Skura: Working together on technological sovereignty
- Skura, which runs mobile phone applications, has been involved in inter-cooperation from the outset. In fact, it was originally made up of two people and other services, such as the server, are needed to develop mobile applications. "Those services can also be done by us, but our specialty is the applications and we prefer to focus on them," said his colleagues. "That's why, from the very beginning, we've come out naturally to collaborate with other small companies that make servers. Magnet, Onenpro or Talaios, among others. And they have the same thing, the projects that develop them, if they need a mobile app, Skura is part of that process. In this sense, we are part of it."
From experience, they have explained to us that cooperatives operating in the technology sector do not see their relationship as competition, but that the word cooperation is better for them. And that's great benefits. "If on top of the same project there are two instead of a company, what you're going to see is four more eyes. Working the same project between companies is very nice and very rich. This way of working is in the depths of Skura and there are very few projects that we do alone: we always have other collaborating companies at our side, what we call our network.” They have also explained that it is good to distribute the work in periods of heavy workload.
Inter-cooperation between these independent companies has taken place from the very beginning, so it is "very natural" for them to feed on these relationships. "They're not in our office, but it's like they're teleworking -- we're always in touch through live channels, by phone and by email -- and they share the idea that you have with each other to see if we can do something together. Many times we say it's as if we were part of the same company, as if we were different departments of the same."
Sewing the TEKS network
This network of technology companies started creating the partnership three years ago and has been formalized: It's called TEKS. The partnership will be presented to technological cooperatives working in the field of social economy and technological sovereignty, proposing their integration into it. TEKS aims to respond to common needs, strengthen the network, inter-cooperate, promote the values of technological sovereignty and the social economy in different areas of society, and support each other, for example, so that small businesses that could not access large subsidies individually can access them. They believe that the fact that TEKS wins the benchmark will also help customers, "for the client to see that behind a project is not just Skura, that there are many companies that support us."
Another area of TEKS is the formations, at this time of the pandemic, have been with groups of women from different towns to work on technological empowerment: "With the pandemic, we have seen the digital divide between women, especially in people over 60 years of age. And their problems with video calls and technology in general. These workshops have been attended by many people, with great interest."
Technological sovereignty
We have asked him about the "technological sovereignty" that has appeared on more than one occasion. Why is it needed? "The aim is for us to own our technologya.No to leave our data to third parties: Google, Facebook -- these multinationals are coming into schools so that citizenship data is available from childhood onwards. Technological sovereignty demands ownership of our technologies and data".
They have explained that in inter-cooperation between companies they try to put common tools to common needs and, of course, from the point of view of technological sovereignty the following tools are selected: "For example, among the cooperatives Tapuntu, Talaios and Skura we have installed a free technology tool on our servers so that all the accounting data on our server are instead on the server of a third company." Another free license tool used in Skura is Netxcloud, instead of Drive: "On this server we have all the documents of our company and the same possibilities as Drive: we can edit documents online, share... but the system is ours, not Google. In this way, we are not dependent on others, the data is ours."
FICHE
What it does: Custom software, design, definition and development. They develop connectivity and communication technologies for mobiles.
Workers or partners: 5.
Created: 2011.
Residence: Arrasate and Orereta-Errenteria.
Contact: 675892204 info@skura.com
