Massey pair supreme in digital mashup

Two Massey University students have won the supreme award in this year’s Great New Zealand Remix and Mashup competition.

Mix and Mash, as it is known, is run by DigitalNZ in association with the National Library of New Zealand. It challenges entrants to build computer visualisations by re-using existing New Zealand digital content and data.

Graham Jenson, a PhD student, and fourth-year student Alex Gibson won the $10,000 Supreme Data Mashup award for their entry 100 Companies. Both study in the School of Engineering and Advanced Technology.

Their website makes use of various government data sources to present a view of the economy and allow people to adjust determining factors that affect our nation’s prosperity.

See the website here: http://mash.hashbang.co.nz/

The project follows Sir Paul Callaghan's StrategyNZ keynote address which dispels many myths about New Zealand, and pushes the idea that manufacturing in New Zealand is the way forward.

“I had seen Sir Paul talk at a conference and his recent online video went viral to some extent,” Mr Jenson says. “It was an excellent talk and we both agreed with its message, but we wanted to have a look at the numbers so it worked well.”

Mr Jenson says both he and Mr Gibson have worked on visualisations in the past and were excited to enter this completion. “Visualisations are the easiest way to transfer knowledge, especially if you can make something interactive,” he says.

The pair spent about 100 hours putting the entry together. “Graham had the nasty part of doing the research and putting the data together,” Mr Gibson says. “Then I got to play around with the graphics and the design of it.”

Nat Torkington, creator of Open New Zealand and the lead judge for the category, says the mashup “lets you interactively say ‘what if’ to scenarios like investing more in tourism or mining the conservation estate. It’s a fantastic use of interactive technology and public data to make sense of topical problems.”