Swarmwise: The Tactical Manual to Changing the World

by Rick Falkvinge

Swarmwise (2013) is a tactical guide to changing the world using cost-efficient swarm methodology. It is a leadership handbook that outlines how the Swedish Pirate Party was able to beat the political competition on less than one percent of their budget, and shows how any cash- and time-strapped executive or manager can use swarm methodologies, whether the goal is business, social, or political.

That organization, founded by one man without resources, has now spread to over 70 countries using the same cost-efficient swarm methods.

Swarmwise will tell you what it takes to found a swarm of volunteers, to organize and energize it, and to lead it to success. The book doesn’t go into theoretical detail, psychology, or deep research papers. Rather, it is very hands-on leadership advice from pure experience – it covers everything from how you give instructions to new marketing assistants or activists about handing out flyers in the street, up to and including how you communicate with TV stations and organize hundreds of thousands of people in a coherent swarm. Above all, it focuses on the cost-efficiency of the swarm structure, and is a tactical instruction manual for anybody who wants to dropkick their competition completely – no matter whether their game is business, social, or political.

A chapter overview of Swarmwise:

Chapter 1 - Understanding the Swarm deals with the basic concepts of a swarm organization, and explains why the swarm is open and transparent. It introduces the concept of a cost-efficiency advantage of two orders of magnitude.

In Chapter 2 - Launching Your Swarm, we learn that the published project plan must be tangible, credible, inclusive, and epic, and what that means in practice.

Chapter 3 - Getting Your Swarm Organized gives tangible advice on how to organize a volunteer organization and why. We look at the dynamics of different group sizes and how to build a culture of trust.

One of the more counterintuitive lessons is detailed in Chapter 4 - Control the Vision, but Never the Message. It explains how you need to use volunteers to translate your vision into messages that fit a specific social context, rather than using an one-size-fits-all slogan.

A healthy dose of classic project management is found in Chapter 5 - Keep People's Eyes On Target, And Paint It Red Daily. We talk about metrics, choosing the right metrics, and causing self-organization to happen when you publish the right metrics to optimize.

In Chapter 6 - Screw Democracy, We're on a Mission from God, we talk about conflict resolution mechanisms and how to optimize the swarm for speed, trust, and scalability.

Chapter 7 - Surviving Growth Unlike Anything the MBAs Have Seen details how the swarm can grow by 200% in a week when some events play out, and how to handle such situations.

Chapter 8 - Using Social Dynamics To Their Potential goes into how we can tap into the long tail of people and effectively cross-use online and offline friendships to grow organically.

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction, Business

205 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 18, 2013

About the author

Rick Falkvinge is the founder of the Swedish and first Pirate Party, which has representation in the European parliament and has spawned Pirate Parties in more than 50 other countries.

[Photo by Carl Johan Rehbinder, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0]

Reviews

[Vasil Kolev · Rating 5 out of 5]

Um... so... this isn't very easy to write.

I was going to go to bed, then saw this mentioned in a mailing list, and downloaded it to take a quick look. Half an hour later I was deep in it, and two hours later I finished it (and will probably reread it in a while).

This is a no-crap book on organizing a working flexible structure that can accomplish things. It's to the point, short, very well written and has enough examples from the real world to support its arguments (because a lot of the ideas present in the book would seem counter-intuitive and nearly insane to a lot of people). It describes mostly the Swedish Pirate Party and its experience, but a lot of the stuff would be applicable anywhere.

[Dylan]

As this is licensed CC BY-NC 3.0, I can gladly legally link you to this EPUB version and this KF8 (newest Kindle format) version yours truly did some work on (most of the work was done by the person who uploaded it on TUEBL and DomesticExtremis who did major formatting cleanups. I merely polished it some more.)

It's just a marvellous book on modern leadership, community building and rapidly out-scaling activism. Go read it now, you'll thank me later! ;-)

Awesomely, the author wants this book to be shared freely as much as possible :-):

You are free to make as many copies of this book as you like and share with friends and strangers, as long as you credit the author and you don’t sell them. Actually, you’re not just free to share copies with your friends, but downright encouraged to. If you like this book, why shouldn’t you share it with your friends?

Formally, this book is under copyright monopoly until January 1, 2034 — twenty years from publication. During that time, it is licensed under a Creative Commons Noncommercial-Attribution 3.0 license, meaning what is said above about free sharing. These are the same terms as suggested in the author’s previous book, The Case for Copyright Reform. Commercial exclusive rights rest with the author for the twenty years.

[Nikola Mojic · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good book for the specific topic, very hands-on, could be a bit more organized and concise, with less author self-praise.

[Vojtěch Tatra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rickard Fakvinge: Swarmwise - Multifaceted. Great, revolutionary and functional idea made available by the age of internet, (at least at this speed and scale), yet the actual validity of this was proven for starting some volunteer-based movement, but there is no clear solution for managing the swarm in later stages (at least not yet) as is shown on Pirate parties struggles in the world. So far we know swarm theory is good for start and early to middle stages of movement around some idea without much investment (besides of time) needed (and its possible thanks to internet communication capabilities where everyone can potentially contact everyone and get reach very fast, good or viral ideas are amplified by sharing). Later keeping balance between "swarming" (still great for smaller events anytime if motivation is present) and structure could be tricky. I like the practical side and story of the book with occasional social theories (we also form groups 30,150 people which we are programmed for, even on the internet), it went somewhat from practical application to theory, not the other direction. I think especially social media landscape change a bit today to have sort of swarming/viral effect itself, but you can do the same for creating swarm just with different tools, yet it would be harder because many people tries to do it now overloading peoples atention. Sometimes its horrifying how easily you can spread the "bad"/misinfo thoughts today. Note: I am a member of Czech Pirate party.

