The CSW Summit, Arctic Circle will focus on local cooperative movements and new digital trends harnessing collaboration for social innovation and economic prosperity.

The most unique aspect of this event is the symbiotic missions of the host organizations. Crowdsourcing Week (CSW), a Singapore/New York-based organization is the largest global community on crowdsourcing with the mission to make technical know-how on the new crowd economy accessible to all – corporates, governments, non-profits and innovators. Lapland Vuollerim Welcomes You’, a cooperative business run by the residents with profits fully reinvested in the community, is the epitome of a people -powered local economy. The confluence of ideas during the Summit’s interactive setting with prominent participants in the field is sure to highlight how crowdsourcing and innovative business models can provide answers to business and societal challenges.

Can crowdsourcing and collaboration offer new solutions where older, traditional ways of doing business and developing democracy have not delivered?

The answer sounds like a resounding -yes. With the growth of digital technology, new methods and tools for collaboration and business development have increased significantly in recent years. The fact that only 50 percent of Fortune 500 companies from 2000 are still standing in 2014, is a strong sign that we are in the midst of considerable and powerful change. Another example that gives an insight into what is happening is NESTA’s ongoing study of Digital Social Innovation, that shows nearly 1000 organizations and nearly 700 collaborative research and innovation projects in the field, in Europe alone at the beginning of 2015. It is likely that the real figures are much higher because many grassroots innovators have not found their way into the database yet. This type of development was hardly imaginable only a few years ago.

Crowdsourcing Week is prepping for its 3rd annual CSW Global conference – the meeting place for the global crowd community, coming to Singapore, April 20-24, 2015. The CSW Summit at the Arctic Circle is part of a series of international events on the road to Singapore, starting in Jakarta, February 25, Venice on March 6 and culminating in Manila on March 18.^. All the summits focus on different parts of the ”new collaborative economy” and the conference in Vuollerim adds an important piece of the puzzle when it comes to the understanding the inside workings of local communities within a digitized society.

Conference content

The conference agenda and topics have been planned to demonstrate the essence of crowdsourcing and the new doors it opens to develop businesses and democracy.

Epi Ludvik Nekaj, founder of Crowdsourcing Week, will discuss how to work with collaborative models in a digital context and also how to make the leap from working with regular social media management to working with social productivity as an entrepreneur, municipality or other local player. Productivity can be enhanced by collaborative digital tools where you can get people’s skills and experience to be far more effective together than with traditional interaction models.

Another important issue that the conference will focus on, is how the future job market molds itself in an increasingly open international context. What are the requirements and how to best work with crowdsourcing in order to take advantage of the potential and the skills needed for a local society to evolve with time. The session will be led by Hjörtur Smárason from the Innovation Embassy, Denmark.

Kaj Embrén, project manager for the ”Nordic Mayoral Initiative” will talk about how mayors around the world are invited to open Almedals week. Through a collaborative process they will formulate a Swedish response and contribution to the climate conference COP 21 in Paris, which is being held later this year.

Practical experience of crowdsourcing will be shared by companies in the district of Vuollerim that have repeatedly received international acclaim for their work. One of the companies, Lapland Vuollerim, was named the top three in the world in innovation for sustainable tourism in 2014.

Furthermore, there will be a digital presentation during the conference where, among others, the founder of the Social Capital Markets, Kevin Jones and Christine Egger from Neighborhood Economics will present the new distributed impact-investing tool to support local development. Ingrid Stange from the Partnership for Change will talk about the project Minnesota 2015: Democracy for a Sustainable Future” (MN2015), a sustainability summit that will devise a new toolkit to address critical sustainability challenges in the world.

Impact Journey 2015 – Crowdchat for Good – Starting February 23^rd

The digital part of the conference will kick off February 23^rd with a webinar and crowdchat where many from the international Crowdsourcing Week community and other partner networks will join in. You are welcome to participate in the chat, ask questions and contribute your thoughts on collaborative solutions to society’s challenges. More on this in the next blog post.

More details about the conference

CSW Summit Arctic Circle

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Bert-Ola Bergstrand, Social Capital Forum