Monster Swell is no longer active as a studio for data visualization. All enquiries for the design of interactive media and products involving data may be directed to Hubbub. Hubbub is a design s...
https://monsterswell.com/blog/2013/07/update-on-commitments-elsewhere/
It’s been a bit quiet here, but to give an update: We are currently working on some data science projects for non-disclosed clients. This week also our principle participated in the Moscow Urba...
Just to post a recap of the things that have happened during the last year. While it has been awfully quiet around here a lot of things have been going on behind the screens and in other places. ...
https://monsterswell.com/blog/2012/09/recap-of-last-year-and-a-realign/
A short video of Alper in Helsinki during a World Design Capital event organized by Virtueel Platform presenting about hacking, Hack de Overheid and the past and future of open data:
https://monsterswell.com/blog/2012/08/open-data-at-world-design-capital-helsinki/
The presentation ‘Designing in the Face of Defeat’ written up below, has been recorded by the kind people of the WdKA and is viewable below: Or you can view it on Blip.tv. We’ve been please...
I called this talk I gave for the Willem de Kooning Academy’s CrossLab night ‘New Design for a New Aesthetic’ initially, but I reconsidered that title. Not because of the person who took se...
https://monsterswell.com/blog/2012/05/designing-in-the-face-of-defeat/
An interesting bit of news came to light at Privacy International a while back: “What does Twitter know about its users?” It is possible for residents of the EU to request from Twitter all of...
https://monsterswell.com/blog/2012/04/a-full-twitter-index-in-your-thinkup/
The year has started nicely and we already have a nice line-up of events. Thursday a week ago saw the iBestuur Congress in the Netherlands the winners of the Apps voor Nederland competition were...
Last week Sargasso had procured a dataset of interruptions from politicians in our House of Representatives. With the counts from which politician had interrupted which in debates they had made s...
https://monsterswell.com/blog/2012/01/parliamentary-interruptions/
The backend of the TIMEMAPS project is based on the Zotonic web framework and Erlang. This article highlights the technical challenges and concessions that were considered while building the visu...
It is my pleasure to introduce here on Monster Swell a new collaboration and a spectacular piece of work. Arjan Scherpenisse of Miracle Things will be collaborating with us in the field of data v...
https://monsterswell.com/blog/2011/11/introducing-arjan-scherpenisse/
TIMEMAPS visualizes how the map of the Netherlands would look if it would be scaled proportionally to the travel times (by train) between cities. I was asked by the designer of the concept, Vince...
https://monsterswell.com/blog/2011/11/timemaps-a-different-perspective/
Finally got around to go the AUB Ticketshop at Leidse Square during the daytime to view the Foursquare Display we setup in action (previous blog post). A video of the screen: The screen in contex...
There is a piece up on O’Reilly Radar by Andy Oram about the sustainability of applications built during hackathons. I am involved in Hack de Overheid and we have organized (Apps for Amsterdam)...
https://monsterswell.com/blog/2011/08/hackathons-as-gateways-to-more-and-better-open-data/
I have written here before about the need for web developers to learn more about GIS technologies and how to either work with or work around the traditional geographical software packages and dat...
https://monsterswell.com/blog/2011/08/nogis-on-a-fortress-apps-for-noord-holland/
Somebody brought to my attention again the Foursquare user adoption animation they created in honour of their 10 millionth member. A great achievement for Foursquare and just the beginning of man...
https://monsterswell.com/blog/2011/07/10000000-foursquare-users/
It’s been some time in the making but today we are proud to do a very early beta release of Statlas, the project we have been working on these past months. The Dutch Press Innovation fund funde...
Tonight the Apps for Amsterdam awards ceremony takes place and stage one of the Dutch open data trajectory will be completed. Last year at the end of summer I helped Thijs Kleinpaste and Stefan d...
The agenda is filling up again just before the summer break. Alper will speak at: May 24th – Technical review of city dashboard concepts at HvA A brief bit of teaching with design and technical...
https://monsterswell.com/blog/2011/05/upcoming-public-speaking/
Here are the slides for a talk I gave at /dev/haag last Friday ambitiously titled “Fixing Reality with Data Visualization” which was well received. I promised to write it up here, so here it ...
https://monsterswell.com/blog/2011/05/fixing-reality-with-data-visualization/
For the Amsterdam UIT Bureau and I Amsterdam we created this Foursquare map designed to display nightlife activity around the Leidseplein (entertainment) area with recent checkins, specials and c...
https://monsterswell.com/blog/2011/05/foursquare-map-display-for-amsterdam-nightlife/
We ran a major update to the previous concept we did for the Dutch Labour Party using their canvassing results for the previous elections. The previous version crammed all the interaction into a ...
https://monsterswell.com/blog/2011/04/mapping-voter-sentiment-in-the-netherlands/
Alper is speaking at /dev/haag this Friday giving a presentation with the title: “Fixing reality with data visualizations” tying together a bunch of strands. It promises to be a fun event and...
https://monsterswell.com/blog/2011/04/upcoming-presentation-at-devhaag/
An exploratory project for the Dutch weekly de Groene Amsterdammer (yes: the Green Amsterdamer) concerning a survey posed to a large number of social scientists asking their assessment of the mos...
https://monsterswell.com/blog/2011/04/interactive-infographic-for-de-groene-amsterdammer/
Our Alper has joined the board of Hack de Overheid a Dutch think tank that creates software and events to advance thinking about transparent government and open data in the Netherlands. Actually ...
Some minor updates from the studio. Statlas is going into full production. The past weeks Alper has been giving lectures at the Willem de Kooning design academy on the subject of data visualizati...
