING GAME CONSOLES OF ALL TIME

1. PlayStation 2 (Sony) was launched in 2000 and sold 155 million units 2. Nintendo DS (Nintendo) was launched in 2004 and sold 154 million units

The first arcade games were created back in 1930 but became more common in the late 1970s. The most popular games included Space Invaders, Pac-Man and Defender.

ARCADE GAMES ZELDA

Photo: Wallpaperscraft.com

3. Game Boy (Nintendo) was launched in 1989 and sold 119 million units

ANGRY BIRDS

With a price-tag of some 4,000 euros (42,250 Swedish kronor) the Zelda Gold Pack game sold on Facebook in August 2015 holds the record as the most expensive game ever to change hands in Sweden.

50 50

Almost as many women as men play games.

BEST-SELLING GAMES OF ALL TIME

1. Tetris Mobile (2006): 425 million units 2. Wii Sports (2006): 83 million units 3. Minecraft (2011): 73 million units

15

Photo: Store.xbox.com

Angry Birds Space was downloaded 50 million times in just 35 days following its launch in 2012.

GENDER

RETRO GAMES!

Backyard Babies have made a comeback and are now touring the world. We met lead guitarist Dregen before the band’s gig at Cirkus in Stockholm and took along some of our favourite old games to talk memories and gaming.

16

HALO 3, X-BOX 360

”I played that a lot! I especially remember the old cassette tapes. I actually have a guitar with an image from Ghosts ‘n Goblins that an artist who runs a website called Pappas pärlor made for me. He creates all his art from various 8-bit video games. On my guitar, he did the pile of skeletons you run past in the cemetery in Ghosts ‘n Goblins.”

COMMODORE 64

Photo: Gamerwithkids.com

Photo: Windowscentral.com

”In 2007 Backyard Babies was one of several bands commissioned to write music for Halo 3. We were given a trailer that was like a silent film – no sound at all – and we were asked to compose a suitable soundtrack for what we saw. We performed the music with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra in Stockholm’s Berwaldhallen Concert Hall on the evening the game was released in Sweden.”

NINTENDO

”The musicians in our support band on the tour are a bit younger than us. They play a lot of video games. I sometimes play ice hockey games with them, but they’re much better than me. I can hardly work out how to switch the thing on. But losing doesn’t make me mad.

I’m too old for that. It’s fun to play with them. I think it’s much more fun to play against someone else than to play on your own and just try to finish a level.”

Photo: Playstationlifestye.net

NHL, PLAYSTATION OCH X-BOX 360

DONKEY KONG, GAME & WATCH

”That’s a real classic. I have one of those somewhere. I wonder where? It’s probably at home with my mum in Nässjö. These games are just so cool. They felt so modern at the time. When I was last in Tokyo, I saw entire shops devoted to selling nothing but games like these. But they’re expensive... What prices! Of course, it’s the sound effects that people love. There are Japanese bands that only sample sounds from these games. But I guess it’s not really politically correct any more – saving girls from gorillas!”

Photo: i.warosu.org

Photo: Gamesdbase.com

”I didn’t play Nintendo much. Although, come to think of it, I did play Zelda. But, apart from the music, I don’t remember much about it. I had friends who really got into video games as teenagers, but I started to play guitar instead. Then I became a musician. I bet those who played a lot of video games back then are probably sitting in front of computer screens at work today.

There’s sure to be a link.”

17

, E S O O L I N E H W D A M T E G T « »BUT I DON' . t a h t r o f I'm To OLD

18

19

How come it’s so easy to get hooked on Angry Birds? And why is filling in timesheets so boring? Basically, because games engage and motivate us. More and more people are now seeking inspiration in the world of gaming to make users more motivated.

It’s extremely rewarding to apply game theories in contexts where there are problems with engagement. By looking at what it is that makes people perform well, at the emotions that are activated in games, you can get people to engage in other contexts as well,” says Ola Janson, a business developer and gamification expert at HiQ. He has been working and lecturing on gamification for ten years. Despite that, he still finds it hard to explain what it actually is.

“The textbook definition is that you apply game thinking or game mechanics to something that has nothing to do with games. But I think that’s a very vague, inadequate defini-

20

tion. What on earth are game thinking and game mechanics?”

For Ola Janson, it is all about putting life into what he calls “dead systems” by studying and simulating the factors that make people participate with such passion in a game. And by that he doesn’t just mean digital games.

“Many people think it’s all about computer games, but it can just as well be about football, board games or card games. Personally I derive more inspiration from card games than I do from World of Warcraft,” he says.

What can developers of IT systems and digital solutions learn from games?

“Sometimes it’s not enough for something to be simple and easy to understand. It must also be challenging, meaningful and interesting if users are to be activated, make decisions and progress,” Ola says.

Games have the ability to simplify situations at the same time as they create challenges. For Ola Janson this is exemplified in the slogan for Othello, a game that takes “a minute to learn, a lifetime to master”.

“The rules for Othello are remarkably simple, but the restrictions and challenges of the game produce almost endless possibilities. This is precisely the paradox that makes gamification work. It adds depth and life.”

A common denominator shared by all games is that they are complex systems. There are given patterns, but no one can predict the outcome. Ola Janson contrasts them with systems based on the conveyor belt principle, in which the aim is to pass through as quickly as possible.

“If we want people to stay in our app or our program and explore, reflect and learn something, we must avoid the conveyor belt method. It’s completely soul-destroying,” he says.

Filling in time sheets is a prime example of

a dead system that no one finds particularly engaging.

“It’s designed for someone else. You fill in your hours and the information is then sucked up by the system without giving you anything in return.”

So how can we apply gamification to time reports?

Ola Janson is looking at ways of how a time sheet system can be made more meaningful for the user: “What benefit can I, as an individual, derive from filling in time sheets?

Perhaps it might be good for me to keep a check on how I and the rest of the group are spending our time? If meaningful feedback loops are built into the system, the user can get something meaningful back. That might be an immediate message explaining that my colleague and I now have just five hours of budgeted time left on a project. Or a weekly report that shows how much time I have spent on various tasks.

“It has to be something that can be valuable to the user. A good feedback loop should teach me something, stimulate me. It should help me understand how things are progressing and where I’m going,” Ola says.

He sees running apps as a good example of how feedback loops can provide motivation.

“I’ve set my app to send me a spoken message every time I’ve run another kilometre. It tells me how quickly I ran the last kilometre.

This might not work for everyone, but for me it is extremely motivating to know how well I’ve been performing and how long I have left. For others, it may be rewarding to get some kind of praise,” Ola surmises.

Gamification is by no means new. We have been using apps and systems inspired by the world of games for a long time. It’s just that we have not always thought of these in terms of gamification.

“I’ve been working for many years on various e-learning projects. As a user, however, you don’t necessarily need to understand that what you’re doing is borrowed from the world of games. For example, most people have no idea that gamification is behind Runkeeper,” Ola says.

According to a study by the economics site Business Insider, 63% of adults believe everyday tasks would be more fun and more rewarding if they included some of the elements of games. The same study shows that the market for apps and services based on game theory may be worth as much as 2.8 billion US dollars in 2016.

“A great many customers are now asking for gamification principles to be incorporated into designs. For those of us who work with user experience – UX as it’s also known – gamification is just one of many tools. But it’s an important one, because we know that it really works,” says Ola Janson.

THREE GAMES THAT OLA JANSON LIKES AND THAT INSPIRE HIM NO THANKS. A card game in which the aim is to say no thanks to high cards because the person with the lowest points wins.

HANABI. Hanabi is Japanese for fireworks, and the aim is to produce the most spectacular firework display by arranging all of your cards in brightly coloured numerical series. The problem is that you cannot see your own hand, only that of the other players – and you are not allowed to reveal what cards they have.

MYSTERIUM. A board game in which one player plays the role of a spirit and the others are well-known mediums. The aim is to find out the mysterious circumstances surrounding the death of the spirit. The spirit cannot talk to the mediums but gives them clues in the form of visions and dreams. If they interpret the visions correctly, they can reveal the culprit and the spirit can rest in peace.

21

Pernilla Andersson, whose new album was released earlier this year, is not only a singersongwriter but an acclaimed record producer as well. She was also one of the first to swap the knobs and faders on a mixer console for a studio software program. We met her to talk about the effect that digital technology has had on her profession – but also about the new album she wrote to comfort herself when her father became ill.

ON THE RIGHT PATH 22

23

W

hen I explain that I’m writing an article on the computerisation of the music industry Pernilla Andersson laughs.

“But I’m the most analogue musician you’ll find in Sweden!”

That is a truth with modifications. Pernilla Andersson also freely admits that she loves to work with digital technology and was one of the first producers to embrace it.

We will get back to that. First she wants to buy some cakes.

“It’s the way I’ve been brought up. As a child I learned you should always have cakes when you invite someone round for coffee.”

We stand by the cash desk in a 1950s inspired café in Stockholm.

Retro armchairs are grouped around teak tables on the black and white chequered floor. Above the juke box are the sleeves of recordings made by Pernilla’s parents.

Her mother, Siw Gunsnér, sang jazz and pop and toured with the Swedish jazz clarinettist Putte Wickman. Her father, Kent, who spelt his surname Anderzohn, was one of the Swede Singers, who made their breakthrough on the popular Hylands hörna TV show and were a support band for the Beach Boys.

It was Kent who first kindled his daughter’s interest in technology.

“He was keen to make sure that I felt comfortable with technical things. He used to let me lend a hand when he was mending instruments or headphones that had broken. He always used to say, ‘If you do screw up, all you have to do is pull out the plug’.”

When Pernilla was just five years old her father built a music studio in their house on the outskirts of Hässleholm in the south of Sweden.

Shortly afterwards he invested in one of the first personal computers from Apple and started to record his own music.

24

“He said that this is the future, a few years from now all musicians will be working from home like this. And he’s been proved right. He showed me what to do and, although I would have much preferred to stand on stage and sing jazz and pop rather than sit in front of a computer, I realised it would probably be a good idea to learn a bit about it.”

The café has sold out of buns, so Pernilla buys a bag of biscuits instead. With the shopping all done we take a walk to her street, to continue the interview in the bright and airy apartment that she shares with her son, Sixten.

There is a walnut wood piano in the bedroom and two guitars in the living room. On the table is the MacBook she uses to mix and produce her songs.

“Today it’s a normal way of working, but people used to laugh when they first saw me using my laptop as a mixing desk,” she says as she pours the coffee.

“Still, the songs I produced resulted in two Grammis nominations.

One for Artist of the Year and one for Composer of the Year.”

I

t was when she was just 23, while she was recording her first album that Pernilla realised she wanted to become a producer. She had asked all her favourite musicians if they could come to the studio and record with her.

“Once everyone was there I got so nervous I lost my voice. There I was, in a studio that cost 1200 euros a day, and I couldn’t deliver the goods. That’s when I understood how much better it would be to have my own studio, where I could record when it suited me and my voice.

When I started to produce my own music I felt this fantastic sensation of freedom. It was such a relief not to have to leave the technical de-

cisions to someone else, not to be reliant on other people.”

In 2002 Pernilla became the first female record producer for a major Swedish label when she was given the prestigious task of producing an album for the jazz musician Svante Thuresson.

They were forced to book several different studios, one for recording the wind instruments, another for the strings and a third for the accompaniment track. The vocals were added last of all, in Pernilla’s summer home in Sörmland with the aid of her computer and a bewildering array of external hard discs.

“It might look cooler with proper faders and regulators, but for me it was just as easy to work on my computer. The only problem was that the computer kept freezing. There were a lot of teething problems with early studio software. Thankfully, Dad was able to support me. I could always phone him if I needed help.”

It sounds like you were a pioneer in terms of embracing digital technology as a music producer. Yet you say you are the Swedish music industry’s most analogue artist. How do you explain that?

