A call to arms!

Smartup Zero is looking for co-explorers! Are you a tech wizard, sassy-designer, bold-businessman/woman, marketing-goeroe or anything in between and you don’t shy away from walking the path yet unknown? Then join us to create magic through tech for local communities!

Our story:

We’ve discovered a promised land between the digital and physical world. A land where people being together is augmented by humane, people-owned tech. A land where the privacy of the individual is being protected and the collaboration as a collective supported. We’ve mapped out how we can get there. Now we’re looking for a bold & brave crew to start walking the walk. Join our multi-talented team of volunteers on this great adventure. Our destination: a new digital toolset for citizens to redesign their worlds. Our mode of transportation: building the first tool.

That first new tool:

We’ve made a blueprint and prototype for a technology called Onlive. Onlive helps you interact with other citizens within the world you share with them. It’s an app that acts as an operating system for all the groups of people you are physically part of in any given time and space. Think of being together in a classroom, at a bar, and event, a store or a hospital. Onlive runs software—plugins—in those groups. These plugins are automatically installed on your phone upon joining a group. This way, Onlive works as an app that adapts to any physical circumstance you are part of. With it, Onlive does not depend on the internet, since it is only for people that are near to each other. In these groups, citizens have full control over their identity and data. That’s why we designed a new type of UI to make things familiar. The UI is based on the idea of playing a game of cards. Read more.

Our organization:

We own, create and govern Onlive as a democratic collective. We call it a Smartup. Smartup Zero is the first Smartup. People need to trust Onlive. For that, we have to ensure Onlive stays in the hands of the people that help create it. A Smartup is an organizational structure for that purpose. We believe that people-owned technology is less vulnerable to commercial corruption. That means it has more chances to become a valuable tool for citizens. It also means that as a member of our team, you are also an equal co-owner. Read more.

Our blueprint (what we’ve made so far):

  • The Onlive prototype/demo App for Android.
  • The Onlive Plugin Software Development Kit (SDK) for third parties to create plugins,
  • The Onlive backend containing
    • Custom Onlive logic for integration with the XMPP server 
    • The Onlive registry, which hosts
    • Context group definitions
    • Plug-in executables (.zip)
 

Our tech stack:

  1. Backend for the context engine runs on Quarkus + Kotlin and operates on Heroku. 
  2. The XMPP server runs a Prosody XMPP server in Docker and a plugin/client written in Go using Docker and operates on OVH  
  3. Grouping logic is written as a XMPP plugin/client written in Golang and runs in Docker and operates on OVH. 
  4. The android app is written Kotlin and supports Android 21+. 

Please reach out to robbert@smartupzero.org to start our conversation!