2 x Almedalen

At the Swedish Mecka of “politics-meets-PR-meets-rosé wine-mingeling” forum, namely Almedalen, I will this year be part of two panels. The first one is about sustainability at SPPs event  Tuesday the 30’Th of June with Sarah McPhee (CEO, SPP), Charlotte Petri Gornitzka (President, SIDA), Casten Almqvist (VD, TV4-Group), Eva Hamilton (Board Pro) and Scandinavia’s swaggiest moderator Henrik Schyffert (critical comedian, producer, TV personality etc). So that’s got to be simultaneously interesting, serious and fun which is a great combination. My introduction will be about the 1) consumer movements as they are right now (political consumption; from boycott to buycott), 2) their critical dimensions (access/owning, market/state, temporary/permanent, anonymous/personal, climate urgency/climate skepticism, political/apolitical, neocommunity/individualism, flexibility/inconvenience)  and 3) the challenges in consumer culture from policy makers’ point of view (increase symbolic and economic value).

The other event is car2go’s exciting panel on Wednesday the 1’st of July on  about the future for urban transport and mobility. In the larger consumer cultural transformation towards immaterialism–or in other words from stuff (products) to experience (services)–what does the future bear in terms of sustainability and consumer engagement in relation to the collective change of preference in terms of ownership? Is it just a question of access vs owning? Or is it again more a question of what one sees as important to own? Namely;  the story of accessing and sharing as symbol for being the New Citizen Consumer. The possibility for the consumer to mediate a compelling story about this, and thereby own the symbol of being a planet-conscious yet urban “accesser” rather than resource-wasting product owner, is one of the most critical dimensions in future consumer culture.

Welcome!

Read more:	SPP-livförsäkring
Read more:	Car2Go

Aktuellt, Swedish Television News “The contradictions in Consumer Society”- 1 June 2015

Interview about the life-puzzling and stressed consumer (in this case in relation to cooking and other practices).

 

View:

http://www.svtplay.se

The Interest Compass- May 2015, Stockholm

At the annual publisher forum held by Tidsam in Stockholm, I spoke about the survey I was part of making about Swedes interests. What are we interested in? How much time and money do we spend on our interests and what interests are we ashamed of? This and much more was revealed in this exciting research.

Link:

http://www.mynewsdesk.com/se/tidsam-ab

The Magic City Core- May 2015 Kristianstad, Sweden

At the annual forum of “Swedish City Centres”, this year in Kristianstad, I talked about the the concentrism of consumer cultures that should stand as model also for city centers in the way they are planned. At least from the perspective of the (post)modern consumer. Premium, avant garde and intense at the core, and middle-of-the-road in the periphery. Not vice versa as it often is today.