The hunk of Leeuwarden

The car ride to Leeuwarden in the North of the Netherlands was under two hours. For Dutch ideas that is a long way and usually you say: It better be good. Yesterday I went with my pal Wim Ouwerkerk to the junior college North Netherlands. We were supposed to give two lectures for the section CMD, Communication & Multimedia Design (you will have to brush up your Dutch). One of the lectures is on the multimedia competitions of the EUROPRIX.nl, EUROPRIX Top Talent Award and the World Summit Award. We have called this lecture the Best of….; we present the history of these competitions and demonstrated several entries. We have several DVDs of the competitions and love to showcase the best entries of students in the various competitions. Also the entries in the World Summit Award get attention, especially as these entries have a social perspective. In the courses this aspect is hardly touched upon. The other lecture is on the employment market situation in the field of multimedia in The Netherland. There are not too many surveys on this subject and the one that are available stem from before the internet disaster in 2001. So in the surveys of 2000 there was an estimate of 4.600 multimedia production companies in the Netherlands, employing some 16.000 people. The conclusion was that ther are a lot of small companies. In fact 70 per cent of the work was done by 25 per cent of the companies. Besides 40 per cent of the companies are established in the Dutch Multimedia Corridor which ranges from Haarlem, Amsterdam, Hilversum and Utrecht.


The map of the Netherlands indicating the spread of the multimedia employees. The dark brown blobs are cities and towns with companies employing more than 19 people. Source: GOC study 2000.

After the internet blow-out there has not been a proper survey yet. So we do not know how many companies have been left after the blow-out and how many people are employed. Hopefully there will be money soon in order to get sound figures. It would help the sector greatly.

The college started started four years ago with this CMD section. So this year the first students will graduate. In September the first one will get his diploma and after that graduation more students will follow.

During the lunch break Albert van der Kooij, one of the multimedia instructors, demonstrated proudly the studios around the college. Students were hacking away code, editing video, refining soundbytes, producing animations and building up installations. As the school has a rather technical history is was not surprising that find students busy with 3D.


3D engine room.

Enthusiastically the students told about the building of a 3D engine room of a tanker for simulation. The production was almost finished and would go to a school were they train sea captains and other maritime personnel. The engine room will be projected on larger screen in order to reach real sizes. I made a snapshot of the engine room coming from the bridge.


Building the hunk of Leeuwarden.

The students were also building people. One of them worked on the face of the hunk on the picture. And they produce much more. In fact they also made a rendering of the waterfall by the famous Dutch artist Escher. You can see a small video clip of this curious waterfall.