Announcing the winners for Highcharts 5 competition (Food & Agriculture)

Posted by Mustapha Mekhatria | 0 comments

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Multiple people throwing powder in different colors in the air

On November 4, 2016, we launched Highcharts 5 Competition with the deadline set on 11 Dec. 2016. The task was to set up a chart or multiple charts with any product of Highcharts 5 (Highcharts, Highstock and Highmaps) using data from FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization) website.

After one week of deliberation, the jury delivered its list of two winners according to the following criteria:

  • Innovative, creative and attractive design
  • Easy to understand what the data ‘story’ is
  • Technical skills both in data analysis and coding

We at Highsoft would like to congratulate the winners and thank everyone who participated in the competition!

AND THE WINNERS ARE…

Title: Nordic Region Agricultural Exports to Non-Nordic Countries

Creator: Richard Griffith

AND …

Title: A History Of Corn Over The Last 50 Years

Creator: Michael A Fernando

FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THE WINNERS

RICHARD GRIFFITH

1-richard-griffithLinkedIn
Twitter
Website

 

  1. Tell us a little bit more about yourself (work, hobby, etc.)?

My background is in electrical engineering, but in my spare time, I like to build things with code (currently, my focus is on JavaScript). One project that I am currently working on is an application for the web and desktop that makes use of the Highcharts library for data visualization. These are open source projects available on Github. The web app can be found at Convolv.

  1. What motivated you to participate in Highchats 5 competition?

I really enjoy working with Highcharts and felt that this competition would be an excellent way to try some of the features that I either had not explored yet or had limited experience with, for example, styled mode, drilldowns, etc.

  1. Why did you choose these data for the competition?

We have just recently started seeing farm-raised salmon from Norway in stores in the US and were discussing this development with Norwegian friends of ours. The discussion was about the heavy use of antibiotics in farm raised fish that we normally see in the US and how the Norwegian variety has none (and tastes much better!). So I actually went to the FAO website looking for data on antibiotic use. Not finding any, I became curious about agricultural trade between Norway and the US, then expanded that to include the other Nordic countries and their trade outside the Nordic Council region.

  1. How did you spend your time on this competition?

I spent most of my time cleaning the data and then learning about styled mode. I spent most of the time in Highcharts working to get the drilldown on the pie chart to work the way I wanted.

  1. What is your biggest takeaway from this competition?

My biggest takeaway from the competition is that Highcharts never ceases to amaze. I have worked with other charting libraries in the past, but Highcharts has always stood out as being the best of all. The introduction of styled mode is a useful and welcome addition to this powerful tool.

 

MICHAEL A FERNANDO

2-michael-a-fernanadoLinkedIn
Twitter
Website

 

  1. Tell us a little bit more about yourself (work, hobby, etc.)?

I’m a Data Operations Engineer at Malwarebytes, but broadly interested in Big Data, DevOps and OpenSource. On the side, I’m a podcast and yoga addict. Also,I love, love and love coffee.

  1. What motivated you to participate in Highchats 5 competition?

I had an idea for an Emoji based heat map which I wanted to turn into a visualization.
Also, I’ve been using Highcharts since 2012 and wanted to see what I could come up with in general.

  1. Why did you choose these data for the competition?

Corn is an interesting dataset because the crop’s overall production has nearly quadrupled over the last four decades. Morerover it is used in a wide variety of applications spanning from food to energy.
I was just curious to see who the primary producers and consumers of corn were around the world.

  1. How did you spend your time on this competition?

Time in this competition was spent in two parts: data preparation and data visualization.
The data prep step consisted of taking the raw CSV data from FAOSTAT and then uploading that to a MySQL database which I could use to filter and rank the data in the correct JSON format.
Once the data was in JSON, I then spent time iterating over the front end visualizations to apply the correct color scheme, chart legend modifications and sizing.

  1. What is your biggest takeaway from this competition?

There is a lot of corn in the world. Also, Highcharts is Awesome! 🙂