Tuesday 16 October 2012

Introducing Sukey 3 aka. http://sukey.io

Sukey.io is a new platform which we hope will spur on previously unprecedented levels of collaboration and truly international digital participation and gestures of solidarity during demonstrations, the world over.

Our Aim.

What we hope is that people will engage with this framework and start using Sukey.io to support each other at the demo by completing 'microtasks', much like Amazon's Mechnical Turk Service (i.e. small digital tasks like tagging a photo or linking to a tweet) in order to help the people on the ground  combat issues such as Police Brutality, Kettling, Excessive State Surveillance to name a few but also to have some fun by rating our favourite banners and protest signs and sharing our favourite chants or quotes from the day with each other online.

What have we learnt over the last few years?

Over the years we have learnt that the best opportunities for making these key observations are on the ground, in the streets, where these things are actually happening. Furthermore we have learnt that it can be so valuable when people on the ground have tactical support online i.e. support from those with a different perspective- outside the demonstration (with a large computer screen and a cup of tea no doubt!). So we want to connect these two groups and help them keep an ongoing dialogue going.

Having the Right Tools for the Job

This is why it is so important that you, the protestor, have good tools to work with. Because you need to collect the first-hand source materiel data that makes this whole thing work!
We are talking:

*Android Phone
*Spare Batteries (boughtly cheaperly off Ebay)
*A full list to come In our comic / journal.


So we made you a webapp on which we have been working really hard in order to make the best app we can with the limited resources that we have- we really hope you like it. :) It is designed to make it easier to use Sukey on the move, even though the signal is not that great and the internet can often be slow.


Lastly, there are also ways in which people can support a demonstration, wherever they are in the world by helping to verify information coming out from the protest by searching and using datasets (e.g. twitter, twitpic, google street view and google maps searches). By participating you can help solve a real need of people on the ground. For example some groups of people will take photos of banners and placards, while some others rate them. Some people will observe which roads have been closed or are slow to travel down and report them as such while will suggest alternative routes.

Introduction / Theory

Sukey.io, in concept, could be viewed as a sequence of Stimulus:Response mappings which have been devised in order to help demonstrators collaborate effectively during a demonstration.
Example:
Stimulus0: We find a tweet online which says "there is a kettle forming on Whitehall, OMG, get out of there!"
Response0: We launch a localised (to whitehall's co-ordinates and the immediate locality) micro questionnaire which simply asks: "Is there a Kettle here?" and can you take a photo of it?
Stimulus1: We receive photos and verification of the fact that the kettle is on
Response1: We can then faithfully tweet out a report that the kettle is indeed happening.


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