Color palette at the Concordia ball, Friday night. It was - again - a wonderful party in Vienna’s townhall. If you want to understand what a ball can be, this is the event to go to.
NSFW (Nikolaus’ Song For the Week)
It didn’t last long until I felt the need to repeat a band recommendation. However, this is just perfect, so please welcome Nun flog Dr. Bert Rabe again:
The song’s YouTube video has some very fine elements too
If I were working for Beyer Dynamic, I would pay them a reasonable amount for presenting the DT 990 Pro so nicely here.
Retrospect
Teaching
I rarely write about teaching here. Let’s make an exception this week, as there were two rather special courses this week I had the privilege to be a part of.
Legal Design Sprint
In cooperation with designers, students spent three days under the guidance of Iris Eisenberger and her team, working on solutions for labor related digitalisation issues such as platforms or human machine interaction.
Iris Eisenbergerr and her team have a description of the concept online and there’s more information on Twitter. I was very impressed by the ultrasmooth cooperation with Arbeiterkammer Wien and by the level of students’ dedication, inspiration and quality of work.
Joint Seminar
On Monday Iris Eisenberger, Martin Selmayr, Christiane Wendehorst and me did our joint seminar. In this full day event students were determining the current EU regulations on digitalization (in particular the Data Governance Act, Digital Services Act, Digital Markets Act, Data Act, AI Act) in their systematic relationship to each other and to the GDPR. All of us were very impressed by the quality and originality of some of the presentations and I know that we appreciated a lot also the opportunity to exchange academic opinions among us.
Birthday and a dead man singing
I couldn’t avoid having birthday this week. I got lots of very nice messages and was deeply humbled and grateful and touched by them. It was also a perfect excuse to visit another rooftop bar in Vienna.
I found the perfect song for a white, heterosexual middle class Austrian male’s 56th birthday on Spotify
and an interview I had the privilege to give for OE1 on whether it’s legal to simulate a voice post morten using AI technologies came just at the right moment as well. :-).
It’s about Steve Marriot - author of beautiful songs such as this one - and the attempt to produce a song he never sung with an AI simulation of his voice.
Variety has some background on the case. I learned (almost) everything I say and know about personality rights in the Austrian legal system in the interview from Franz-Stefan Meissels brilliant reflections on § 16 ABGB in the third edition of “Klang Kommentar”.
Concordia Ball
Friday night was the right moment for a very nice party in Vienna’s townhall. Plenty of journalists and media people were there.
There was some political protest at the beginning and Austria’s decline in media freedom rankings was mentioned everywhere - so not everything was painted in pink. Horizont provides plenty of pictures, there’s als an OTS.
Reclaim TikTok
#Hashtag presented their new video documentary on (right wing) political propaganda on Tiktok.
I attended the premiere, took a picture
and was impressed by the video. There’s more coverage on this in Der Standard and on Twitter, for example here or here.
GDPR@6
Martin Selmayr and the conference
received some more coverage in media, including Netzwelt, Kleine Zeitung and Die Presse.
#arsboni
This week’s main contribution was on leadership, values, governance at Universities. You can see three people (somehow) in the academic system reflecting on what it actually means to be part of the system. And what it costs.
Cardiology and Klimaticket
I tried to provide an overview on AI-legislation for cardiologists in Salzburg on Thursday.
I learned there: Dress code is like at a conference of corporate lawyers. Lots of dark suits with ties and trouser suits. Medical doctors tend to believe without further reflection what some random lawyer tells them as a marketing argument (“GDPR compliant”) just like lawyers trust medical doctors telling them that “everything is OK”. A cardiologists’ conference provides child care, joint sport activities and lots of healthy food from sponsors. However, there are still smoking cardiologists on this planet.
The congress was the reason to finally buy a “Klimaticket” - which was an interesting experience in legal issues of non-digitalisation in this country. I asked some of the questions on Twitter, here and here and Paul Eberstaller had an extranice contribution on this.
Prospect
#arsboni Special
On Tuesday June 4th at 18.00 CET Martin Selmayr will speak with me on his career, the EU as employer and how digitalisation changes the legal profession.
I will also interview Stephan Apfl and the director of “Reclaim”, Lisa-Marie Gotsche, for #arsboni. I will do this at their premises with their equipment so that I don’t know yet whether I will stream or record this - and when to publish it. Wish me luck, please.
Maiforum
On Friday, June 7th, the association of administrative judges (“Dachverband der Verwaltungsrichter:innen”) dedicates its “Maiforum” in St. Pölten to AI in legal decision making. I will be on a panel there, a keynote is delivered by Dr. Alexandra Kunesch. I don’t know whether the event is public, it starts at 9.00 at NÖ Landhaus, Landtagssaal, 3109 St Pölten.
Theory of Legal Information
Also on Friday I am going to give my yearly lectuure on Theory of Legal Information in our Postgraduate LLM-programme on information and media law. If you want to join the crowd (next year): the application window is open, also for full scholarships.
Daisy
loves the sun just as much as I do.
© Felix Forgó
Have a wonderful week!
Kind regards
Nikolaus (Forgó)