“I like analogue and acoustic music – the sound of the instruments, the tone quality. I’m a jazz singer at heart and I adore the sound of a double bass or a live drum set. However, I use computers to help me record these sounds and then put them together. I love analogue sounds and instruments, but I’m not opposed to using digital technology to capture the music they make. Quite the opposite. I’m a big fan of all kinds of digital technology.”

"I HARDLY EVER AGREE TO DO INTERVIEWS. INSTEAD I WRITE WHAT I WANT TO TALK ABOUT IN MY SOCIAL MEDIA CHANNELS AND DIRECT ANY MEDIA ENQUIRIES TO THESE." Early in her career Pernilla Andersson set up her own label, Sheriff Records, which released music from artists such as Titiyo, Svante Thuresson and Staffan Hellstrand.

Today, however, she no longer releases physical CDs. “I think physical CDs are on the way out. If you’re not touring and selling your own records, there are no longer any sales channels.

There are no record shops left, and it costs more than it’s worth to manufacture CDs just because it’s the thing to do,” she reasons.

Over the past ten years the music industry has witnessed big changes, mostly as a result of advances in digital technology. When internet sites like Spotify were set up, people said that music streaming would mark the beginning of the end for the industry. But they were wrong. Instead, thanks to money-spinning agreements with commercial music sites, record companies have really been raking in money in recent years.

“The big companies are doing well right now. But today Spotify seems to be very much a forum for young artists and a young audience that is very comfortable with streaming. Things are still tough for songwriters and for those artists whose work is streamed less often – the segment the industry calls ‘adult contemporary’. The royalty levels should – and, I think, will – be renegotiated and restructured for different forms of listening. Older users, who are less likely to listen to Avicii a hundred times in quick succession than they are to stream an entire album now and then, must find ways of using these new approaches to enjoying music and feel comfortable in doing so,” Pernilla says.

One thing she personally feels is lacking in today’s new music services is information about who the musicians are, who has composed the music, written the lyrics and produced the end result.

She takes a bite from one of the biscuits and continues: “We’re still in a transitional phase and people are always apprehensive about change. But things will sort themselves out. They always do. We can’t turn back the clock, we must move forward. I think we need to embrace technology. After all, the pros do outweigh the cons.”

O

ne of the biggest advantages is that technology gives you the freedom to do everything yourself, and that is just what Pernilla likes most.

“Let’s say I’m working on the final mix and I suddenly realise that I need some strings. One click opens up my music library and there I can produce a really good string sound. It couldn’t be simpler. Sometimes technology really does make life easier. And, if there is ever anything that, from a purely technical point of view, I don’t know how to do, I can always check out YouTube for guidance.”

Social media is another of the digital age’s advantages. It creates new opportunities for musicians to reach out and interact with fans on their own terms.

Pernilla Andersson is active on both Instagram and Facebook.

“I hardly ever agree to do interviews. Instead I write what I want to talk about in my social media channels and direct any media enquiries to these. Then people have to quote me word for word. It’s an excellent way of keeping control over what you want to say and the picture people have of you. Otherwise you don’t stand a chance against the mass media.”

25

26

PERNILLA ANDERSSON BORN: 1974 HOME: Södermalm, Stockholm JOB: Artist and music producer RIGHT NOW: A new album, Tiggrinnan TOUR DATES: Check out the website pernillaandersson.se OTHER MERITS: Played pop star Ann-Louise Hansson in the

feature film Cornelis FAVOURITE APP: Cleartune (“a guitar tuner than has saved my life on many occasions”), YR weather app and Netflix TECH GADGET I CAN’T/WOULD HATE TO LIVE WITHOUT:

My iPhone/laptop TECHNICAL INNOVATION THAT I WISHED EXISTED: “A gadget

that lets me call for all the many things I leave lying about – and that only works when I need to use it. A chip, perhaps, like those I already have in my wallet or key ring, but one that is solely voiceactivated. I’m sure an innovation like that is well within the realm of possibility.”

S

he believes, too, that you need to keep up with developments.

“Technology is advancing so fast these days. My dad had a keen interest in all things technical and always used to make sure that I was kept updated. Now that he’s ill, it’s made me realise how easy it is to lose touch with the latest ideas.”

The mere mention of her father’s advanced Alzheimer’s is enough to make Pernilla Andersson suddenly pensive. The sorrow of slowly losing her father is one of the themes in her latest studio album, Tiggrinnan.

“It’s a very personal album – about estrangement, longing and the helplessness you feel when someone close to you gradually slips further and further away into ill health. I wrote the album for myself, to comfort me,” she says.

“I used to be like a tigress, living my life thinking nothing could hurt me. Then my dad became ill around the same time as I had a child, and from then on nothing was like I had imagined it would be. Suddenly the tigress sat there like a beggar, pleading with the doctors to make my father well again. Accepting that it wasn’t going to happen came as a terrible blow.”

That’s what the title track of Tiggrinnan (a made-up expression that

conflates the Swedish words for “tigress” and “beggar”) is about. As Pernilla sings, “In every tiger hides a beggar – if you squeeze him really hard”.

But the album also takes up the idea that weakness can give birth to strength.

“It’s a strength that grows out of the insight that, if fear is not to emerge victorious, grief must be confronted head on. I think all of us change from tigers into beggars at some stage in our lives,” she says.

Tiggrinnan is Pernilla Andersson’s ninth studio album, and this one too has been produced by her.

Her reputation as an outstanding producer was confirmed in 2013 when she became the first woman to receive the Sir George Martin Music Award for her work as a composer and producer.

Sir George Martin, frequently referred to as “the fifth Beatle”, handed over the prize personally and wrote in a letter, “I cannot think of anyone more deserving than you”.

Pernilla says that meant a very great deal to her.

“He was a great role model for me in my musical career. I regard his words as official confirmation that I have chosen the right path in life.”

27

17 PEOPLE + 12 NATIONALITIES

= SUCCESS Perhaps the team’s success in creating Sweden's most frequently used mobile payment service is no surprise. Research shows that diversity drives creativity.

O

n the roof of the HiQ office in central Stockholm twelve people are assembled for a photo. A cold wind is blowing and there is drizzle in the air. Someone jokes about the Swedish winter and a ripple of laughter runs through the others in the group.

For some of them, Swedish winters are still something of a novelty.

When everyone in the team is in place there are co-workers from France, Spain, Romania, Russia, China, Thailand, Vietnam, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Uganda and Sweden. An ideal combination for creativity, in other words. Most researchers would agree. For example, Professor Richard Florida from the USA says that there is a direct correlation between the proportion of foreign-born members or the number of different nationalities in a group and that group’s creativity index. The more nationalities, the better!

Charlotte Stigenberg, the team’s project leader, recalls that the group was exceptionally exciting to work with. One of the reasons was the cultural diversity.

“People from different backgrounds, each with their own way of working and reasoning, create a really dynamic intellectual environment. It’s not just that we come from different countries; we’re also from different age groups and, from an IT industry perspective, there’s also a fairly good gender balance in the group,” she says.

"PEOPLE FROM DIFFERENT BACKGROUNDS, EACH WITH THEIR OWN WAY OF WORKING AND REASONING, CREATE A REALLY DYNAMIC INTELLECTUAL ENVIRONMENT" A Stanford University study in the USA shows that groups that consist of people from different backgrounds are better at problem-solving and innovation. It’s hardly surprising, given that people with different experiences have acquired different bodies of knowledge and have different ways of looking at things.

The same study shows that the benefits of diversity dominate in knowledge-intensive and creative jobs.

Joel Holmberg, a back-end developer in the HiQ team, is convinced that diversity made a positive contribution to their work.

“For the most part, you find yourself working with other people who have grown up in the same surroundings and had the same education. People with similar experiences think in fairly similar ways. In this team, however, there was masses of input from all sorts of sources.

More than once, when I had painted myself into a corner, someone came up to me and said ‘What about doing it like this? That’s how we do things where I come from.’ And suddenly, the problem was solved.”

28

MOBILE PAYMENT SERVICES THAT HiQ HAS HELPED TO DEVELOP: SWISH is an app that enables users to simply and securely make financial transactions with one another using their mobile phone. Now Swish can also be used in some shops and online. Today there are more than 4 million Swish users.

S-MOBILE is the first mobile bank in the world to be integrated with a retailer's customer loyalty programme. S-Mobile enables customers to manage their bank transactions at the same time as they are doing their shopping. In 2016 S-Bank is also launching a new IoT mobile refueling service, making it possible to pay for gas at the ABC gas stations with just a few taps on your smartphone. The feature is the first of its kind internationally.

COLLECTOR BETALKOLL is an app that makes it easier for users to pay their bills straight from their mobile phones. All the user needs to do is to take a photograph of the bill. The app then makes sure the bill is paid on time.

Bills received by email can be simply imported into the service.

CARPAY is an app from Volvofinans Bank which simplifies all car-related purchases and payments. With a click on their phone, customers can also use the bonus they have earned when they refuel.

SEE MORE OF THE TEAM Scan the QR-code to watch a film about the successful team.

RICHARD FLORIDA Richard Florida is an American professor and the man behind the concept of the “Creative Class”. This is a description of a relatively large group of professionals in society who use creativity as their chief tool. The professor has analysed today’s urban societies and found that cities with a high proportion of residents who belong to the Creative Class are more likely to thrive economically and technologically. This is because the Creative Class produces a tolerant, dynamic environment that attracts other creative individuals, businesses and capital.

Professor Florida maintains that the more diverse a society is, not only in terms of nationality and origin, but also in gender and sexual orientation, the better it performs. He advocates an open society based on the “three T’s” – Technology, Talent and Tolerance – and has created his own ranking system that rates cities and areas within cities according to a Bohemian Index, a Gay Index and a Diversity Index. In his creative index list Sweden and Finland are at the top the list.

S

udip Kumar Das is a system developer who moved from Kolkata in India to Stockholm in 2014. He says he’s never worked in a better team.

“It’s a fantastic group. Our different backgrounds mean that we have different strengths and totally different ways of looking at things. We complement one another very well.”

"OUR DIFFERENT BACKGROUNDS MEAN THAT WE HAVE DIFFERENT STRENGTHS AND TOTALLY DIFFERENT WAYS OF LOOKING AT THINGS." Charlotte Stigenberg agrees: “Everyone in the team is an individual, of course, with their own personality. You can’t generalise and say that everyone from such and such a country is like this or like that. But people who have come from the other side of the world to work and live in Sweden are often people with drive. They have made a real contribution to the group. We’ve all learned a lot from one another.”

To tap into the collective know-how and experience in the group and to share this among all the members, competence transfer lunches were held from an early stage in the process. On each occasion one team member was given an hour in which to explain how he or she solved a particular problem in the project.

“It was a way of enabling everyone to benefit from each individual’s progress. It helped the entire team to grow,” says Sudip Kumar Das. He is eager to make clear that there has never been any internal competition within the team. It is a team of equals, each and every one of whom excels in a particular field. They have all always been able to ask one another for help when they have encountered something they don’t understand or can’t do.

“It’s important to feel you can ask questions without being branded as a dimwit. The people in the group are modest, unpretentious types. Everyone has always been willing to help their colleagues,” says Joel Holmberg.

But what about a common language? The Stanford study shows that the advantages of diversity are soon squandered if the members of a team can’t communicate.

“Our working language has been English. The fact that not everyone knows Swedish has never been a problem,” Charlotte says.

“Most team members do want to learn Swedish,” Joel adds. “So we’ve been practising together. Another positive thing about working with so many people who are new to a country is that they are all eager to acquire new friends and to do things together after work. We’ve become almost like a second family for those who have left their friends and relatives behind when they have moved to Sweden.”

