How now, brown cow?

Where did Sukey come from?

It was dubbed 'the anti-kettling app' and received international media attention in 2011. It attempts to keep people safe mobile and informed during a demonstration. We achieve this by promoting collaboration between people on the demo that are using Sukey, and people not at the demo via social networking, to share reports and observations which can be independently verified by a team inside and outside the demo (some are on the ground) and then broadcast back to the entire crowd. We believe  in information for information's sake and try to introduce as little 'editorial bias' in rebroadcasting as possible. We also produced a map showing where the police were kettling protestors so that people had a better sense of what was going on.

Where are we going?

The information flows are now more dynamic and interesting as we enter into the 3rd generation of the app and we can now engage thousands of people from all around the world who may just simply watching the demo at home or from work, using social media or live-streams, to help the people on the ground by preforming 'mechanical-turk-esque' micro tasks. These are small digital tasks which may involve adding or correcting waypoints on a map, taking photos (on the ground), rating a photo, tagging a photo, doing a google search, voting on the perceived veracity of a piece of information or looking on google street view to help find things. This is all very exciting and I would ask those interested to get in touch to help us BETA. Email: sukey.org@gmail.com twitter: @sukeyio

Connecting People

It is really interesting and important to connect people at a given demonstation with people not at the demonstration and give a 'loose-knit collective of clicktivists' something to do in order to help the demonstrators in a tangible way. This will lead to compelling stories of collaboration between people from all over the world who identify with the struggle of fellow people from other countries who are being silenced, coerced and beaten for peacefully protesting against their states. Even better when these stories are received and read by the people that were helped, then those in the countries that were helped will turn around and return the favour when the time comes. So we want to be the first group to really pay it forwards and start helping people to stay well informed at demonstrations and see if we can start a trend which will help all people collaborate to facilitate peaceful protest in this digital age.

What is Sukey?

People that study technology often fail to remember to study people. Folks get so wrapped up and enamoured with the data, and so alienated from the people doing the work that human practice often gets ignored. Re-inscribing the "human" into technology is extremely important...lest we fall into the trap of "there is no alternative."

The Sukey project speaks to a number of theoretical problems with which we grapple when thinking about technology: the agency of software, the production of space, the possibility of reconfiguring existing capitalist technologies for purposes of resistance, and community organizing through emerging media channels. Sukey is also inherently geographic and does work to expose the often largely invisible tactics of the state to dominate spaces of protest.

So it appears that the Sukey app and our team are sort of a unique case.
When we bemoan and lament technology's role in oppression and governmental regimes, the question we often ask ourselves is, "How could this be done 'differently'?"  Some may ask the same question regarding geoweb technology: "What could be done to make geoweb applications more egalitarian?  You make it sound as though capital domination is a foregone conclusion." The first step toward changing that is imagining a different possibility.

I was recently told by a friend that Sukey is regarded by some as a counter-example to "the corporate-state nexus owns and manipulates social media and other technology" in the geoweb field. Thanks guys!

Source: Adapted from an Email from Josef Eckert

Sukey.io helps you have fun during the protests and, on the way, keep each other safe, mobile and informed.

This is just a teaser of sukey.io. ALPHA release soon...

Follow @sukeyio

Sukey.io helps you have fun during the protests and, on the way, keep each other safe, mobile and informed.

This leaves no trace since the micro-app list is temporary and set by Sukey servers.

Micro-apps are frequently updated and change based on your location so keep checking Sukey.io during the protest to see what's new!

Get in touch if you want to help us test the ALPHA release.

• @sukeyio on twitter
• sukey.org@gmail.com
• http://sukey.io/

Sukey.io is proudly agpl-3.0

Sukey De Verdieping Talk, Amsterdam 2011: Post 2

A quick flyer I've put together for our talk tonight!

Get the flyer here: http://bit.ly/SukeyFlyer

And look at our slide show here: http://bit.ly/SukeySlideShow
We've even got wallpaper:

• 1024 by 768
• 1280 by 800
• 1440 by 900

-Gaffen (from the Sukey suit)

Sukey De Verdieping Talk, Amsterdam 2011: Post 1

This week Sukey has been visiting Amsterdam; a group of us have been invited over in order to give a talk at a regular conference hosted by Trouw Amsterdam called De Verdieping. Trouw (from their website) looks like one of several interesting spaces located around Amsterdam. Located in an old newspaper printing mill, they have a restaurant, club, Venue for cultural discussion and debate, exhibition space, and magazine. Sounds pretty bloody cool!

Amsterdam is a beautiful city on several levels. It's beautifully designed, the bicycle system is integrated into the cities' structure in a way I don't think is even possible in London - rather that being pushed to the kerb and generally ignored (mostly) like they are in London, they have dedicated lanes on almost every road and seem to be seen in a similar light to those driving cars.

By far the most impressive at this point has been the Central Library, and the attitude towards libraries in Amsterdam. If you live in the UK I'm sure you're aware of the terrible things being done to the funding of libraries. I am currently blogging from this most amazing of spaces: 

The Openbare Centrale Bibliotheek Amsterdam is the largest public library in Europe, and possibly also the best. It has 10 floors - we have been working on stuff for Sukey for most of the day from floor 5 - it is fully networked, they have public iMacs for visitors, ergonomically designed workspaces from people on their own or in groups, and a full blown, affordable restaurant on the top floor where you can choose from a variety of incredibly tasty and healthy foodstuffs.

Essentially it's about the most productive environment in which I have ever been.

Student fees for university courses used to be non-existent, but now cost €1,713 from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. The people are welcoming, friendly and love Londoners. We're having a fantastic time here!

-Gaffen (from the Sukey Suit)

Sukey has made sleep a distant memory...

I've had so little sleep recently.

Sukey has officially arrived, I believe. Today we were featured in the Guardian, I was pleasantly surprised to discover we got four pages!

I'm truly happy, happier than I've been in some time.

Original Post by Matt
Shamelessly clipped and edited by samthetechie

New Website: Sukey.org

www.sukey.org

Hi everyone,

It's been a busy few days for us at team Sukey, we've been working very hard on several new things - one of which is our new website layout; we thought we'd do a little spring cleaning. Ok, so it's not spring yet. But we couldn't resist! Truth is we couldn't resist the lure of another all-nighter for all the tasty click-throughs from the article about us in the Guardian. So here's the result - *drumroll* - tadaa!

Top of the list right now for us is tidying up the source code and getting it open to the public on GitHub as soon as possible. We're tightening bolts and battening down the hatches, so keep an eye out!

We're also working on some little surprises for you and some new video coming soon. Watch out for our full introduction to Sukey and its' features, as well as details of how it works.

Stay safe everyone, expect more soon. We're aiming to get Sukey 2.0: Electric Boogaloo ready for a special event ahead of the March 26th demo. It promises to be lots of fun and we hope to see you there!

xoxoxox

Gaffen from the Sukey Team