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SINEWS

‘It inspired me to work harder to create a more attractive world’

NFGL member Ruibo Tu from China talks about how he was inspired by the recent Gather Festival in Stockholm.

Published: 20 September 2017 17:38 CEST
'It inspired me to work harder to create a more attractive world'

On September 14th-16th, I was lucky enough to attend the Gather Festival 2017 at Nobelberget in Stockholm, which was once an industrial warehouse but is now is a place for conferences and activities.

In the special Swedish sustainable atmosphere, we experienced an impressive festival and heard many innovative and interesting ideas. The Gather Festival consists mainly of three parts: a conference; labs; and a music festival. Speakers from all over the world shared their ideas at the conference and continued to further discussion following their speeches.

The conference also focused on five themes: Human and Machine; Democracy; Economics; Urban development; and Communication. In the Lab, attendees could discuss topics openly and try to find solutions. And the Night Music Festival provided us with a happy and relaxed musical experience.

‘Big data’ in the future

I attended three sessions on the theme “Algorithm Business” as well as a speech about using data in urban development. The speakers tried to describe a totally different data world in the future.

First of all, the security of the internet is the foundation of our data world. If we cannot protect our data, we can’t create and protect this new world based on data. Claudia Olsson, CEO and Founder of global digital consultancy Exponential, introduced a technology – blockchain – to solve the current security problem.

Considering that data centers are almost all centralized, making them easy to attack – blockchain technology transforms the centralized structure into a decentralized structure to store and protect the data. In this way, we can guarantee the safety of our data.

From this safe foundation, Claudia explained, we can develop next-generation technology. Tuva Palm, CTO of innovative financial institution Nordnet, gave a speech about artificial intelligence (AI) finance or a personal bank advisor. It’s hard to say that machines will totally replace humans in finance, however machines have lots of advantages and perform many tasks better than human.

Using the huge amounts of data we generate every day, machines can provide a precise prediction and analysis for each customer and give them proper advice based on their own situation. This is not sci-fi, but what is happening now. Maybe one day we will not have to spend a lot of time analyzing the situation and getting advice from other humans, but will instead get advice directly from machines within seconds.

Urban design is another interesting application for ‘big data’. Maja Briswall, co-founder of sustainable data consultancy The Quantified Planet, showed us the increasingly serious problems of our planet, such as air, water, and climate problems. Fortunately, in the data world, we can create a more effective tool to solve these problems. She offered us a prototype of the future city, where we can collect data, monitor the state of the city, analyze it, and uncover problems related to our development.

Gender equality

If you are in Sweden, you will likely have the chance to attend to a discussion about gender equality. The team from Making Waves, a design agency with offices in Scandinavia and the US, gave a speech about the role of females in product design. They pointed out that the current product design process should consider females more.

For example, according to their research, cars are designed to protect the male rather than the female in a car crash. They claimed that if we thought more about female customers, we could attract a huge number of potential customers in the world, which will not only benefit the customers, but also increase revenue for the company.

Another discussion following one of the interesting speeches about nightlife focused on females in the music industry. After several women shared their experiences with inequality, people attending the discussion offered their opinions about how to solve gender equality problems.

Other women gave examples describing how they fight for their own rights, prompting some men attending the session to add that they appreciated that the women discussed their problems and that they now better understood the situation.

In the discussion, several fathers shared their own attempts to promote gender equality. The group concluded that we still have lots to do to improve gender equality and that we also need to do more to allow women to feel confident about themselves when they are young and give them more support to learn and work. If the world takes more time to discuss gender equality, we will hopefully be able to finally solve the problem.

Attending the Gather Festival with the support of Swedish Institute allowed me to have an impressive and inspiring journey, and experience many creative ideas and interesting projects. The Festival broadened my horizons as well as encouraged me to study harder so I can contribute to creating a more attractive world in the future.

Ruibo Tu is studying Machine Learning and Computer Science at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH)

SINEWS

Lagom: The best way to achieve social health?

Ronoh Philip, who is studying for his masters degree in Infectious Disease Control at Södertörn University, explains why he thinks the Swedish concept of 'lagom' is the best way to achieve good social health.

Published: 23 December 2019 10:24 CET
Lagom: The best way to achieve social health?

During my one week orientation program on August 2019 at Södertörn University, we were presented with many aspects of Swedish culture and practices. One of the new aspects that I learnt was the “lagom culture”, As I quote one of the presenters about applying lagom to our studies, he said: ”Lagom will reduce your stressful burdens of hectic lecture schedules and ensure that you spend equal time of working and socializing in the university.”

So being a student with a background in public health and society, I got interested and searched for the deeper meaning of lagom, and how it can  apply to society and health. I found out that it is a Swedish way of life, it is a concept which means not too much and not too little, just enough. I learnt that it came from a Viking tradition laget om which means 'around the group' and was allegedly used to describe just how much mead or soup one should drink when passing the bowl around in the group.

If this concept is applied to achieve social health goals, it would really fit well. So, what is social health at first? Social health is how you interact with other people and adapt in different situations, it deals with how people in society deal with each other. It is important to note that there is a close link between good social health and improvement of the other aspects of human health, this can lead to the achievement of SDG goal of good health and wellbeing. It also leads to self-satisfaction and happiness; no wonder Sweden is ranked as one the happiest countries in the world. It is ranked 7th in 2019, according to world happiness report. I believe lagom has a big role in this achievement.

In the country where I come from, Kenya, one of the greatest challenges we face in our society, is the ability for people of different cultural and ethnic backgrounds to interact and form positive and cohesive relationships with each other. From my perspective, when I finish my studies and return, lagom will be worth implementing in the workplace, the place where I live and the society as whole, as it is the best way of finding simple, attainable solutions to our everyday worries like stress, eating better, having downtime and achieving happiness. It’s a balance of work and life, so everything is in sustainable existence with each other.

My goal during my entire university studies at Södertörn, will be to learn more about the lagom principle and also be able to apply it on our SI NFGL Local Network platform, because it is surely one of the best ways to achieve a good  work-life balance, reaching consensus with my colleagues and adapting a team minded approach in dealing with issues in an organization and the society.