InSIS Seminar Series - Smart Citizenship. Recovering the productive role of society through new technologies

Presentation abstract:
Five years ago we launched the concept of Smart Citizen, it was the result of many tech and thought experiments developed over the years at the Fab Lab Barcelona at IAAC, and inspired by the work of friends such as Arduino and Pachube. In 2011, it was quite adventurous to imagine an Smart City model different than the landscape painted by big technology corporations were selling everywhere as an IT based urban playground, where citizens were seen as mere consumers. Since then we have already deployed more than 1.200 sensors all over the world, which can be seen in our website: smartcitizen.me, we have worked with more than 20 universities and have been used as a study case in many academic papers. Now cities are using the term smart citizen as a standard to define citizen participation in the smart city agenda. We are advocating for making technology valuable for people’s life, not as a consumer good, but as a real tool that empowers citizen and take their role in their cities into a next level and we feel this just have started.

Presenter's biography:
Guillem Camprodon is an interaction designer working on the intersection between Design, Science and Technology. In 2010 he joined Fab Lab Barcelona at the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia where he currently leads the development of Smart Citizen, a global open-source environmental monitoring platform. He is also a regular advisor on many projects as a tangible interaction and internet of things expert and he teaches regularly workshops on design and technology.