29

DIVERSITY – A SUCCESS 12 of the 17 people in a team from 12 countries. Together they have played a part in developing Sweden's biggest mobile payment service.

30

IN THE PICTURE FIRST ROW, FROM LEFT: RONNIE (SWEDEN), ANDREW (UGANDA), CHARLOTTE (SWEDEN), ANA (SPAIN), NGUYEN (VIETNAM), RAFI (BANGLADESH) SECOND ROW, FROM LEFT: FAROOQ (PAKISTAN), ANDERS (SWEDEN), SUDIP (INDIA), JACK (SWEDEN), HALIT (TURKEY), ANDERS (SWEDEN)

31

32

How the internet should be used and by whom are questions that have been debated for a long time. Those who call themselves net activists want an internet that is free from regulation, censorship and control. But some are prepared to go further than others to achieve this aim.

In recent years the international Anonymous network has attracted a great deal of attention. Who are they and what are their aims? HiQ Magazine has taken a closer look at the collective behind the Guy Fawkes mask.

POLITICAL HACKING IS NOT NEW Back in 1989 NASA’s computers were subjected to a virus attack after nuclear power was used in a space project. Hundreds of computers were infected with a wormlike virus that spread the message “WANK: Worms Against Nuclear Killers”.

A

nonymous has declared war on IS, hacked into the racist Ku Klux Klan’s Twitter account and helped protesters combat repressive regimes. Yet its representatives have also closed down corporate websites and the homepages of western governments. They have been dubbed net activists and the defenders of free speech. But they have also been branded as cyber terrorists and “hackers on steroids”. How are we to understand a phenomenon such as Anonymous? And who are the people behind the Guy Fawkes grin?

The second question is obviously impossible to answer – anonymity is at the very core of the concept. Activists range from teenage hackers and unemployed youngsters to well-established programmers and human rights activists. They are “everybody and anybody”.

“Neither hackers nor net activists constitute a homogeneous group. Their numbers include both libertarians and left-wing extremists, as well as everything in between. What unites them is the conviction that the internet should be open and free,” says Martin Fällman, a digital security expert with Civil Rights Defenders.

Martin was a net activist himself for many years, part of the Telecomix cluster that restored internet connectivity in Egypt and released details of internet surveillance operations in Tunisia and Syria during the Arab Spring. In recent years he has worked to build opinion against net surveillance and taught digital security to authorities, journalists and activists.

He is eager to point out that net activism takes different forms.

“The kind of activism that I’m involved in is about fighting for a free internet by putting forward your arguments, bringing about change and making politicians accountable for their actions. It’s a sort of lobbying activity that makes full use of the potential of the internet. The net activism that Anonymous practises is more like hacking. Its members also want to see political change, but their method of achieving this is to short-circuit the political processes. The last thing a hacker wants to do is to sit down and reason with someone. A hacker prefers direct action.”

Anonymous emerged in the early 2000s out of discussions on the now infamous 4Chan bulletin board. There anyone could upload pictures and submit content about everything under the sun. No registration was required to use the forum and everyone who wrote anything without being logged in was tagged as “Anonymous”.

“That gave rise to the evolution of a unique and particularly brutal forum culture

where people could in principle post anything at all. Anonymity provided an opportunity for self-assertion and social criticism that people could not otherwise give vent to in their dayto-day lives,” says Fällman, who was himself active on 4Chan at times.

He compares it to the book and film Fight Club, where malcontents from different backgrounds and different social classes find companionship in illegal recreational fighting.

"NEITHER HACKERS NOR NET ACTIVISTS CONSTITUTE A HOMOGENEOUS GROUP. THEIR NUMBERS INCLUDE BOTH LIBERTARIANS AND LEFT-WING EXTREMISTS, AS WELL AS EVERYTHING IN BETWEEN." “That’s the best way to understand how Anonymous came into being. A whole bunch of people who were angry about different things and vented their anger on the net.”

The fact that so many people expressed their views under the “Anonymous” tag meant that Anonymous said one thing here and another there. The overall impression was muddled to say the least.

However, as journalists Linus Larsson and Daniel Goldberg write in their book Svenska hackare – En berättelse från nätets skuggsida (“Swedish Hackers – A Story from the Dark Side of the Net”): “When Anonymous reaches a consensus, when the thousands of participants in the dialogue begin to work towards a common, albeit vaguely defined goal, the phenomenon suddenly becomes a force to be reckoned with.”

I

nitially most of what Anonymous did could be dismissed as mere pranks. For example, clubbing together to create thousands of identical avatars in online games for children and then placing the avatars on top of one another so that they formed different symbols.

In 2006, however, at the time of the raids on The Pirate Bay, the hackers became more political in their motives. In their book Larsson and Goldberg describe how the Swedish file-sharing site had become an international symbol for a free internet. When the authorities closed down the site, supporters worldwide joined forces to exact their revenge.

Just a day after the raid the National Police Board became aware that something strange was taking place on the website polisen.se.

Unprecedented numbers of users seemed to be accessing the site simultaneously. Soon the entire website had collapsed and the police could no longer use email to communicate

33

H

owever, it was not until 2008, when Anonymous declared war on the Church of Scientology, that the movement attracted international attention. Anonymous disapproved strongly of the Scientologists’ introversion on the internet and reacted strongly when the church attempted to censor a YouTube video that featured Tom Cruise. Anonymous activists uploaded hundreds of copies of the video, overwhelmed the church websites with information requests and gathered in person to demonstrate around the world. They also prank-called Scientology offices and uploaded videos poking fun at the church’s representatives.

That approach is the hallmark of Anonymous activities. Although the underlying message is serious, the methods adopted are almost invariably tempered with humour designed to ridicule the network’s opponents. In a documentary on Anonymous’s own official

combining their efforts to help the opposition to spread information through anonymity sites and on websites critical of the regime. Net activists subsequently repeated such actions in Egypt and Tunisia during the Arab Spring. When the Egyptian government barred internet access, Telecomix made sure that the people of Egypt could connect via modems in France. And when local activists were ordered to delete anti-regime videos from their blogs under threat of violence, Telecomix copied the films and uploaded them on other sites.

“Anonymous was involved in setting up proxy servers so that internet traffic could be channelled out of Tunisia. But the movement also hacked into the regime’s own websites,” says Martin Fällman.

While this was taking place Wikileaks was also revealing that the US military had concealed the killings of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan. The news sent shockwaves through the political establishment but was applauded by Anonymous, not necessarily for the nature of the revelations themselves, but rather for the ambition to spread information and make it widely available.

When politicians and large corporations attempted to stifle Wikileaks, for example by blocking financial donations, Anonymous once again sought revenge. All the companies and agents of the state that had actively

Photo: Isabel Gustafsson

with the general public.

Two days later the government’s site regeringen.se crashed under the pressure of a similar attack.

Hackers had crippled government websites before, but this attack was different: what had caused the servers to overload was not the work of a single individual but of a large network of like-minded people. The hackers had teamed up and created a political movement.

MARTIN FÄLLMAN Digital security expert.

Works with Civil Rights Defenders.

THREE DIFFERENT KINDS OF INTERNET ACTIVISM 1. Social activism works to achieve a desired effect by using the net as a tool for spreading messages.

2. Technological activism fights for a free internet by making politicians accountable for their actions.

3. Technical interventions and internet hacking also fight for a free internet, but do so by short-circuiting political processes.

»I constantly have to enter into discussions in defence of internet activism« YouTube channel, a number of people claim that this distinctive humour is one reason why so many people are fascinated and provoked by the movement.

It was in conjunction with the antiScientology demonstrations that Anonymous supporters began to hide their faces. To do so they chose the Guy Fawkes mask made famous by the film V for Vendetta. Today the mask has become almost synonymous with the movement and is a key component of the movement’s distinctive aesthetic identity.

In 2009 activists turned their attention to the Middle East. The Iranian presidential elections in June of that year saw the incumbent, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, re-elected despite accusations of vote-rigging. As thousands of Iranians took to the streets to demonstrate, the Iranian authorities tried to silence the protests, employing internet censorship as one of the weapons in their arsenal. Net activists worldwide retaliated,

34

opposed Wikileaks were declared to be legitimate targets and subjected to concerted internet attacks. Some Swedish companies and government agencies were among those affected.

In 2012 the Swedish police acted to close down a server used by Wikileaks and The Pirate Bay (and, incidentally, also by users sharing child pornography images). Supporters of Anonymous in Sweden responded by attacking the websites of a number of banks and Swedish government agencies including the Security Service, the Armed Forces, the National Board of Health & Welfare and the National Courts Administration.

“An investigation into the attacks revealed that most of them were launched by Swedish teenagers and tech-savvy adolescents, the kind of young people who often believe that file-sharing should be legal,” says Chief Inspector Anders Ahlqvist, a specialist with Sweden’s National IT Crime Unit.

THE EMBLEM OF ANONYMOUS: A HEADLESS SUIT The emblem symbolises anonymity and a leaderless organisation. To conceal their identity members wear a mask made popular by the film V for Vendetta. The mask is based on a likeness of Guy Fawkes, a historical English rebel who planned to blow up parliament in London.

RISK OF IMPRISONMENT In Sweden someone convicted of hacking can be sentenced to a maximum of 2 years in prison. The punishment for aggravated hacking is up to 6 years in prison. To date no one affiliated to Anonymous has been sentenced in Sweden.

One of those responsible for the attacks, an 18-year-old from a small Swedish town, told the Aftonbladet newspaper, “It’s just not right to close down our torrent sites! That’s why we’re so angry. We want a proper internet. No child pornography, of course, but otherwise everything should be free.”

In answer to the question of how the decision to launch an assault is actually made, the 18-year-old explained that people in a chat room discuss how to attack and who is to be the victim: “We have no leaders – just a bunch of people who lend a hand. Some are Swedes, others live abroad.”

GOOD OR BAD? People's views on Anonymous differ.

T

he common denominator of all the targets attacked by Anonymous is their various attempts to limit the flow of information and prevent people from communicating via the net. Fighting for freedom of speech and a free internet is the platform for everything that Anonymous does. Also the movement often stands on the side of the oppressed, against the powers that be.

In recent years Anonymous has helped LGBT activists in Uganda, closed down child pornography sites and conducted a Twitter campaign encouraging North Koreans to rise up against their government.

After the terror attacks in Paris in Novem-

activism. They just make my job harder. The reason for this is something I’ve already mentioned – that anyone at all can do anything at all and sign it ‘Anonymous’.”

When Anonymous declares war on IS, this can be a call to action that is supported by the entire movement – or the work of just one 14-year-old at home in his or her bedroom.

“The result is that there are an awful lot of half-baked ideas floating around. Lots of unnecessary and unwinnable conflicts are provoked in the name of Anonymous.”

develop among the more technically adept participants. These people aren’t members of an organisation. They simply feel the need to become involved in a specific issue. Some are probably ideologically motivated, others are there simply because it’s fun,” he says.

Martin Fällman agrees. He says that, deep down, hackers are rarely politically motivated.

“Motivation probably comes from being part of a really cool hack. Ascribing a political dimension is often just an afterthought.

It’s like graffiti artists. Sure, they can spray a

»Lots of unnecessary and unwinnable conflicts are provoked in the name of Anonymous« ber 2015 Anonymous announced that it was declaring war on IS. It did not take long before they had hacked a number of IS websites, closed 3,000 Twitter accounts with links to IS and published an online guide for everyone who was willing to take part in sabotaging the IS presence on the net.

The movement’s unrelenting campaign for democracy and openness has caused many former critics of Anonymous to reconsider their opinions. The various courses of action are not always legal, but many people – not least, the activists themselves – believe that they have right on their side.

“I’m absolutely convinced that most of those who are affiliated to Anonymous want a better world,” says Martin Fällman. “The problem is that they often cause more problems than they solve. For those of us working with internet activism and trying to build up something positive, Anonymous can be like an irritating little brother who keeps tripping us up. Their actions mean that I constantly have to enter into discussions in defence of internet

As a consequence of this, some Anonymous supporters have publicly disassociated themselves from the actions of their fellow activists.

When Anonymous declared war on US presidential candidate Donald Trump because of his racist remarks, others within the movement pointed out that political censorship runs contrary to the movement’s own ideology. The Swedish chapter of Anonymous has also reacted to the fact that some operations have failed in their aims and been hijacked by racists: “In such instances it is imperative that other elements in the collective make their voices heard and show that they are critical,” it wrote in a press release some years ago.

It has been a long time since Anonymous attacked any Swedish targets. The National IT Crime Unit’s Anders Ahlqvist says this is because of the absence of a cause to rally around in recent years.

“Our impression is that when the media write a lot about an issue relating to, let’s say, file-sharing, youngsters talk about this in a chat room and a certain mood begins to

political message on Stockholm underground carriages, but what drives them to do it is more likely to be the thought of their work being seen all the way from the southern suburbs to those in the north.”

Even so, Anonymous does have an important role to play in the growth of internet activism. Many of those who are now engaged in more serious work to create a free internet were once hackers. Today they are hotly sought after as experts by western governments and authorities.

How has such a change come about?

“Those of us who were there at the start are no longer teenagers. Today we have families, jobs, research posts – but also a genuine interest in politics. That means we no longer see the point of hacking into polisen.se. It’s a bit like throwing stones at policemen, an expression of frustration rather than a deep-felt desire to instigate change. If you really want to make a difference, there are better ways to do it.”

35

THE JOBS WILL DISAPEAR, OR WILL THEY? Digital technology and robots are not going to make us redundant.

We will, however, be working with other things in the future.

To manage this transition, schools will need to become better at preparing students for tomorrow’s world. So says Bo Dahlbom, Professor of Information Technolog y at the IT University in Gothenburg, Sweden.

R

esearchers in Oxford published a study a couple of years back stating that almost half of today’s working tasks will be automated within the next twenty years. Understandably many people were worried: What if my job, too, is to disappear? Will I be replaced by robots and sophisticated IT systems? However, according to Bo Dahlbom, who researches into IT and how schools can prepare children for the labour market of the future, there is no need for concern.

“First of all,” he says, “it will take longer than what has been predicted. The fact that the technology exists does not necessarily mean that the technology is widely adopted.

Secondly, new jobs will be created. People will be needed to take care of the robots.”

BO DAHLBOM Leading debater and public speaker on IT issues and the internet’s role in social development.

A professor at the IT University in Gothenburg and R&D Director with Sustainable Innovation AB.

36

Nonetheless we are facing the prospect of huge changes in the labour market. Digital technology has already heralded the beginning of the end for numerous administrative professions.

Bank clerks and office workers who once registered payments or managed simple routine tasks have been replaced by IT systems.

Robots have already taken over production line jobs in many factories and in the future, when autonomous vehicles take to the roads, driving may well be another profession that belongs to the past. Even highly qualified professionals such as doctors will be affected by the march of technology.

“When artificial intelligence systems become better than doctors at making accurate diagnoses, the power of the medical profession will be undermined,” Professor Dahlbom predicts.

So what professions will remain? Are we all going to work on programming robots?

“No, by no means. Digital technology will lead to the evolution of new professions in the same way as industrialisation did. We will, for example, need to adapt our legislation, rules, practices and behaviour to the new reality.

Someone will need to develop and launch new services. Someone will have to make sure that the transition to new ways of doing things actually works. All of this will create huge

numbers of jobs,” Dahlbom contends.

Also, as more and more people around the world see their living standards improve, consumption will increase, creating even more job opportunities. Professor Dahlbom believes that there will be more work in the entertainment and tourist industries, for example. Once the inhabitants of today’s poorer nations have more money in their pocket, they "DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY WILL LEAD TO THE EVOLUTION OF NEW PROFESSIONS IN THE SAME WAY AS INDUSTRIALISATION DID." too will want to travel and see the world. The downside of this increase in consumption is, of course, increasing pressure on the planet’s finite resources. So in the years to come many people will be engaged to work on environmental issues and sustainability.

Presumably there will also be brand new services that we are unable to foresee or comprehend today. There are already lots of people working in professions that no one had even heard of just five or ten years ago.

The question is whether today’s young people are properly equipped to respond to the

ROBOTS AS WAITERS Will the robots take over all professions and make us unemployed in the future?

demands that follow in the wake of such rapid developments in society. How can schools prepare students for the challenges and opportunities of the future?

In Sweden the government has tasked the National Agency for Education with producing national IT strategies and clarifying the schools’ responsibility for strengthening pupils’ digital competence. In March 2016 the agency issued its first proposal to introduce programming into the curriculum. There is much to suggest that this will not become a separate subject but will be integrated into maths and technology lessons from the first grade onwards.

Professor Dahlbom is not convinced that this goes far enough. He thinks Swedish schools are out of step with the times.

“After twelve years at school pupils are totally unprepared for modern working life.

They know nothing about how trade and industry work, or what is expected of them in their future professional roles. They don’t know what engineers or other professionals actually do at work and they have neither contacts nor competence,” he says.

The problem is that school has become its own isolated world. Dahlbom believes that, in order to keep pace with the rest of society and

to benefit from the knowledge that is out there, schools must be more closely integrated with working life.

“I see no reason why school should be seen as a building, a physical place where pupils spend most of their time. Instead more tuition should take place in real workplaces, where pupils can work on real projects and learn skills that they will actually find useful. That would make them considerably better prepared for adult life and the demands of paid employment. After all, isn’t that the most important task that school has?” he says.

"MUCH OF WHAT IS TAUGHT TODAY IS OUTMODED. DOES EVERYONE IN TODAY’S SOCIETY REALLY NEED TO LEARN NEEDLEWORK AND WOODWORK?"

O

bviously there are also some important subjects, such as history, that perhaps can’t be learnt in an ordinary workplace. But is it really necessary to be in school to learn? In the same way that IT is creating new opportunities for working in places other than the office, why can’t pupils use technology to sit wherever they choose with their computers and follow

what the teacher is saying? Professor Dahlbom reasons.

Many teachers do their best to arrange more study visits and longer periods of work experience, but they say they are limited by all the demands that are already made in the curriculum.

“That makes it hard to implement any changes. That’s why I think it’s time to ditch the curriculum!” he says, adding, “Anyway, so much of what is taught today is outmoded.

Does everyone in today’s society really need to learn needlework and woodwork?”

Wouldn’t it be better to replace those lessons with programming?

“At least that is a skill that is actually in demand. The snag is that if we develop a course to train today’s teachers in programming, it takes a long time before they can teach it. The knowledge then shared with pupils is already out of date. But we can solve that problem by making sure that pupils spend more time in the working environment, because programming has already become such an integral part of so many jobs.”

37

TRAINED FOR THE

To meet the future needs of the labour market increasing numbers of countries are introducing programming into the primary school curriculum. In Finland programming is seen as a key skill for everyone in the new digital society.

38

39

F

irst four presses on the arrow for straight ahead.

“Now two to the right,” says Mico, pressing the arrows on the robot’s back before releasing it to see whether it follows the intended path and ends up where it should.

The yellow and black striped piece of hardware looks rather like a bee. Bee-Bot, as it is called, moves on a chequered plastic mat, where each square corresponds to a press on one of the arrow keys. First four steps straight ahead, then two to the right. When Bee-Bot arrives at its destination it plays a little tune. Mico looks on approvingly.

“This is an example of how to teach the rudiments of programming to first and second graders. The children decide where they want Bee-Bot to go and program it accordingly. It teaches them to think logically,” says Anna-Kaarina Niskanen, a teacher at Kytöpuisto Primary School in Koivukylä, 25 kilometres south of Helsinki.

From the autumn term in 2016 programming will be part of the curriculum for all Finnish primary school pupils. In the first two years the focus will be on understanding the practical aspects of programming. From year three to year six the children will learn how programming languages work and start to create their own programs on a tablet computer.

By the time they reach secondary school age they should be able to program independently. That means being able to identify patterns, produce abstract models, think logically and work systematically and creatively to find solutions to a variety of problems. In short, everything

40

that is included within the concept of “computational thinking”.

The idea is to fully integrate programming into all aspects of the curriculum rather than studying it as a stand-alone subject: computational thinking is regarded as a core skill that everyone will need in the modern digital world.

“Technology plays a big part in our lives today. In order to make the best possible use of it, we need to understand the basics about how it works. In the future this kind of knowledge is going to be even more crucial. My job is to prepare pupils for this,” says Anna-Kaarina Niskanen.

The demand for skilful programmers will also rise. It is hoped that by adding programming to the curriculum, more young people will develop an interest in it and continue their studies at a higher level.

“Not everybody will need to work with technology, but a good many will. Teaching everyone the basics gives people the opportunity to choose for themselves whether or not they want to work in this field in the future,” Anna-Kaarina says.

P

rogramming is very much in the spotlight at schools throughout Europe today, as the European Schoolnet report “Computing our Future” published in October 2015 confirms. The report, based on a survey conducted in 20 European countries and Israel, notes that 16 countries have introduced programming into the curriculum at either national, regional

BEE-BOT The Bee-Bot helps pupils learn programming.

A FEW OF OUR FAVOURITE EDUCATIONAL INITIATIVES

or local level, in some cases as a separate subject, in others integrated across the board. The 16 countries are Austria, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, France, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain and the UK. Ten of these have already introduced or are about to introduce coding skills into the primary school curriculum. Now Finland is following suit.

Anna-Kaarina Niskanen has a keen personal interest in technology and is positive about the new curriculum. However, she does have concerns about how the skills will be taught in schools where staff are less enthusiastic about technology.

“Things will work well at our school. We’ve already started. But it’s important that every child in Finland receives the same quality of tuition.”

Why are some teachers less enthusiastic?

“Most criticism tends to come from teachers who are themselves uncertain about how to use modern technology. It’s important to give them time to practise and test things for themselves. That really is the key, because the success of the initiative depends to a great deal on us teachers.

We need to learn before we can teach others,” Anna-Kaarina says.

The children in her class enjoy playing with Bee-Bot. But many of the school’s slightly older pupils also think that programming is fun.

Sixth-grader Radia Manadir, 12, has tested her coding skills both at school and at home with her older sister.

“You have to plan what you want to do carefully. I think it’s fun to see the outcome of what you yourself have programmed,” she says.

Radia thinks it is important to know a little about coding in order to understand new technology and how it works. Her classmate Jenny Hämäläinen agrees.

“It’s fun! I’d like to write my own program, something to make life easier. But it’s quite complicated, too. You need to know lots of things.

It’s very different from what we normally do at school,” she says.

MATTECENTRUM offers free help to everyone in Sweden studying maths. Every month more than 300,000 pupils are given extra coaching both online and in “maths labs” that are open to everyone. Here learners can do their maths homework with help from mathematicians, engineers and scientists who provide tutoring assistance on a voluntary basis. Each year as the time approaches for Sweden’s National Tests for school-leavers, Mattecentrum arranges conventions all over Sweden where pupils can receive help to hone their skills in maths.

PINK PROGRAMMING aims to encourage more women to become programmers. The association is the brainchild of an IT consultant, a developer and a web developer, all of whom would like to see more female colleagues in the profession. Pink Programming champions female role models and arranges lectures, informal Sunday get-togethers and camps where women who are interested can learn how to program.

FUTEBOL DÁ FORCA is much more than a football school. It offers young women a platform on which to build their self-esteem in order to realise their dreams. Futebol dá força means “football gives strength” and was started in Mozambique in 2012 by Cecilia Andrén Nyström from Sweden. Today the organisation is also active in Zambia, Sweden and Finland. Its vision is to change attitudes, social structures and social norms – starting on the football pitch.

ABOUT THE WORKSHOP HIQ ORGANISED IN FINLAND In 2015 HiQ Finland arranged an “Innovation Workshop” together with Kytöpuisto Primary School. Fifth- and sixth-graders were asked to present ideas about how technology could be used to make their own day-to-day lives a little simpler. Among the many ideas presented were a recycling robot, a grandma robot to look after children whose parents are at work, and a digital stylist that tells you what to wear. Another useful idea was an app that keeps track of all your possessions.

41

NEW PROFESSIONS Scan the QR-code to hear more about HiQ's view of new professions.

NEW

PROFESSIONS Old professions disappear; new ones take their place! Meet two employees who have jobs that didn’t even exist five years ago.

42

DANIEL JOHANSSON, WORKS WITH VR

What does your job involve?

“I work on truck simulators, using VR to develop new truck models. For example, if we want to develop a new cab, it’s important that windows are placed to offer drivers the best possible all-round vision.

That can be difficult to ascertain until you’ve actually sat in the cab.

However, by creating a cab in VR, we can test ideas and make any necessary changes to the windows before building it for real. This also gives us an opportunity to identify any constructional errors and to examine how well matched components are before we produce them.

It all helps to speed up the development process.”

What led you to work in this particular niche?

“I started working with high-performance computing. When I first joined HiQ I was building aircraft simulators to train pilots. VR was still in its infancy at the time but I was curious about the different ways in which it could be used.”

How come VR has suddenly become so big?

“A few years ago a VR headset cost around 50,000 euros and was such a tight fit that it gave you a headache. Since then the technology has made great strides. Now the challenge is to think of ways of using VR to simplify all sorts of tasks. Things have progressed so quickly because of the keen interest shown from consumers.”

What’s the most difficult thing about your job?

“The hardest part is to make everything look like it does in reality.

To be convincing VR needs to work in the way you expect everything around you to work in real life. That’s a challenge. You need, for example, to create trees that look, act and move just like real trees do.”

What kind of qualifications do you need for a career in VR? “It depends on what you’re going to do. I have a degree in engineering. But it’s also useful to have skills in computer graphics and image processing.”

How will we be using VR in the future?

“In all sorts of ways! I can see VR moving closer and closer to reality. Let’s say, perhaps you’d like to enjoy five quiet minutes by yourself in surroundings that uplift and inspire you before you step out onto the stage. In the future this will be possible thanks to virtual reality.”

So yours is definitely a profession for the future?

“Absolutely. Although I’m not sure VR will be regarded as a separate profession. It will soon play such a central role in technology that people won’t have to be VR specialists. It will simply be knowledge that everyone will need in their work.”

Do you enjoy your job?

“I do! It’s great fun, fascinating and intellectually challenging. It’s incredibly motivating to know that what you’re doing makes a real difference. You’re so much more than just a cog in a machine.”

JEANETTE ÖSTERMAN, WORKS WITH SOCIAL LISTENING

What is social listening?

“It is media intelligence, monitoring social media to find out what people are saying about a particular brand. I monitor who is talking about my customers, what they are saying and which channels they are using. Then I analyse the results. My analysis can later be used to steer future messages from the company or to determine which social media to focus on to reach a particular target group. In this way I can help my customers to focus their efforts more effectively and achieve a stronger impact.”

When did social listening become a marketable service?

“It has been around for a couple of years now. To begin with it was quite rudimentary; for example, you could receive alerts every time a relevant term was mentioned. Today the service is greater and broader, as we also interpret and analyse what it being said. The unique thing about the technology here at HiQ is that it is a self-learning system that can be trained to listen only to relevant discussions. Previously this has been difficult as terms and phrases can be used in so many different ways and not everything that is said about a company is necessarily relevant. Today we can filter out all the ‘background noise’ and focus solely on what is relevant.”

Why has HiQ chosen to focus on social listening?

“Social media has become so important in today’s society. It’s not unusual for customers’ opinions to be more widely spread through social media than a company’s own market communication. Consequently various forms of digital analysis have become a key service to offer companies. Social listening is one of them.”

What kind of qualifications do you need?

“Social media monitors have different qualifications, but you do need to be able to interpret statistics and put them into context. A lot of social media monitors have a background in communication. In my case, I have a Master’s in Business and Economics where the emphasis was on marketing.”

How do you think your job will develop in the future?

“They say that the next stage in social listening will be image analysis. More and more companies and private individuals are choosing to communicate via pictures, for example on Instagram. The next challenge will be to gather, categorise and analyse the content of the pictures that people take.”

Do you enjoy your job?

“Yes. It’s enjoyable work and very creative, especially in terms of deciding how best to make use of the information you’ve gathered and the conclusions you’ve reached.”

43

New business with VR With innovations such as Oculus Rift, HoloLens and HTC Vive the time has finally come for Virtual Reality to really begin to make its mark. This opens up new opportunities for every company that is looking for brand new ways to market and launch its products.

JOHAN SANNEBLAD Business developer at HiQ.

44

V

irtual reality (VR) enables users to see, feel and experience things that do not actually exist.

Let’s say, for example, that you are thinking of building a house. With the aid of technology such as HTC Vive you can get a little box to look like a real house and then walk around on the plot, moving and turning the house to work out the best place to put it, or what the view from the bedroom window will look like.

Are you in the market for a new car, but haven’t yet decided on the colour? Well now, with the help of a pair of HoloLens glasses, you can see what the car in front of you would look like in a different colour or with different accessories.

If you are undecided about where to holiday, don an Oculus Rift headset and sample what Tenerife has to offer, or see what it’s like in your destination’s different hotels.

VR is already being used in industry to reduce development costs. It costs less to design something in VR and then test it and make

adaptations, than it does to build a real-life prototype. Now, however, a number of new VR technologies are also creating opportunities for other kinds of companies.

In the first instance these are companies that have previously marketed themselves and their products by using films to communicate a certain kind of sensation. With VR these companies can now offer potential customers experiences they have never had before.

“To stand out today you need to give the user a real ‘wow!’ experience. You can do that with VR. It’s an amazing feeling to put on the headset and step into a totally different world. The contrast between watching a film and experiencing something in VR is as great as that between reading a brochure and watching a film. You get so very much more out of the experience,” says Johan Sanneblad, business developer at HiQ. He looks at how products can be launched and made “real” for customers in revolutionary new ways with the help of virtual reality.

“These are exciting times. The platforms for VR were developed some time ago, but it is only now in 2016 that they are actually coming onto the market. The potential is enormous,” he says.

VR is not really new but until fairly recently the technology was so complex and costly that the areas of application were limited. A simple VR helmet cost tens of thousands of euros and a user could only wear it for a short time before developing a headache or suffering the symptoms of motion sickness.

That meant that VR technology was restricted primarily to industry and defence applications rather than being developed for ordinary consumers. HiQ has been building VR flight simulators and VR heavy goods vehicles for years in order to help a number of companies rationalise their production processes.

For VR to make a major breakthrough, the technology needed to be better and cheaper.

The answer was, to a certain degree, to be found in the rapid technical progress made in

the field of mobile phones. The people behind Oculus Rift hit on the idea of using small, inexpensive screens together with advanced computing power to bring VR experiences within the financial reach of ordinary consumers.

Oculus began as a crowdfunding project but was soon bought by Facebook for 2 billion US dollars. That kind of financial backing was to prove decisive for the development of VR technology.

One important improvement is a series of ingenious algorithms that ensures a seamless VR experience when users turn their head.

Previously the time lag before the VR world “caught up” with the user caused many people to feel travel sick. These delays have now been eliminated.

Another timely technical advance is the new generation of high-resolution screens.

The fact that the virtual world no longer looks like a pixelated computer image plays a big part in authenticating the sensation of actually being present in the VR world.

The first Oculus Rift sets were delivered to ordinary consumers in April 2016. However, the technology has also been used in a variety of mobile solutions. During the half-term school holiday McDonalds in Sweden ran a Happy Meal campaign with cartons that could be turned into virtual reality viewers.

Customers simply needed to download an app and then use their smartphone as a screen in the Happy Goggles carton.

For truly astounding experiences, however, somewhat more is still required.

“VR in your smartphone is fun, but it’s still rather like watching a feature film on your computer. It works, but it’s not the same as going to the cinema. That’s why I think we still have a few years to wait before VR becomes really big among consumers. That improves the opportunities for companies eager to market themselves with VR to offer customers a truly out-of-the-ordinary experience that leaves them with a real ‘wow!’ feeling,” says Johan Sanneblad.

45

Warm up in

HAWAII

If Karin Lundqvist and her teammates qualify for Rio de Janeiro, it will be the first time a Swedish women’s beach volleyball team has competed in the Olympic Games. Karin has spent all spring in intensive training – in Hawaii!! We called her early one morning to hear how things are going.

46

“Things are going well. The big qualifying tournament will be taking place over the midsummer weekend. That’s when 16 European countries will be fighting for a place in the Olympic Games. So it’s important to train hard!”

It sounds fabulous to be training in Hawaii of all places.

“I’ve spent three years at university here and I love this island. People often describe Hawaii as a paradise – and they’re not exaggerating. The people here are incredibly kind and friendly. The climate is perfect. It’s never scorching hot, but it’s always nice and warm.”

What is life as a beach volleyball professional like?

“Being a professional is like running your own business. I work with sponsors and set up training schedules. I’m also one of the owners of Play 4 Life, which organises beach volleyball training camps at which players at all levels are welcome. During the three months I’m in Hawaii, around 70 people will be coming to train with us.”

What use do you make of digital technology when marketing yourself?

“Social media have really helped athletes like us to be more visible and raise our profile.

Now I can always update my fans on where I am and how things are going. It brings alive the quest towards the goals I’m aiming for, and it’s a fantastic opportunity for fans to feel

part of it all. I hope I can inspire others to follow their own dreams.”

What drives you?

“My motivation is loving what I do. I love the adrenaline kick of a competition when I have to perform at the peak of my abilities.

But I suppose what I like best is the feeling of constantly developing and improving. For example, when I hit a serve a little better than before – or whatever. I’m motivated by seeing the results from that come from training.”

You’re also involved in the “Beachvolley against Cancer” charity. How did that come about?

“When Nina Grawender and I were teammates, we felt we wanted to do something meaningful and we wondered if we might be able to get our sponsors, HiQ , on board too. As you know, HiQ is a company that welcomes unconventional solutions. It is a big believer in thinking outside the box. So I asked if HiQ would be interested in a collaboration where they donated the equivalent of our prize money to the ‘Beachvolley against Cancer’ fund. It feels good to help other people in ways like this. It’s the right thing to do.”

When are you happiest?

“When I have the right balance in my life and can feel that I’m still developing. Results aren’t always the most important thing. As long as I feel I’m giving 100 percent and I’m totally committed, I’m happy. That’s when I feel at my best.”

K ARIN LUNDQVIST BORN: 1981 HEIGHT: 188

cm (6 ft 2 ins) volleyball pro and part-owner of Play 4 Life HOME CLUB: Katrineholms VK SWEDISH CHAMPION: 2004, 2007, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2014, 2015 HIGHEST RANKING IN WORLD TOUR: 5th place in Grand Slam Gstaad 2008, 9th in European Championships 2013 RIGHT NOW: Aiming to compete in the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics BLOG: www.karinlundqvist.com INSTAGRAM: karinlundqvistbeach JOB: Beach

47

GUNNEL Wood-chopping board member

She has been named as one of the Swedish IT industry’s most powerful women.

She has many years’ experience of leading positions in global IT businesses and her know-how is much in demand among a host of successful companies. Yet few know who she is, this wood-chopping professional director with roots in Luleå in northern Sweden.

