Alper Cugun M.Sc. (1981, Dutch/Turkish) is a designer, technologist, publicist and early adopter. He was one of the first ten Dutch Twitter users and he’s always looking to find and build new things. Currently Alper is intendant of data visualization agency Monster Swell, CTO of game studio Hubbub and on the board of Hack de Overheid

After graduating he started a collective donations startup TipiT that contributed significantly to Wikileaks among other initiatives. He brought Foursquare to Amsterdam as its first international city shortly after the service had launched in the United States. And with an exploration of physical computing he won first prize at Music Hack Day Amsterdam.

Alper is currently enterprising in the following fields:

Games – Gamification is a somewhat hyped buzzword, but there is a tremendous amount to be gained by using the power of games to improve organizations and society. Working with Hubbub Alper conceives, designs and builds pervasive/serious games that matter and that are fun to play.

Data – We need analysis, visualization and algorithmic intelligence to come to terms with the vast quantities of data available today. With Monster Swell Alper works on data visualizations, data journalism, statistical analysis and interaction design to do just that. He has also taught on this subject at the Willem de Kooning Academy among other venues.

Society – With Hack de Overheid (Hack the Government) Alper fights for an open government where open data serves as the raw material to create better services for everybody. In that process programmers and designers are today’s civic innovators. At Hack de Overheid Alper organizes hackathons and competitions such as Apps for Amsterdam and he advises institutions at all levels on their open data strategy.

Alper has spoken at Reboot, Mobile Monday and What Design Can Do.

Alper is a Master of Media and Knowledge Engineering at Delft, University of Technology. He writes regularly for Vrij Nederland and nrc.next and serves as an expert in various other media.

Alper about making a serious game on the CHI Sparks conference: