Masterclass description: Taurin Barrera, designer of the original Aethera sensor used for Data Canvas, along with Jack Shao from seeed Studio, will explore with fellow hackers, shakers and makers how DiY technology can empower citizens of our modern day cities and bring about change in the urban landscape.

Data Canvas: Sense Your City is an international competition inviting designers, coders, data analysts and pioneers to visualize the data streamed from 100 sensors all around the world. Launched in 2013 under the name Urban Data Challenge, Data Canvas: Sense Your City is the second edition and will take place during the first quarter of 2015.

Background: In 2015, swissnex SF, Lift and Gray Area join forces again to bring about change in the urban landscape. With the collaboration of SEEED Studio, a Chinese hardware platform for and by makers and the City of Geneva, we are bringing the power in the hands of the citizens themselves by making them the pioneers of Data Canvas (formerly named Urban Data Challenge). 100 people will build their own DiY environmental sensors and measure air quality, noise, light and temperature over the course of 4 months in: San Francisco, Geneva, Shanghai, Rio de Janeiro, Bangalore, Singapore and Boston. The data thus collected will allow for a live, crowd-sourced mapping of the environment people inhabit everyday in these 7 cities.