HiQ Magazine met Gunnel Duveblad to talk about performance, the future and owning your own time.

48

E

nergetic is probably the best word to describe Gunnel Duveblad. It’s difficult not to be swept off your feet by her pace and sense of commitment. She walks swiftly in high heels, has a ready laugh and punctuates her words with expressive gestures of her hands. There is a twinkle in her eye and a commanding presence in her keen, ice-blue gaze. Everything about her suggests positive energy and get-up-and-go, despite the fact that the interview has been timed for an early morning start at the HiQ office, one of the companies for which she is a director.

“I’m a morning person. There’s no denying that! Perhaps I shouldn’t mention it, but the day before yesterday I was up and working by five o’clock,” she says.

Gunnel Duveblad loves her work. No one who meets her is ever left in any doubt about that – nor about the fact that she is a person who commands respect and is not afraid to air her opinions.

But what about all that energy? Where does it come from?

What is it that drives her?

“It’s difficult to put my finger on any one particular thing. But I’m a very results-oriented person in every respect. I’m motivated to achieve things and I’m fortunate enough to have a job where I’m constantly meeting people who also want to achieve something, people with ideas and passion. I get a lot out of that.”

It is not often that we see her in this kind of situation. The name Gunnel Duveblad is well known in the IT industry and the Swedish business world, but the woman herself gives few interviews and makes few public appearances.

“Trying to stay in the background has always been my way. I suppose it’s because I prefer to work as a member of a team, where the team gets the credit rather than the individual.”

L

49

»Everyone should be able to work with what they want to work with. But they need to be given the opportunity to do so.« GUNNEL DUVEBLAD

T

hat drive – to improve the team as a whole – is a common thread that runs through Gunnel Duveblad’s life. As a youngster growing up she was determined to become a maths teacher, an ambition that stayed with her to the very end of her school career.

“That sort of sums it up. A teacher isn’t there to bask in her own glory. Her job is to raise the performance of the group as a whole. That’s probably particularly true of maths, which can be a difficult and complex subject to grasp. You need to help each and every pupil to think in their own way, to understand the concepts in order to ‘make the penny drop’, as you might say. I get a real kick out of helping other people to grow and raise their game. And I can see a link between that and working with other board members,” she says.

Gunnel never became a teacher, however.

She studied science in upper secondary school and a special project brought her into contact with programming.

“That’s what sparked my interest in IT and technology,” she says. “I loved programming and at home I’d always been encouraged to focus on doing the things I enjoyed. I suppose it was there and then that I embarked on the journey that has led me here.”

Home back then was in Luleå in the far north of Sweden. Gunnel grew up as one of three siblings. Her father was a contractor, often working with excavating machines; mother stayed at home while the children were still young. Gunnel’s younger sister, Gunilla Nordström, is also a well-known figure in IT, industry and commerce and has held leading positions with the Electrolux Group and Sony Ericsson.

How come you two sisters were so attracted to IT? “As I said, we’ve always had a lot of positive support from two loving parents, who like nothing better than to see us pursuing our interests. We were constantly told that we could do whatever we set our heart on doing. It was that which led to my becoming the first in our family to study at university and my sister to

50

become the second. These were quite simply the subjects we found most appealing. We never gave a thought to what might be typically male and typically female areas of interest.”

Gunnel thinks it was also an advantage to grow up in a relatively small city. She believes it gave her greater freedom: the way forward in life was less clear-cut.

“If you grow up in Stockholm or Gothenburg you can become very blinkered in your choices. Is it to be KTH, Chalmers or the Stockholm School of Economics? I think growing up in the provinces may have played a part in giving me the courage to choose a different path.”

"TRYING TO STAY IN THE BACKGROUND HAS ALWAYS BEEN MY WAY. I SUPPOSE IT’S BECAUSE I PREFER TO WORK AS A MEMBER OF A TEAM, WHERE THE TEAM GETS THE CREDIT RATHER THAN THE INDIVIDUAL." At the time Luleå offered little choice in terms of IT studies, or EDP as it was known back then. So when Gunnel left school she moved to Umeå where she was one of just two women in the university’s first cohort of Computer Economics students (systems analysts in today’s parlance).

On graduating she joined the gigantic IBM Group as a consultant.

“In those days there was a lot more emphasis on hardware and huge investments were being made in IT systems. The focus was on helping companies to automate their processes. It was hugely exciting. For me, IT has always been about creating value. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a question of major applications or simple administrative aids, the quest to find commercial benefits has always fascinated me: how can companies become more efficient, save money and be better at delivering what they do?”

Gunnel spent 25 years with IBM, most of them in leading positions at both Nordic and European level. However, a career in management was not anything she had set her sights on. It came almost as something of a shock

when she was offered her first managerial post.

At the time she was working part-time, a decision she had made in conjunction with her two spells of parental leave.

“I remember getting an email saying that my manager’s manager wanted a word with me. He offered me the chance to become a line manager – but I turned it down. My focus was to work part-time so I could spend time with my daughters. I wasn’t prepared to compromise on that. But then IBM got back to me.

‘Okay,’ they said. ‘What about working parttime as a manager?’ After much deliberation back and forth, I finally said yes.”

In practice, of course, it could hardly be considered a part-time job. But that didn’t matter. The way things were set up, it worked well. The important thing as far as Gunnel was concerned was that she was in control of her time.

“I’m sure I worked more than full-time. But I wanted the flexibility to be able to leave work early and to work from home. That’s good advice for anyone – Take ownership of your own schedule! Women especially need to have the courage to be kind to themselves.”

S

uddenly that famous energy is positively crackling in the room.

It’s clear that this is an issue very close to Gunnel Duveblad’s heart. With force and passion she explains how a senior position demands a great deal of time and hard work, but that the key is to find ways to balance the workload – both for the individual and in society as a whole.

“No one is going to tell you to create a more flexible working situation for yourself. That’s an initiative that only you can take. Everyone – men and women alike – should be able to work with what they want to work with. But they need to be given the opportunity to do so.

That’s never clearer than when you start a family. Because, despite the enormous changes this brings in your life, the week still only has seven days and the day only has 24 hours. That’s when you need to cut out certain things from your life. And for that to work, we need a fully developed service sector. That would produce

all sorts of positive effects, not least in terms of the integration into the labour market of young people and those without any formal qualifications in higher education.”

Gunnel’s message is plain. She has been filling a glass with water while speaking and now, at last, she finds time to take a drink.

When I ask what has been the greatest challenge in her career, there is a pause in the conversation – a marked contrast to her otherwise rapid replies and quick-fire comments. When the answer finally comes it touches on an issue we have just explored.

“If I take a step back, I think I’d have to say that it’s the work-life balance, actually making it work. Combining the ambition to be a mother who is there for her children with delivering good results at work. I think there are a lot of people who would agree with me about that.”

G

GUNNEL DUVEBLAD

Board worker and new Chair of the Board of Directors of HiQ. HOME: Outside Stockholm, but comes originally from Luleå.

FAVOURITE GADGET: There’s no denying that the mobile phone is a really practical piece of kit.

READS: A mix of novels and crime stories WHAT TO DO ON THE METRO: Solve sudoku puzzles.

FAVOURITE SEASON: Spring. Spring symbolises faith in the future so well. Nature is so full of signs that things are starting to happen.

THE BEST THING ABOUT HIQ: Everything. The people, the passion and the attitude. What HiQ has already achieved and, not least, what we want to achieve in the future.

JOB:

unnel Duveblad is chair of the Ruter Dam Foundation, an initiative that works to promote female leadership at a senior level in major companies. The answer to the question of how this can be achieved is delivered instantaneously: “a performance- and results-based corporate culture”.

“That’s my simple analysis,” she adds.

“More women are given leading positions in companies that embrace a performance-based culture. People are given clear responsibilities and clear goals, so they understand, ‘Okay, this is what I need to do to deliver what is expected.’ I think women are more results-oriented.

There are statistics that show that girls have better results at school and in further education. It’s only in trade and industry that the balance shifts.”

Gunnel explains this contradiction in terms of a relational culture, based on factors such as who is last to leave the office in the evening; factors where performance is not based on quantifiable metrics.

“Traditionally people have said that, in order to attract women you need a ‘softer’ working environment based on relations. I think the opposite is true; you need something that is

51

»And I think it’s great fun to chop wood. The results are so clear to see. You work at it and suddenly there’s a pile of wood at your feet«

clearly linked to personal performance. That kind of environment stimulates people to deliver. However, it’s less important where you deliver from in purely physical terms – for example, if you need to work from home while you’re looking after small children, or if you prefer to get up at five in the morning to get your work done so you can leave early in the day. It’s the results that should count.”

What about female quotas? What do you think about them?

“I don’t believe in quotas as a way of shoehorning more women into corporate boardrooms. I think the focus needs to be on putting more women in senior positions in management teams. Women with responsibility for results. That’s where I want to see more women.”

In common with many others, Gunnel Duveblad would like to see more female role

52

models to show others the way forward. The problem is that different people have different ideas about what constitutes a female role model.

"SURE, THERE’S AN ATTRACTION TO BELONGING TO A TEAM THAT WORKS TOGETHER EVERY DAY, PEOPLE WHO BATTLE SIDE BY SIDE TO SOLVE THE CHALLENGES THEY FACE" “My own role models when I was growing up – my mother and grandmother, for example – were not women who were in the public eye.

Both went to work outside the home and both learned to drive, something that neither of my grandfathers ever bothered to do. At the time I didn’t see these initiatives as anything special.

It was only later that I understood what pioneers these women were in the family.”

R

ole models, a focus on results and flexibility are seen by Gunnel Duveblad as three key factors behind success. She herself took flexibility to a new level when she first embarked on her boardroom career just over ten years ago. After 25 years with IBM followed by four intensive years as a manager with another American IT company, EDS, she stepped back from these operational roles.

“Even as a 40-year-old I said that by the time I was 50, I would take operational retirement. It had a lot to do with making sure I could have a greater say in how I used my time.”

She had already taken a peek at what boardroom work involved and gained an insight into what it meant to take an active role as a director. Today she chairs and has directorships in organisations that include Dustin, HiQ , PostNord, Sweco and Team Olivia.

“It’s a lot of work, but it’s great fun. The companies I have chosen to become involved in are companies that have embarked on a journey of change. They know what they want and they are eager to develop. For me, that’s really stimulating.” orking days as a board professional – or ”board worker” as she prefers to call herself – consist of numerous meetings and large amounts of material to be read. There are conclusions to be drawn and conversations with the CEOs of the companies for which she is a director. No one can deny that she has her plate full. Does she not perhaps sometimes wish she were back dealing with operational issues?

“Sure, there’s an attraction to belonging to a team that works together every day, people who battle side by side to solve the challenges they face. I do miss that at times. It gives you a real rush to make those positive transitions, moving out of the red into the black, entering new markets, winning new shares. In the boardroom there’s less focus on day-to-day operations. That’s the whole point – taking a

W

look at things from the outside. But that’s fun, too. Especially being able to work in so many different fields.”

It is no coincidence that the companies for which Gunnel Duveblad is a director span such a broad spectrum of industries, from IT to care and rehabilitation “It gives me an opportunity to share the knowledge and lessons learned in one industry with another. That’s exactly the kind of thinking that HiQ stands for. Basically, the challenges are very much the same. My roots are in the IT industry, where people work to solve a wide range of day-to-day issues, to find solutions to commercial challenges – just as they do in all businesses in every sector.”

Cross-industry collaboration is also a theme that recurs when the discussion turns to the wider implications of the digital revolution and its impact on the future.