[Grin · Rating 4 out of 5]

An honest book about leadership in a different setting than most classic leadership books. What do you do when you want to do something meaningful but you have no resources? You lead by example and focus very hard on making the experience easy and awesome for everyone involved. When you can’t offer to pay with money or buy what you want, you treat your swarm like your family, and everyone else like potential future siblings.

For a short, humorous primer on the swarmwie approach, read Rick’s letter to the Bitcoin Cash community: https://falkvinge.net/wp-content/uplo...

[Nat Roberts · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the most lucid guides to organizing I've ever read. While I might be wishing for more historical context and concrete examples, I also recognize that those would slow the eager pace of Falkvinge's writing. It was a little amusing to read this book as an anarchist because our organizations use many of the same techniques described in this book (e.g. consensus circles) for ideological reasons while Falkvinge points out their purely practical dimensions.

[Ellen Anna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Na tuhle knihu bych nenarazila kdyby mi ji někdo z pirátské strany neposlal a nemohu být vděčnější, kniha je skvělá a ukazuje víru v lidstvo a náplní vás touhou činit, není to žádné manifesto pirátské strany ale naopak návod jak uskutečnit jakýkoliv projekt se skupinou aktivistů.

[Cyber Killer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Even if you don't plan on forming a net swarm to change the world, this book has some very good ideas on group management.

[Ethan J · Rating 1 out of 5]

seems quite related to the concept of DAO

theoretical on organizing people, seems quite political and superficial, not a book for me

[Kuba · Rating 4 out of 5]

Useful high level principles on how to organize big yet not so formal groups, interwoven with weirdly specific applications of these that seem relevant only to author's experience.

[Marco Svevo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Arrivo a questo libro prima ancora di aver finito La baia dei pirati di Luca Neri.
Non ce la faremo mai...
Questo libro (strepitoso) andava letto dieci anni fa. Peccato.
Come dice? Uscito nel 2013? Dettagli...

Once method I used to make it easier for people to attend the party
management meetings when I was party leader was to limit the
meeting to a strict time frame. We would start the meeting at 8
p.m. on Tuesdays, and the meeting would end at 9 p.m., no matter
whether everybody thought we were finished or not. That made
sure that two things happened: it let people know that they could
plan things with their family after 9 p.m. on Tuesday evenings, and
it forced people to address the important things first, as the meeting
cutoff would happen whether they were done or not. (p.75)

“If you see something you don’t like, contribute
with something you do like.” (p.93)

If somebody says you’re all morons and
clowns, that’s a sign you’re on the right track. Su questo avrei mooooooolto da dire.

Lesson number one: come svolantinare. Nobody hands out flyers alone, ever: this
will look like an “end of the world, end of the world, end of the
world, somebody please take my flyer and read about the end of the
world” village idiot who people will want to just cross the street to
avoid.
Lesson number two: hai mai pensato di tappezzare la città con centinaia di volantini?

Scaling out means that you
keep the low-cost servers currently doing the job, and add more
such low-cost servers. We’re adding more activists. Many more
activists. We’re scaling out our work.

If it goes well, encourage activists to take photos and share when
they do activism in the streets. That encourages more people to do
the same kind of activism and breeds a friendly competition
NB COMPETISCION

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hands down the most inspiring book I've read so far.

I started reading this as a time sink while commuting, since my audio book was finished unexpectedly. I had already learned to appreciate the author through his columns on Torrentfreak and his own blog at Falkvinge.net, but hadn't been particularly interested in his take on management techniques, considering I wasn't interested in that subject in general.

However, soon after I started reading it, I found myself unable to put the book down before having finished it. I very much enjoyed the personal annecdotes to frame the theories described, as they gave me insight in the practical application of the techniques.

Immediately after having finished the book, I went to my local Pirate Party's website to learn more about how I would be able to contribute to 'the cause'. I have been one of the most active volunteers for the Dutch Pirate Party ever since, which in my eyes is the ultimate proof that the concepts described in this book work.

[Henrik Lindberg · Rating 3 out of 5]

Part retrospective of launching the Swedish Pirate Party, part walk down memory lane, and part list of useful practices that apply also on other areas in life. Quick, easy read if you browse through it, with lots of useful pieces that one can use for reference later.

Likely susceptible to the fallacies listed in The Halo Effect: ... and the Eight Other Business Delusions That Deceive Managers, but useful nevertheless.

[Nikolay · Rating 5 out of 5]

“A swarm organization is a decentralized, collaborative effort of volunteers that looks like a hierarchical, traditional organization from the outside. It is built by a small core of people that construct a scaffolding of go-to people, enabling a large number of volunteers to cooperate on a common goal in quantities of people not possible before the net was available.”

The book gives practical advice how to organize, motivate, and run a swarm following the history of the Swedish Pirate Party, the author founded.

Even if you're not starting a swarm, a lot of the techniques are useful for running either a volunteer organization or even an open-minded commercial company.

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fantastic book explaining in great details what it takes to create viral change at scale with a movement. Very recommended. One of the discoveries and surprises of the many books i read in 2013.

[Zarathustra Goertzel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think it's a really good book.
It's inspirational, funny, and a simple explanation of a new type of organization.

[Pablo Álvarez · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesante, pero necesita de un extra de know-how para que sea realmente un manual de desobediencia.

[Clivemichael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent tactical explanation for creating change. Inspiring and accessible with simple instructions along with a great story. Occasionally repetitive but brilliant.

[J · Rating 4 out of 5]

Inspiring AND practical. Excellent advice throughout.

[Gregory · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolute must read for grassroots organizing!

[Gabriele · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent book!

[Nadja Petranovskaja · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book with very detailed information about how to start and to lead a swarm.