Various movements, political parties and NGOs do organize conferences from time to time. So why should the Pirate meeting that took place in Maastricht this weekend be special?

Well, it was I guess this was the first conference, that was actually organized – in a squat. Landbouwbelang, it might be a hard name to remember, but it is actually a squat/culture center in an abandoned factory at the banks of the Maas River in Maastricht, Netherlands.

The whole event took two days and the participants were from many countries from around the region (Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium). I was the only one who came there from Amelia's team. The organizers were Belgians, the speakers pretty much lot of people from Civil Society – as well as from the Pirate Party.

During Saturday and Sunday all the participants had a chance to see a lot of interesting sessions, presentations and talks. The place was nice and the conference, despite a rather slow start, turned out pretty good in the end as well. The more time I've spend there, the better it got. Therewere many interesting sessions, such as the Education reform, focused mostly on the question why is school and learning now two separate entities and why the textbooks are expensive and inefficient - while lots of other options are there on the internet, or the preparation for the upcoming 2014 elections. We also talked about the current situation when it comes to the lobbying in the European Parliament or debate about Basic income (where I had to comment on the session that some of the attendees actually welcomed by an applause). The topics that we discussed and that were presented were pretty much a nice mix of the issues that Pirate party care about extended by many more that are on mind of numerous Civil Society activists. 

As about some of the upcoming events, this conference was pretty much a good place for discussion over these topics. I've met with the Belgian Pirates and we talked about the foundation conference of Pirate Party Europe – the very same one, that would Amelia like to hold in March 2014 in Brussels. I was quite positively surprised by the willingness of Pirate Party Belgium to participate in the whole business and by their opinions they've shared with me about this issue. We still have a lot of work to do – as we aim to have a meeting of about 500 people in Brussels.

As the time was progressing, the number of participants was growing and growing. Soon the whole venue was quite full and it was harder and harder to moderate the discussion - simply everyone wanted to speak about the topics. But the time schedule wasn't created for compromises (and we were already behind the schedule in the end). So despite all our wishes, we had to end our meeting on Sunday afternoon so that the participants will have enough time to get back home. But still it was great. Especially thanks to many bonds that were created and people that showed up, presenting new ideas or new views on the ideas that are already well known.