Holland Web Week Groningen: 3D visualizations

From Wednesday 16 to Saturday 20 September it was buzzing in the Ebbingekwartier in Groningen, the setting of The Holland WebWeek , a four-day ‘Online and ICT Festival’. The 600 visitors listened to dozens of speakers, participated in workshops and watched the start-up competition, The Battle of the Schools. There was an Amusement Arcade of the North, programming lessons for hundreds of girls, drones flying around and much more.

In the Infoversum , one of the festival sites, the theme on Friday 18 September was Research. Bart van de Laar from Science LinX began the day with his take on the inevitability of Big Data and the importance of visualizing data, in both research and communication.

The speakers in the morning discussed the possibilities of data visualization, in general and of Big Data in particular. Tjeerd Willem Hobma, General Director of the Donald Smits Center for Information Technology at the University of Groningen, gave examples of research at the University of Groningen in which visualization had played a role. To develop the Ocean Grazer , for instance, they used 3D models, which were shown on the 360-degree dome of the Infoversum.

Lambert Schomaker, Scientific Director of the artificial intelligence research institute ALICE , offered visitors a glimpse of robot development and the Monk handwriting detection project. Designer Gert Franke from CleverFranke rounded off the morning by demonstrating what you can do with the visualization of weather data on the KNMI website. He also showed the audience a project that visualized traffic data from the American city of Chicago in order to improve traffic flow.

After lunch two researchers from Nijmegen gave a presentation on how new socioeconomic practices and concepts develop and spread from the local to the global. Infoversum Director Shawn Laatsch ended the day by taking the visitors on a 3D journey through space, thus demonstrating the possibilities of this unique theatre for scientists.

Report Eva Teuling