San Diego presentation: bringing GIS to national tv


Dutch broadcaster VPRO used extensive data resources to put together a tv series, named The Netherlands from above. This documentary ran ten episodes and was weekly rated over 1.2 million viewers nationally, ranking as one of the most watched shows in the country.

In his presentation Bringing geography to national TV at the ESRI user conference in San Diego, data-journalist and information designer Frédérik Ruys, reveals the challenges and pitfalls of visual storytelling and datavisualisations while sharing his ambitions for the second season.
The interactive maps, by Stamen Design, helped the viewers searching for exotic locations or unknown spots. The datavisualisations for tv were beautifully animated by 422 South, the UK-based CGI company who was also responsible for the animations in Britain from Above (2008), Deutschland from Oben (2010) and America Revealed (2012). But VPRO succeeded in cutting the production time drastically by adding a data-journalist to its editorial team who prepared and storyboarded the GIS-data with the help of ESRI-specialists.

ESRI User Conference, July 26th, 2012 | 8:30 – 9:45 AM | San Diego Convention Center | Room 29 A/B