Last Tuesday Dutch broadcasting corporation VPRO launched the iPad documentary “Money & Speed” (free now in the App Store) they had been working on on and off for a large part of the past ye...
https://monsterswell.com/blog/2011/01/tegenlicht-money-speed-%E2%80%94%C2%A0a-touch-documentary/
For the project Statlas we are looking into making a personal mapping platform for journalists. We submitted the grant proposal for this almost half a year ago and the idea had been alive for far...
https://monsterswell.com/blog/2011/01/personal-mapping-platforms/
I had been aware of the fact that our Dutch public broadcaster NOS was going to open up their news using an API. During the run up to this I gave them a couple of pointers concerning what we thin...
https://monsterswell.com/blog/2011/01/glanceable-news-using-the-new-nos-api/
This opinion (in Dutch) by Ernst-Jan Pfauth about how bloggers and other people online can help make the government more transparent is in line with most current thinking on open data. It is good...
https://monsterswell.com/blog/2011/01/bloggers-transparency-and-our-catch-22/
The technology demo of Dutchstats as presented during Hack de Overheid last year has been a nice trigger for further development along that axis. For now the project under codename Dutchstats2 �...
The first of these cards have made their way out into the public so I think it’s time to show them to the world at large. They are the first step in rolling out the graphic style we have come u...
https://monsterswell.com/blog/2010/12/information-compression/
If you’ve been following the blog, you must have noticed that we are back from hiatus. There is so much happening in the field of data right now, that we would be amiss not to organize the next...
Watch Alper give a broad sweeping introduction on the field of data at a recent Mobile Monday Amsterdam:
https://monsterswell.com/blog/2010/11/video-of-the-rising-tide-of-data/
Next Wednesday Alper will be presenting about Foursquare in the Netherlands, its past, its present and its future on Social Media Club 030 #8. Alper will also join a Hack de Overheid team of expe...
https://monsterswell.com/blog/2010/11/next-weeks-public-appearances/
The previous video for Civic Duty in a Hyper-Connected World was somewhat poorly accessible because it is locked in a HVA courseware environment. The Club of Amsterdam has graciously provided the...
A proposal on the topic of Open Data (link to PDF) that Monster Swell advised Thijs Kleinpaste and Stefan de Bruijn on was discussed during a meeting by the commission for general affairs of the ...
https://monsterswell.com/blog/2010/11/open-data-in-amsterdam-center-adopted/
“The Rising Tide of Data” was a more pared down, less activist, introductory version of “Civicy Duty in a Hyper-Connected World” presented by Alper and it was well received in a solid pro...
https://monsterswell.com/blog/2010/11/the-rising-tide-of-data-on-mobile-monday-2/
Alper will be giving a one hour workshop to civil servants of the city of Amsterdam concerning open data on the Open Innovation Festival, on December 3rd from 11:00-12:00. This workshop will trea...
https://monsterswell.com/blog/2010/11/open-innovation-festival-for-the-city-of-amsterdam/
Alper will be giving a brief data-heavy talk titled “The Rising Tide of Data” at Mobile Monday Amsterdam #18. More to follow.
https://monsterswell.com/blog/2010/11/the-rising-tide-of-data-on-mobile-monday/
Consultation with council members of the city of Amsterdam (division Amsterdam Center) on open data which resulted in a policy piece with a proposal to open up data (PDF in Dutch). The commission...
https://monsterswell.com/blog/2010/10/open-data-in-amsterdam-city-center/
The video of my recent presentation for the Club of Amsterdam (slides and notes) has been posted to the HVA site. Find it here (start at index: 44:30): The Future of Hacking Working on releasing ...
https://monsterswell.com/blog/2010/10/video-of-club-of-amsterdam-presentation/
Yesterday Dutch daily newspaper NRC.next published an opinion piece I’d written for them concerning Dutch public transportation information. Alexander Klöpping had written a piece before and m...
After the first Dutch Data Drinks many people asked about the following edition. We’ve been busy thinking about the next event with a better venue and a light formal program, but we’ve been b...
Yesterday Alper gave the presentation on improving our environments using data and hacking for the Club of Amsterdam. Here are the slides from that presentation with notes: I am intendant at an A...
https://monsterswell.com/blog/2010/10/slides-for-civic-duty-in-a-hyper-connected-world/
The Utrechts Uitburo —the cultural promotion and scheduling agency of the city of Utrecht— has received the first Dutch brand page on Foursquare via our mediation (tweet). Further integration...
https://monsterswell.com/blog/2010/09/foursquare-page-for-utrechts-uitburo/
Our old project Vervuilingsalarm unexpectedly got nominated for this years eParticipation Award, an award that showcases successful examples of public services. The project was a proof of concept...
https://monsterswell.com/blog/2010/09/nomination-eparticipation-award-2010/
For an upcoming presentation at the Club of Amsterdam on the Future of Hacking, Alper will be presenting on an intersection of APIs, public information and game design titled: “Civic duty in a ...
https://monsterswell.com/blog/2010/09/speaking-at-the-club-of-amsterdam/
Not a dataviz at all, but an abstract evocative animation by Onesize for VPRO’s Quants: “the alchemists of Wall Street”. The abstractness of the direction was deliberatly kept abstract and ...
https://monsterswell.com/blog/2010/09/alchemists-of-wallstreet/
We thought it would be an interesting challenge to hold an informal data event on the fringe of PICNIC after three days of conferencing. Thus were born the Dutch Data Drinks on Friday, September ...