On Thursday morning we embarked on a train to Hilversum, just outside Amsterdam, sometimes referred to as Hillywood, the media capital of Holland. There, our first destination was Beeld and Geluid(dutch for The Institute of Sound and Vision). This multicolored glass building housed a media center that consisted of a vast media archive (thousands and thousands reels of film as well as audiotapes from news broadcasts and movies and supplementary material for these), research facilities and a educational experience. There, we were taken for a tour around the media archive – definitely an amazing experience, even something to come back for.. Further, resonating with our focus on media services, Wietske van den Heuwel gave us a presentation on their R&D initiatives – including different media services for crowdsourcing the metadata for material and for the clients to access the archives.
After experiencing (it is, indeed, an experience to visit this magnificent complex) Sound and Vision, we headed towards Hogeschool voor de Kunsten Utrecht. There, we had an opportunity to meet a crowd of inspiring students and faculty as they were hosting their annual Project Market event. During this visit, we were impressed by the wide variety of projects the students had carried out. Some examples are available here.
On Friday, we had a chance to visit the offices of Sanoma Digital and OmnicomMediaGroup. Check out the student blogs to read more about these visits and their learnings (Leyla, Jukka, Saara, Karri, Tomi, and Eveliina.)
