I usually give Hagström Consulting’s Christmas gift of SEK 10,000 to an organisation related to the work I do. This year, however, it goes to the Swedish Cancer Society to honour Catharina Ekdahl from PRV (the Swedish Intellectual Property Office), who passed away earlier this year. Catharina was a wonderful person whom I worked with on a few different projects, who was always willing to help out and share her knowledge, to try new ways of doing things, and who drove issues forward with her great curiosity and commitment. There are certain people you meet who are more and bigger than their context, and Catharina was truly one of them, and I know I am not alone in thinking so. I often catch myself wanting to check a question or an idea with her, and realise with sorrow that this is no longer possible.
Two more people who passed away this autumn were also important to me, to many others and to the issues I am passionate about in my professional life: Mattias Jansson and Östen Frånberg, who also receive honourable mentions here, unconnected to the Swedish Cancer Society. Mattias was a municipal chief executive on a few different occasions, an investigator, and was an early adopter of social media, meeting quite a lot of resistance when he did so. Östen was one of the great driving forces behind the development of the internet in Sweden and a major reason why the Swedish Internet Foundation was created. I had not been in touch with Mattias for far too long, but I worked with Östen on an Internet of Things project until very recently.
Take care of yourselves and each other, and those of us who remain will have to do our best to honour their memory and drive the important issues forward as best we can.
Previous recipients of the Christmas gift are the open source project curl 2021, ”Källkritik, fake news och faktagranskning” (Source criticism, fake news and fact-checking) 2020, Open Knowledge Sweden 2019, Näthatsgranskaren (a Swedish organisation reporting online hate) 2018, Wikimedia Sweden 2017 and Musikhjälpen (a Swedish charity fundraising event) in Örebro 2016.