My back of the envelope back story of my Dev Pirate-life

My back of the envelope back story of my pirate dev-life

My name is Ola, like “hello” in spanish. I’m the son of Ola and way back in churchbook records most men in my ancestral line was named Ola. Except my grandpa. he was named … Ole. You know like OLÉ!

Gramps was acop, but also a piraty storyteller. My dad told even more piraty stories. This is the tall tale of how I recovered my piraty storytelling voice. My ancestral birthright as an Ola. A piraty storytelling voice I use to serve & protect our community of piraty devs and other creatives.

‘Tis a tall tale of treasure hunting, theater, treason and tyranny. Looking at the pettyness of politics today it’s hard for me to believe it, but my first full time job was in politics. I learned some legendary life lessons. Life lessons I use EVERY day. Like the life lessons I’m telling you about right now:

Go Good Storytelling or Go Home

It all started with us picking a fight with the Most Powerful & Dynamic duo in scandinavian history: the oil industry & their Labour Party partner. With “us” I mean a handful hundred teenage activists. Mostly young women. Nine out of ten were young women. We were puny. Almost pathetic. I apologize if you’re a feminist, but take a look around! How many powerful women do you see in your local oil company or your national politics. Our opponents weren’t listening to us, neither was the national news media. And why should they? We were NOBODY. And don’t forget, this was before the internet could give us reach. Traditional national news media was our battle ground and our fearsome foe OWNED it.

It was like if your buddy’s fledling tech start-up team should travel back in time and take on Pablo Escobar’s cocain production and smuggeling operations in the Medellín Cartel’s heyday. I mean the Crown Prince of the Labour Party was loved by the people, just like Pablo Escobar. The Prince’s plan was to build 11 petroleum gas plants to generate clean electricity.

What did we do?

We out-story-told our enemies

The Crown Prince of the Labour Party was also The Planets Own Handsome Knight in Shining Green Armour. Back then he named his project “Natural Gas”, great for our planet. Then The Planets Own Handsome Knight smiled his handsome smile.

We made a new tale, about how The Planets Own Handsome Knight actually was a lying Traitor selling out to the Big, Bad, Oily Oil Industry. While pretending it was all “natural” and good for mother nature.

How did we tell our story? Remember the traditional national news media didn’t listen to us and no internet.

We played out our tale as live theater during the The Crown Prince of the Labour Party’s campaign stops. Every time the Pretty Prince appeared across our long country, we had a couple of our local young ladies stand right next to him with hand placards that said “Gas Plant, No Thanks”. So THAT was the photo in the local newspaper. And the local news readers all recognized our local ladies. The local news readers knew our local ladies to be the REAL authorithy on what’s bad for the planet. Our tale turned the Pretty Prince into The Lying Traitor. A lying politican, who would believe THAT? That’s right, everybody.