#rpTEN Speaker Sascha Lobo
Sascha Lobo will once again be presenting at the 10th re:publica instalment. What better reason to publish his speaker profile and get re:publica veterans and newcomers acquainted with him.
Mohawk, “internet guru” and “blogosphere spokesperson” are some of the common descriptions used when talking about German Sascha Lobo. We feel its time break through the obvious and present - to re:publica veterans and newcomers alike - the man behind the internet's best haircut.
Sascho Lobo writes through and about the internet: he intensely examines surveillance activities conducted by security services in his Spiegel Online column “Die Mensch-Machine”, he writes about strange discussions within social media, and most recently examined the escalation of “national social-ism”, following the events of New Year's Eve in Cologne. Regardless of the topic, his columns impress through a healthy mix of subtlety and indignation. He's also subtly indignant when writing in his blog.
Sascha Lobo also puts pen to paper and in 2006, along with Holm Friebe, published a mix of demands and statements in their book “Wir nennen es Arbeit” (We Call It Work). Two years later he was joined by Kathrin Passig in writing the anti-advice book “Dinge geregelt kriegen – ohne einen Funken Selbstdisziplin” about getting things done and self discipline. Another two years later he published his first novel “Strohfeuer”. His reputation as an internet guru has been cemented by other works (such as “Internet – Segen oder Fluch”, again in collaboration with Kathrin Passig) and a now in/famous diagnosis for the F.A.Z that “the internet is broken”.
Sascha Lobo has been a re:publica speaker ever since the first conference in 2007. Since then he has held numerous talks at re:publica, including the latest and legendary state of the nation address in 2014. He's also a frequent guest on German talk shows when covering digital issues and is a go-to expert for internet-related topics.
Sascha Lobo is a fan of doing things on the internet. His “Reclaim.fm” project is designed to mirror a social media user's activities right onto their own Wordpress blog, thus giving users more control over their own online activities. He also co-founded the book trading platform and reading community Sobooks.
What he no longer does are Follower-Parties. We wrote about these in our coverage of re:publica 2009 for our #rpReview series. Back then Sascha Lobo invited his Twitter followers to party at his house. This would be problematic today, not least because his apartment isn't really equipped to host 336,000 people.
Sascha Lobo is man of many talents. We're very happy to welcome him back to #rpTEN this coming May!
Photo credit: re:publica/Tony Sojka (CC BY 2.0)