“I see Volvo’s In-car Delivery as a firstrate example of what is happening now,” "THE GREATEST THING IS WHAT’S HAPPENING RIGHT NOW. NOW AND IN THE FUTURE!" Gunnel says. “Radically different industries and companies are focusing on the problems and needs of the end-user and working together to solve them: in this particular instance, to deliver goods that a customer has ordered directly to that person’s car. Today the opportunities to do this exist and it has become cost-effective to develop innovations to meet these needs.”

Many years of experience have enabled Gunnel Duveblad to detect a clear trend: the IT industry has reverted to a “trial and error” approach where the starting point is human behaviour.

“After a period when the mantra was to test and test and test again before daring to release ideas, the return to a ‘test and run’ approach has revolutionised the industry.

The key is simply to dare – and to bring together players from different sectors. We will continue to find brand new ways of using technology.”

T

he time allocated for the interview is rapidly running out.

Soon Gunnel must be on her way to one of her many meetings. Before she disappears, however, I ask how she likes to spend her time on days when she isn’t working.

“I get a lot of pleasure out of gardening,” she says. “Pruning my fruit trees and weeding.

Working with your hands gives you plenty of opportunity to think about other things. Work, for example. So I like working with my hands at home and at our summer place.”

Her next comment is both unexpected and obvious.

“And I think it’s great fun to chop wood.

The results are so clear to see. You work at it and suddenly there’s a pile of wood at your feet. I’m so grateful for things like log splitters. I’m no good with an axe, so I’m glad that smart inventions like log splitters help me to do what I enjoy doing.”

Clear results, smart solutions, having fun.

Chopping wood somehow sums up the entire interview with Gunnel Duveblad. It also makes it easy to decide where to photograph her. We agree to meet “out in the country”, where she patiently poses a couple of weeks later among sawdust and piles of logs.

When the photographer is satisfied, we stroll around the large garden scattered with early spring flowers and talk about the latest news and what has been the most revolutionary change during Gunnel Duveblad’s 40 years in the industry. She has seen numerous technical advances and innovations that have changed the world, our own lifestyles and our relationship to technology. What has left the most indelible impression? The growth of the internet, maybe? Smartphones?

“The greatest thing is what’s happening right now. Now and in the future!”

Of course. The greatest things are ahead of us, not behind us.

“It’s now and in the future that the most exciting developments will take place.

We’ve only seen the beginning of what it is possible to do.”

53

54

TECHNOLOGY THAT MAKES A DIFFERENCE Technolog y is making life simpler for people all over the world. New methods for collecting money mean that technolog y can now also make a difference to those who are fleeing from war and persecution.

W

e are living at a time when 60 million people worldwide have been forced to flee from their homes. Many of them have lost everything they owned. Fortunately there are also many who want to help.

One way to do that is to donate money to an organisation such as UNHCR, the UN’s refugee agency that works to protect displaced people. UNHCR distributes emergency aid, fights to uphold human rights and gives refugees hope for the future.

Many people in Sweden donate money in connection with major galas or special campaigns. However, for UNHCR’s work to be sustainable it is also essential that people continue to give by becoming monthly donors.

For a long time now the charity Sweden for UNHCR has made a point of telephoning people who have recently made an SMS donation to ask if they would consider becoming monthly donors.

"THANKS TO THIS SERVICE, MORE PEOPLE ARE ABLE TO SURVIVE." “It’s an effective approach. We know these are people who have already shown that they care. They are often prepared to continue to be involved in this way,” says Lovisa Ulfsparre of Sweden for UNHCR. Many of those contacted agree to become monthly donors, but until a year or so ago the organisation then had to send a form through the post which donors had to sign and return. In many cases the form was never returned. As a result Sweden for UNHCR lost almost two thirds of potential donors.

“It was an expensive business, for us and for the environment, to send reminders that didn’t lead to anything. Initially we started to look at various telephone services that recorded conversations in a way that constituted an oral agreement. But all of the services were very expensive and required a commitment from us stretching many years into the future. So we turned to HiQ to ask if they could help us to build a similar service customised to our own specific needs,” Lovisa explains.

The new app enables Sweden for UNHCR to record an oral agree-

ment that ensures that the donor is registered for a monthly donation by direct debit on completion of the phone call. In addition the app compiles statistics based on the phone calls made. This has already led to improvements in efficiency and results of Sweden for UNHCR. “Since we started to use the app in February 2015, it has worked really well: 80 percent of those who become donors have agreed to a monthly direct debit by the time the call is over,” Lovisa says.

The average monthly donor gives around 15 euros a month and remains for 4 years. Each new monthly donor can, in other words, be worth over 700 euros for UNHCR. “This means UNHCR can help more refugees. Thanks to this service, more people are able to survive,” Lovisa says.

I

n the interim HiQ has also built an app for those who work with face-to-face (F2F) recruitment out on the streets.

Previously these recruiters were equipped with binders full of pictures that they used to explain what UNHCR does. Everyone who agreed to become a monthly donor had to complete a form that was then sent to the office to be copied and filed.

Now Sweden for UNHCR has replaced binders with tablet computers.

“The change has made it a lot quicker to fill in all the personal details. We can use a donor’s personal identity number to access much of the information we need via the Swedish Population Register,” says AK Fagerlund, Program Manager for F2F fund-raising with Sweden for UNHCR. It also used to be a major undertaking in time and money to replace content in the binders, as new pictures needed to be printed and sent out to recruiters nationwide. Today the content can be updated on every recruiter’s tablet at the same time.

“It all means that we can use the money that people donate to us where it does most good,” says Lovisa Ulfsparre.

It also means that Sweden for UNHCR can experiment with different types of films and messages and follow up the results in real time.

“We hope this will help us to collect hundreds of thousands of euros every year to help displaced people around the world,” says AK Fagerlund.

55

Photo: Epicrapbattlesofhistory.wikia.com/

PewDiePie, one of YouTube’s biggest channels, is run by 26-year-old Gothenburg-born Felix Kjellberg. More than 43 million subscribers follow his YouTube clips where he plays and comments on computer games. The most popular videos are those where he screams out loud in terror during a variety of horror games. In 2014 PewDiePie reported earnings of around six million euros.

PEWDIEPIE

Photo: Sverigesradio.se

In 2009 15-year-old Clara Henry sat in her bedroom and uploaded a video to YouTube.

Today her humorous video about julmust, a Swedish soft drink sold only at Christmas, has been seen more than half a million times and Clara’s YouTube account has 380,000 subscribers. Meanwhile Clara has become an author, a TV host, a radio celebrity, a comedian and a self-appointed expert on menstruation.

She posts one video a week and can live off the earnings from her YouTube channel.

CLARA HENRY AVICII

SUPERSTARS OF OUR TIME Today’s digital platforms are creating brand new opportunities for just about anyone to reach a huge audience. The most successful YouTube, Instagram and Twitter profiles have millions of followers and earn lots of money from internet ads and sponsorship agreements.

Here are a few of our current Nordic favourites.

56

Tim Bergling started to produce house music as a hobby in 2006. His initial recordings were distributed free through well-known international blogs. From there, one thing led to another. On 27 February 2014 his “Wake Me Up” passed the 200 million plays milestone to become the most played song ever on Spotify.

Today Avicii is a world-famous DJ with more than three million Instagram followers and 19 million likes on Facebook.

Sara Maria Forsberg from Finland has an amazing gift for mimicking the cadences of different languages. When she published her 1 minute 45 second video “What languages Sound Like” on YouTube in 2014 it took only hours before she was world-famous. Now, two years later, the video has been viewed almost 17 million times and her SAARA channel has more than 500,000 subscribers.

These successes have led to a recording contract with a major US studio and a number of film roles. In December it was revealed that Sara is the creator of the alien language in Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

Photo: Helloimsaara.com

Photo: Edmchicago.com

SAARA

Photo: Norran.se

Photo: Angelicablick.se

Sascha Richardson from Skellefteå in northern Sweden started uploading videos with make-up tips to YouTube when she was just 13 years old in 2013. Today she has 165,000 subscribers and a devoted base of fans known as “Saschers”. She earns money from internet ads and regularly works with a number of advertisers.

With 1.2 million Instagram followers 24-year-old fashion blogger Angelica Blick is one of Sweden’s biggest names on social media. She has won a long list of blog prizes, appeared in the TV talent show Swedish Idol and designed her own collections for BikBok and Nelly.com.

With so many followers she also earns big bucks from sponsored content.

SASH MMIISAS Photo: Iltasanomat.fi

ANGELICA BLICK JUSTIMUS Photo: Hmlviihdekeskus.fi

In 2009 three young men from Haapavesi (a small town in the Finnish provinces) started the YouTube channel Justimusfilms. Juho Nummela, Sami Harmaala and Joose Kääriäinen soon became a hit with their sketches and in 2012 the trio of comedians-cum-musicians were given their own series on Finnish TV. Two years later they released their first album, which, inevitably, topped the Finnish charts.

Today they have 400,000 subscribers and almost 84 million views on YouTube.

They are, of course, also big on Instagram and Snapchat.

21-year-old Miisa Rotola-Pukkila likes to call herself “the Internet kid”. She rapidly became one of Finland’s biggest internet stars after starting her YouTube channel in 2013 with her own take on the Harlem Shake. Three years later her video blog and YouTube channel have more than 240,000 subscribers and 275,000 people follow her day-to-day life on Instagram. In 2015 Miisa was voted best female vlogger at the TubeCon event and in January 2016 she was listed among the Top 100 Most Influential Finns in the country’s biggest business newspaper, Kauppalehti.

JONIELOL

Photo: Shortcut.se

Johanna Nordström, alias Jonielol or skitjobbig (“damn nuisance”), is 20 years old and hails from Västerås.

Currently ranked as Sweden’s sixth most influential Twitterer, she has more than 80,000 followers for her humorous and often ironic tweets. This success has earned her a job with Lajkat, the viral news site of the Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet, and she has also produced podcasts and released a song.

57

Photo: Marcus Uggeldahl

GUSTAV TRÄFF CHANNEL: GTboard.com

2006 200,000 + VIDEO VIEWS: Over 278 million ON YOUTUBE SINCE: SUBSCRIBERS:

58

YOUTUBE STAR CRAZY ABOUT CARS

Gustav Träff is the man behind one of Sweden’s most successful YouTube channels. His film clips of sports cars racing against one another are watched by over 200,000 subscribers.

59

How did your career as a YouTube star begin?

“I started a BMW site back in 1996. Later, when the new model with a V10 engine was launched in 2005, I was curious to know how this performed in comparison with its predecessors. So I decided to run my own test. I found an airfield where we could race the models to compare them. We also took the opportunity to test other makes of cars, filming everything from inside the cars to show how the different models really performed. Then I started a YouTube channel and uploaded the film clips.”

That channel soon became hugely popular. To what do you ascribe its success?

“There are huge numbers of people out there who are really passionate about cars. Some are thinking about buying a new model and are eager to find out more about it. Others are simply fascinated by high-performance cars and love to dream about owning one.”

So, can you now make a living from your YouTube earnings?

“Not easily. I sold my BMW site in 2011. That enabled me to devote myself fully to my YouTube channel and I worked on it full-time for a few years. Today, however, I work 50 percent of my time with the YouTube network United Screens in Stockholm and 50 percent on my own channel. A lot of the income comes from ads that are screened with my videos, but I also earn money from sponsoring and branding. Earnings are good compared to the amount of time I spend on the channel, but I don’t make enough money to live on. I have a lot of expenses. Hiring oval tracks here, there and everywhere in Europe doesn’t come cheap.”

sometimes they are about me, too. Sadly, people don’t always say the nicest things, but I’m always grateful for constructive criticism.”

What does it feel like to be the centre of so much attention?

“It’s usually the cars that get the attention rather than me. For example, if I’m comparing a 1200 hp Bugatti with a 700 hp Lamborghini, the focus is purely and simply on the cars and the way they perform, not on me personally.”

