The Pirate Party International assembly was held in Kazan, Russia the weekend 20-21st April. We had a remote hub in our external office in Brussels where we welcomed Pirates from all over Europe to participate. In whole, we had around fifteen participants in our remote hub, from six countries.

This was my first event I had to organize for the EuroPirates here in Brussel. Suddenly I had to turn into a video conference expert. With good help from Elin and Cristian, we managed to put up quite decent video conference setup in the external office. I was quite happy with the result and had a lot of fun taping all the extension cords to the floor and on the table in order to make sure that nobody tripped!

The aim of this General Assembly of the Pirate Party International was to elect a new board, discuss about the infrastructure of PPI, voting on amendments to statutes and admittance of new members and observers of the PPI. The new board is co-chaired by Grégory Engels from the German Pirate Party and Vojtěch Pikal from the Czech Pirate Party.

Fourteen new members and six observer memberships were admitted, there amongst was both the Swedish Pirate Party and the Young Pirates admitted as observers. The Icelandic Piratey Party was admitted as full members of the PPI and the Besti Flokkurinn, or the Best Party which was established by the comedian-turned-mayor, Jón Gnarr. For some reason he is not a member of the Icelandic Pirate Party, but from the Best Party (which was only for the local city council elections), they have formed another party which they call “Björt Framtíð” which translates as “Bright Future”. It is good to see that the Pirate movement is spreading and I know that the Icelandi Pirates were very happy about the fact that they could relate their competitors for the upcoming Parliamentary elections to the Pirate party :)

Pirate Party International is turning into an important platform for Pirates to communicate and meet. It will be interesting to follow PPI and see where it takes us. Alot of new parties joined the PPI which shows how the Pirate movement is evolving and growing. It was a lot of fun, not only because we were taking part in building something new with this assembly, but also it's important to meet and share something together.