Making Sense Workshop in Amsterdam

by Maria Ustarroz     Posted on May 18, 2016

Making Sense project was presented at Pakhuis de Zwijger last 21st April and on Friday 22nd there was a really interesting workshop about sensing and the city.

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Mel Woods, Mara Balestrini, Tomas Diez and Alexandre Pólvora collaborate in the project Making Sense, a research project with focus on the question how open source software, open source hardware, digital maker practices and open design can be used by local communities to make sense of their environments. It will develop a Making Sense Toolkit based on the Smart Citizen platform for bottom up citizen science, developed at Fablab Barcelona. The toolkit will be developed and tested in nine pilots in Amsterdam, Barcelona and Pristina.

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The Making Sense Workshop took place the 22nd of April in Amsterdam. First of all, experts in the field of participatory sensing delivered a comprehensive introduction and state of the art. Secondly, participants engaged in a hands-on exploration of citizen-driven measuring tools and strategies using a novel participatory sensing toolbox comprising maps, scenarios and technologies. Finally, the workshop concluded with a discussion on how we might critically deploy the imagined devices in scenarios of desired futures to achieve positive change, while negotiating and sharing concerns and challenges with policy makers.

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