Projects
newthinking communications
10/2009 – 02/2010
Some weeks before I finished school, Markus Beckedahl offered me an internship at Newthinking Communications, the company he co-founded that is also behind netzpolitik.org (which does not generate substantial revenues whatsoever).
I decided to use this opportunity to live in Berlin and work in an innovative environment for five months. Updating netzpolitik.org with news on internet politics, data security and free culture on a daily basis is one of my core tasks. I am also involved in the planning of re:publica 2010.
Threatened Voices
04/2009 -
Threatened Voices is a project by Global Voices Advocacy. Its aim is to crowd-source information on harassed and imprisoned digital activists. The data is subsequently mapped to visualize hot spots of repression.
I was contacted by Sami ben Gharbia early on, at first contributing data I had collected during my work for Blogger for Freedom and DigiActive. Later I joined the team of volunteers that worked on the project’s initial database and added a couple of blogger profiles to it. I expect to continue contributing to Threatened Voices after its launch in early November 2009.
i like patterns
06/2009 -
With my diploma under my belt, I needed a new challenge. i like patterns started as a part of this: It is a tool to separate English and German blog entries of mine, but it is also meant to encourage me to use a new writing style. On i like patterns, I want to explore and explain a field that is only roughly definable. It includes digital activism, privacy and surveillance, internet politics and free culture. In general, i like patterns is a blog on digitalization.
netzpolitik.org
11/2008 –
Netzpolitik.org is a group blog mostly written by Markus Beckedahl. It is one of Germany’s most important blogs and has won several awards for being one of the best sources on internet politics and free culture. When Markus approached me in 2008 to cover a conference in my home town, I instantly agreed. Afterwards I continued to write for netzpolitik.org from time to time, covering topics such as digital activism, persecution of bloggers and free culture.
During my time with newthinking communications, writing for the blog is one of my core tasks.
FoeBuD-Treff Siegen
05/2008 -
When we founded the Siegen chapter of the Arbeitskreis Vorratsdatenspeicherung, it was mainly to fight one particular data retention bill. One year later, the movement was growing to become a powerful opposition to all forms of surveillance. In the meantime, our group had started to do Privacy Workshops. We felt that we needed a new home for our efforts, and found it in activism veterans FoeBuD which at that time started to expand. We became the first table of the 20 year old group out of its home town Bielefeld. Since the FoeBuD is itself a member of the Arbeitskreis Vorratsdatenspeicherung, we think of ourselves as members of both groups, while mostly working independently from both. We organize local rallies or actions, but focus on the Privacy Workshop Project.
Über Armut Siegen
05/2008 – 09/2008
During my 12th grade I was a member of my school’s student council for the second time. When my term was nearly over, we were approached by a group of other student councilors that were organizing a project day on poverty. I went to one of the meetings to represent our school, as nobody else could go, and so I became a member of the organizing committee against my initial will. During the next months, we collected donations, arranged for panelists and did all the huge and the tiny tasks needing to be done for our event. While we did not attract as many visitors as we had hoped for, we managed to agree our balance and had a great day for the good of humanity. Our topics covered a wide range of themes connected to poverty. My school focused on poverty as an effect of natural disasters, which included climate change and genetic engineering.
Namenstänzer
04/2008 – 06/2009
The idea for a blog by and for Waldorf students came up in a comments thread. I quickly reached out to the other commentators and found a companion in Alex, who designed the Namenstänzer blog. We found some authors and, after several months, we released our project to the public. As we found out, our team was too small (and many of us too busy) to regularly provide articles, so we hoped to find more authors soon. But we had not counted in what became our biggest problem: We did not realize the extent of the discussion around anthroposophy. Both supporters and opponents discussed with fervor and, much too often, utter hate. We finally had to close down the project as it became a hi-jacked platform for a discussion we were not involved in. Ansgar, whose articles had often spurred the discussions, continues to write on his own Waldorf blog.
DigiActive
04/2008 –
Blogger for Freedom lead me to develop a keen interest in digital activism, but even though I occasionally cooperated with others, such as Free Kareem or the Committee to Protect Bloggers, managing the project alone (and only for a small German community) was hard. When I came across the newly founded group DigiActive, I quickly joined it. DigiActive documents and researches digital activism and is dedicated to helping grassroots activists around the world use the Internet and mobile phones to increase their impact.
In summer 2009, DigiActive began working on a book on digital activism that is to be published in spring 2010 under the title “Decoding Digital Activism”. I contributed a chapter on the suppression of digital activists, headlined “Prisons and Persecution: The New Casualties”.
gulli:news
03/2008 -
I am a regular, paid, but freelance author for gulli:news. Gulli.com, most famous for its forums, is Germany’s most prominent underground news platform. While its spectrum also covers topics such as hacking, in my writing I focus on domestic and internet politics, surveillance, censorship and free culture.
Privacy Workshop Project
12/2007 –
When the Siegen chapter of the Arbeitskreis Vorratsdatenspeicherung developed, we felt the need to expand our activities beyond info tables and art activism. The Privacy Workshop Project aims to equip children and teenagers properly to protect their privacy in the digital age. In workshops, we help them to develop awareness for the concept of privacy and teach them how to use technology to safely navigate through the web.
Blog4Burma
10/2007 – 02/2008
The Blog4Burma coalition was another child of the German blogosphere’s occupation with the Saffron Revolution. Some bloggers realized that attention on Burma would soon vanish after the situation calmed down, giving the Burmese regime space to continue its crackdown. Blog4Burma was an attempt to counter this fate in an unusual way. The coalition had little common infrastructure: A mailing list, a mission statement, a logo and a feed. It spanned several countries and languages, at times constituting some kind of a decentralized news agency on Burma. When my interest evolved to focus on digital activism, I left the group behind.
Blogger for Freedom
10/2007 – 03/2008
Still during the preparations for the Free Burma! campaign’s international bloggers’ day for Burma I co-founded Blogger for Freedom as a platform to document and promote blog campaigns. Because my companion soon became occupied with other duties, I ended up managing the project all by myself, publishing reports in German and, soon, English. I abandoned Blogger for Freedom after half a year when I joined the DigiActive crew. Today, Blogger for Freedom still exists as an archive.
Free Burma!
09/2007 – 10/2007
The Burmese regime’s crackdown on the protesters of the “Saffron Revolution” lead to an outcry in the German blogosphere. It was condensed in a blog campaign called Free Burma! that promoted an international bloggers’ day for Burma on October 4. I sought to support what became Germany’s most successful blog campaign at that time by encouraging national and international acquaintances to join our project. The Free Burma! campaign became a key moment for me, leading me to further explore the power of digital activism.
Arbeitskreis Vorratsdatenspeicherung
04/2007 –
The Arbeitskreis Vorratsdatenspeicherung is a German umbrella group founded to bundle efforts against data retention. After attending a demonstration in Frankfurt I became a founding member of the AK VDS’s Siegen chapter. We frequently organize political and artistic actions to protest surveillance and to promote data security and civil liberties.
simoncolumbus.de
02/2007 –
The founding myth of my blog is told very fast: In my 11th grade, I was looking for a topic for my Jahresarbeit. Once during their school days, Waldorf students work on one topic for a whole year. When I sat in the presentation of the previous class’s works, one student embarrassed me with his work on “the screen as a cause of danger”. I decided to choose a topic that would display a positive side of digital technology. I wavered around web 2.0 and free culture topics for some time, ultimately settling on blogs. simoncolumbus was my base when I started to explore the blogosphere, and it continues to be some kind of a virtual home today.