To what degree is Gustav Träff the YouTube celebrity the real you? Is there a difference between your public and private personas?

“It’s the real me, alright – 100%. I must admit that I’m just as car crazy in my private life, too.”

Do people often recognise you in the street?

“Recently it’s started to happen more often. And it’s always men between 15 and 25 years old.”

How do you maintain interest in your channel?

“There are always new models being launched. And I also upload other car-related films – from the Motor Show in Geneva, for example.”

How seriously does the car industry take your opinions?

“They can be important in certain very specific niches, but the test results count for more than my own opinion. If you google Bugatti and Koenigsegg together, my films are at the top of the search results. That’s very important for fans of the two marques.”

»It's the real me, alright – 100%. I must admit that I'm just as car crazy in my private life, too« So what does your day as a YouTube celebrity look like?

“Most of the time when I’m working on my channel, I work from home. I plan the next comparison I’ll be making, read about new models and investigate the reasons for any sudden increases in traffic for a particular video. I also reply to comments on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram. It’s fun to work with something you’re interested in. I often sit working long into the night.”

How important for you is it to have so many YouTube viewers?

“Without viewers, there wouldn’t even be a channel, or at least not one that made much of an impression. In that sense, viewer numbers are crucially important. It gives me a lot of pleasure to be in daily contact with my subscribers. They leave comments on my YouTube channel but they are also constantly getting in touch on Facebook and Instagram.”

What kind of comments do you get?

“Most often the comments are about what we’ve been filming, but

60

What has been the highlight of your career so far?

“Testing the Bugattti Veyron Vitesse and the Koenigsegg Agera R from 50 to 350 km/h and 250 to 370 km/h on an oval track.”

What would you be doing today if YouTube hadn’t existed?

“Working with the internet in one way or another.”

Do you intend to continue with this in the future?

“It’s an interest I have. It’s not going to go away, so I don’t really see any reason to stop doing what I’m doing. I think YouTube and Facebook are here to stay, but I don’t see much of a future for TV.” What car do you yourself have?

“Right now I’ve been driving an Audi A8 W12. I do miss my Porsche 911 Turbo PDK, however. I sold that last spring.”

MADDELISK MaddeLisk became one of Sweden’s biggest names in eSports after winning the female World Championship Series in the strategy game StarCraft II in 2013. Since then, Madeleine Leander has commentated on eSports for Sweden’s SVT public broadcasting service, made commercials for Coca-Cola, been a columnist for a Swedish daily newspaper and was voted one of Sweden’s super-talents by the Swedish business weekly, Veckans Affärer.

MADDELISK

Madeleine Leander (MaddeLisk), Facebook (MaddeLisk) och Instagram (maddelisk_workout) FOLLOWERS: 20,000 followers on Instagram, 13,000 on Facebook and 13,000 on Twitter.

Photo: Esport.aftonbladet.se

NAME:

SEE HER ON: Twitter

Can you make a living from eSports?

“It’s possible, but as a player you have to be among the very best to be able to survive solely on gaming. Many eSports stars need to have some other form of income. It’s common for players to stream their exploits

What does the attention you get from your followers mean to you?

“Being famous has never interested me. For a long time, I regarded attention as something negative. Now, however, I have begun to realise that there is a positive side to being in the

This will attract more money through sponsorship and advertising, and that will make it easier for the sport to grow. One of the biggest challenges is to make sure that young eSports enthusiasts are seen. A lot of adults know very little about eSports, which means they have

»It gives me opportunities to exert an influence and to spread important messages« and to take on various advertising commissions. I have earnings from commentating on matches, writing about eSports and TV ads. But I’m also studying for a PhD in mathematics, so I don’t just make a living from eSports.”

What does a typical day look like for you?

“Right now I’m busy writing my PhD thesis, so I don’t have much time to play. But previously I’ve spent about half my time working on eSports.”

What has been the highlight of your career?

“Winning the StarCraft II World Championships in 2013.”

public eye. The fact that lots of people follow what I’m doing provides me with opportunities to exert an influence and to spread the messages that I think are important.”

What kind of feedback do you get?

“It depends on what I upload. As soon as I express any strong opinions about something, there are always people who disagree and who aren’t shy about saying so. But the majority of comments are positive.”

What are your thoughts about the future for eSports?

“I see a very bright future for eSports. Interest is growing in both playing and watching.

a poor understanding of what’s involved.

They’re not there in the same way as, for example, football parents. But they’re needed just as much. We need adults to tell youngsters that it’s not OK to say nasty things to their opponents. We need adults who encourage eSports players as enthusiastically as they encourage floorball players or chess players.”

What’s your favourite game?

– StarCraft 2.

61

62

MORE ABOUT NYC? Scan the QR-code and hang out with Mia in the Big Apple.

RECONNAISSANCE

FROM

NYC Instagram tunnel, cupcake cash machine and a climbing wall with augmented reality.

MIA BREITHOLTZ New York resident since 2014.

63

T

he first thing that greets me when I open the front door of the apartment block where I live is the familiar sound of sirens. I step outside into the constant background hum of traffic on Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg Brooklyn. Williamsburg is a neighbourhood famed for its cosy bars, trendy little shops and people who take both themselves and organic food very seriously.

I take the underground to Manhattan to eat lunch with a friend who works in one of the city’s digital agencies. The yellow taxi cabs stand in line outside the restaurant we have chosen and I scour the menu in a desperate attempt to avoid dishes with the uber-trendy curly kale. We talk at some length about a study that reveals that people spend less time in their bathroom than in any other room in the home – just 20 to 60 minutes a day. Uninteresting information, you say? Maybe. But for all those Internet-of-Things-people working on ideas to make time spent in the bathroom a little more enjoyable, this highlights huge potential. One solution is a TV behind the mirror. Switched off, it looks just like an ordinary bathroom mirror, but half of the mirror’s surface is actually a television screen!

"I CAN’T RESIST TESTING THE BREATHTAKING EXPERIENCE OF A VIRTUAL REALITY ROLLER-COASTER RIDE." After lunch I take a walk through the Meatpacking District. Samsung has just opened a new “digital playground” here. Curious as I am, I can’t resist the temptation to peep in and test the breathtaking experience of a virtual reality roller-coaster ride. My seat moves just like it would in real life. Together with my fellow “passengers” I laugh and scream before moving on, heart in mouth, to the next exhibit – an odyssey through my very own Instagram account. This is a tunnel pulsating with light and music, where the walls, ceiling and floor are plastered with my own words and pictures.

Talk about #narcissism. All visitors have their smartphones at the ready to photo and film the experience.

T

his evening I will be swapping my high heels, which are forever getting caught in the cobblestones of the Meatpacking District, for climbing shoes. I have been

64

rock climbing for a couple of years now, but Brooklyn Boulders have taken the sport to a whole new level with the aid of Augmented Reality. The indoor climbing wall has been equipped with sensors so you can rack up points as you scale the vertical face. Each time you touch a handhold you hear a signal and your time is projected onto the wall. It’s like being a character in a video game.

I continue down to Midtown. There on 61st Street is one of my favourite ATMs. It doesn’t dispense anything as boring as money; this ATM dispenses nothing but cupcakes. You use the touch-screen menu to customise your idea of a perfect cupcake. One minute later, it’s ready for you to enjoy.

I

t’s easy to become terribly spoilt when you live in New York. It is by no means uncommon to have a reception in your apartment block that takes care of any packages that are delivered to you. I buy almost all my food online and get it delivered together with the week’s recipes and all the ingredients already measured out. If a recipe includes one tablespoon of flour, I get exactly one tablespoon’s worth in a separate little bag. Although using my kitchen for cooking food makes me something of a rarity in New York. My apartment has built-in speakers, but no extractor fan in the kitchen. What do you expect? I mean, who fries bacon in New York? Many New Yorkers boast proudly about always eating out or ordering food via their Seamless app. This has details of every restaurant that will deliver food to your door.

But there are also some exciting innovations in US kitchens. How about a fridge linked to your mobile phone that films the food inside and keeps you informed about best-before dates? The fridge door also doubles as a screen, so you can check out your favourite food shows or search for new recipes.

Before going to bed I curl up for a while on the sofa with my Apple TV device and use the voice control function to select the TV series I want to watch. Then, as my New York day slowly turns into a New York night, it’s comforting to know that, should I be unable to sleep, all it takes is a few quick taps on my mobile phone and a short while later I can be tucking into hot cookies and milk delivered to my door by Insomnia Cookies. Thank you, New York!

ray.com Photo: That foodc

WHAT'S UP SILICON VALLEY? Johan Carlsson lives on the US west coast and works on Product Discovery at Ericsson.

A veteran in the field of mobile solutions, Johan has also been Director of Innovation at Ericsson – a fascinating position if ever there was one!

Mia Breitholtz phoned him for an update on the latest developments in Silicon Valley.

Hi, Johan. How are you doing? Having just discovered how innovative New York is, I’m now wondering what things are like where you are on the West Coast?

“Well, New York is New York, I suppose – but it’s here in California where things are really happening.”

So what are the latest trends in Silicon Valley?

“Just like everywhere else in the world there’s a lot of talk about the Internet of Things and autonomous vehicles, but what’s possibly most exciting of all is artificial intelligence (AI). AI paves the way for self-learning systems and the automation of tasks that otherwise require manual labour or are too complex for us humans to cope with.”

Do you have a good example of how AI can make our everyday lives simpler?

“Right now AI is being used to help us consume services and make use of technology in ways that more closely resemble how we humans interact. Take Amazon Echo, for example. This free-standing cylinder has a microphone, speaker and integral voice-controlled computer. You can tell Amazon Echo to turn on the radio, or to search the net and then read out the answer.

Soon we’ll not only be able to speak to all our gadgets, but the gadgets themselves will become better at learning what we want them to do – without any need for us to tell them!”

What are you most looking forward to in terms of tomorrow’s technology?

“The day I no longer need to buy and own a car – and I’m not talking about travelling by taxi!”

65

1,806,000

T O TA L N U MBE R O F ME T R E S R U N B Y HI Q IN L A S T Y E A R ' S G O T HE NB U R G H A L F M A R AT H O N

The first site was launched more than

years ago

171 MILLION T HE N U MBE R O F P R E D I C T E D A C T I V E V R U S E R S B Y T HE E ND O F 2 018

3,000,000,000

The number of Ed Sheeran streams on Spotify.

This makes him the most streamed artist of all time.

6.4 billion

The number of connected gadgets that are expected to be in service this year

T HE G LO B A L A M O U N T O F D ATA D O U BL E S E V E R Y T W O Y E A R S , A ND W IL L BE

44 BILLION

GIGABYTES IN 2 0 2 0

66

100

self-driving Volvo cars that customers will be able to use on Sweden's roads in

2017

WANT TO SEE MORE? Scan the QR-code or visit our YouTube channel: http://bit.ly/1riaDzX

67

IF YOU DARE TO THINK LIKE US YOU ARE VERY WELCOME!

hiq.se

|

hiq.fi

Hi Q H E L P S TO M A KE TH E WORL D A BETTER PLACE BY MAKING PEOPLE’S LIVES SIMPLER A N D B E TTE R. WE A RE TH E PE RFE CT PA RTNER FOR EVERYONE EAGER TO ACHIEVE RESULTS THAT MAKE A D I F F ERE N CE I N A DI GI TA L WORL D. FOUNDED IN 1995 HiQ CURRENTLY HAS 1,500 SPECIALISTS IN FOUR COUN TRI E S A N D I S L I S TED ON THE NASDAQ STOCKHOLM MIDCAP LIST. G OT H E N B UR G HE L SI N GFORS KA RL S KRON A LINKÖPING MALMÖ NORRKÖPING STOCKHOLM VÄSTERÅS ÖREBRO