Thursday was a big day here. We attended the Safer Internet Forum for the first time. There were two big sessions, one on the questions we prepared about Rights and Responsibilities on the Internet and the other one about Internet in our Pocket.

Actually, I actively participated in both, but the discussion was more open in the second session, where I had a five minute speech at the beginning. I’m going to very shortly summarize both sessions below.

In the first session we discussed that issues of rights and responsibilities are for Europe very important and that shows us the European digital agenda too.

We could ask the Commissioner questions and this is only question I can remember now:

– How can we get respect on the Internet?

– I asked a question too and it was: In real life there is a definition about what crime means, is there a definition on the internet too?

Then we spoke about the main issues of the internet. I added an interesting opinion to the problem, which you can find on Twitter.

Internet is like an experiment. Best way to learn is to try it.

 After lunch, there were three parallel sessions running on different themes. Our group had the Internet in my Pocket. Mainly I think it’s a really interesting theme so I enjoyed it.

We had 5 minutes at the beginning of the session to present our opinions. I prepared the presentation and was a speaker too. It was about the usage of mobile phones on a normal day. We added our opinions to this theme and then discussed it with parents and other participants. It was great!

After that we went to the shopping mall. The six most active participants were chosen prior to the dinner. We got a great opportunity to think about. We got the possibility to share opinions, contact industry experts and for this I can only say thank you to the Insafe team and Vivendi company.

During the Safer Internet Forum 2011 in Luxembourg, youth panellists from all over Europe had a chance to meet up and speak up before the European Commission. While in Luxembourg, they attended various workshops and activities, and had a lot of fun. What follows is an account of Wednesday’s activities, the Diary entry of Ľuboš Perniš, a 13 Year old Youth Panelist from Slovakia.

“It was the second day of activities and discussion in Luxembourg and I really enjoyed the activities we did.

Copyright on the internet

Today’s theme was possibly the most interesting one for me. Copyright on the internet is about not stealing other people’s work. I don’t download illegally, and I certainly would not advise anyone to do so, but big parts of industry are still not compatible with today’s online life, and they need to come up with more internet-friendly offers I think. As long as they are still living in the 20th century, they will lose money.

Walking lunch activity

After a morning of talks, we went for a special walk in the city. We were divided into four groups and got GPS tracking device. Each group had to visit some checkpoints to get to the lunch place.

Later, we split up in groups and had a Tug of War contest. The people on the muddy side lost almost all the time…

Hacking

Afterwards we spoke about hacking and how to be secure. The evening activities revolved around both some discussion and group work. I think it’s very important to follow very basic but important attributes of online working, like a strong password, a good browser…

Tomorrow…

Tomorrow is maybe one of most interesting and important days here. It will start the forum and there will be space for open discussion. We will have a presentation space in a parallel session and now I’m just preparing for it. I will be one of the two speakers and I’m preparing the powerpoint presentation.”

Read the next day’s blog here
Find more from Ľuboš on his own blog site