Recently, we have been working on a system that allows someone who isn’t familiar with Linked Data to build their own structured vocabulary with a few clicks, and visualise the vocabulary and its relationships as it grows. The aim of building a tool like this is to make the world of Linked Data and structured vocabularies more accessible to a wider audience. Currently, only domain experts are using this technology, but we want any of our clients to be able to create their own linked datasets. The vocabulary would specifically be a SKOS Vocabulary, and as a result would be hierarchical in nature (a concept may have parent and children concepts).

One issue that we encountered was that when a vocabulary gets large enough, it becomes very difficult to visualise it effectively. For instance, in one of our very early prototypes we had a sideways tree view that worked amazingly on small vocabularies, however when a larger vocabulary was imported (in this case, the UNESCO Thesaurus), it became unusable and ended up looking something like this:

At this point, it may be necessary to explain in laymen terms what a SKOS Vocabulary is. If you want a technical run through, the docs can be found here. SKOS is essentially a W3C Consortium standard for publishing controlled vocabularies.

A controlled vocabulary is an organised arrangement of words and phrases used to index content and/or to retrieve content through browsing or searching. It typically includes preferred and variant terms and has a defined scope or describes a specific domain. — Getty

This is where the students come in — their task was to query our API, fetch a vocabulary and display it in a meaningful way to a user. Prior to our first (virtual, because COVID) meeting, the students had never heard of (at least in any detail) Linked Data, Structured Vocabularies, RDF, SPARQL, or any other buzzword you’d encounter in our field. We specifically tried not to let the students see our work so far, to make sure any ideas they came up with were original. We figured in this case, a blank slate was the best place to start.

Typically, during the project the students fly over to Edinburgh to work with us here in our offices. We work closely together, literally, and come up with solutions together. We also try and get the students to see some of what our beautiful city has to offer, from views from Arthur’s Seat, to going down to the local pubs. However, Coronavirus has put normal life on hold, and like everyone else, we’ve had to adapt. Wallscope has switched over to working completely remotely, and as a result this meant that the student project would be conducted remotely as well.

Over the course of a month, we met once a week on Google Meet to go over any questions the students had, and they would show us any progress they made. We also brought the students into our company Slack and set up a channel for them to ask any questions they had. In the end, the students ended up with a design extremely similar to our original prototypes: a tree view to one side, and a a visualisation on the other, where one can flip between three different ways of displaying the data:

I spoke to some of the students involved to get a better idea of how they found the experience and to help us shape the project in the future.

Q: What were your expectations coming into this project? Were they met? Why or why not?

A1: My expectations were to learn something new from using D3 and a framework like Vue. I learned a lot from D3 (had minor experience with D3) and I learned a lot from linked data and structured vocabularies. However for the Vue part, I am picking that up this summer as we chose a vanilla approach.

Q: Did you learn anything useful over the course of the project?

A1: TONS! Everything about Linked Data and all connected theory was completely new for me, but it was really interesting taking that deep dive.

A2: Working as a team goes well with google meetings and github projects. Also working with devs abroad is something that I think was really fun to do, shame we couldn’t have pizza’s and beers together tho :(

Q: Did working with a company in industry add any value to your project? Did it teach you anything?

A1: Mostly the orientation was quite different from doing school projects. There is a very clear focus on the goal and what we were asked to do, so it felt much more meaningful.

A2: I learned a lot about linked data and big companies that are adapting this technique more and more.

Q:What was the process of designing/building this application? Any thoughts on your decision making process/building process?

A1: Normally we would really observe the user’s behaviour but that was something that was not possible this year due Covid-19. So all our decisions were based on interviews with you guys and a few assumptions. Which normally is not a way of designing that I like.

A2: Well, I focused mostly on performance and I have definitely tried some new and inspiring stuff that I will take with me. Especially the entire workflow I set up with the lighthouse CI, build step and service worker integration and making it all automated was really interesting and something I would recommend people who are interested to take a look at.

Q: Anything we could have done differently?

A1: The description of the assignment beforehand was really hard to understand. After the first meeting we are realised that it just was really difficult to explain, I do think however that the description for the students could have been much more comprehensive.

Q:Anything we did well?

A1: Great support, API & documentation. Hats off!

A2: The atmosphere, meetings and support were really great and I really liked working with you guys. Also the articles that Antero wrote on Medium were a really good intro to the subject.

(shameless plug, Antero’s Medium posts can be found here: https://medium.com/@anteroduarte)

Q: Overall thoughts on the project?

A1: Really intriguing subject and some really cool tech that I will definitely keep in mind with future endeavours. I hope I am able to work with Wallscope again in the future

A2: Very technical. But highly interesting if you want to become a better developer and designer.

Overall we were impressed with the student’s work. In the matter of mere weeks they had grasped some difficult subjects, and asked us informed questions which made us reflect on some design decisions we might have made too rashly. At the end of the project, the students presented to their school, and that was it! Usually, in non-COVID times, the students come up to Edinburgh, and at the end of the project we take them out for beers and pizza. However, sadly, this will have to be postponed until safer times!

I was hell-bent on getting a development job between my third and final year at University, but after months and months of applying for internships and never hearing anything back, I had given up looking and resigned myself to working a part time bar job once again. One night while hanging out with friends, someone mentioned Wallscope offhandedly and said that I would find the work they were doing very interesting. I went home and did some research, and boom, I knew I had to get involved.

I sent off an email and expected that, as usual, there would be radio silence, especially since they weren’t advertising that they were hiring. Much to my surprise, within 48 hours I had an interview set up with the Lead Developer and one of the Co-Founders of the company. Within another week, I was told I got the job! I signed a ten week contract as a “Full Stack Developer Intern”. No more bar work for me!

Setting expectations

I’ve had internships before and decided that this time I would set myself some expectations based on prior experience to avoid disappointment down the line:

• I would be given a project to work on that would bear little to no real consequence, neither positive nor negative, for the company
• I would be taken in by the company, but still be an intern, and treated as such
• Once my time was up, I would get a pat on the back and a smile as I was walked out the door, and that would be the end of my relationship with the company.

On my first day, however, these expectations were blown out the water.

Working at Wallscope

I walked in the office on my first day and was greeted by the Lead Developer before being introduced to everyone else in the office, shown my desk and got all the admin out of the way. I was told that I would start off doing front-end web development, working on their flagship project. Sounds daunting right? Right. I felt the usual impostor syndrome a lot of interns feel when they first start, but pushed through it. I was given a week to get up to speed with the code base as much as possible before I joined in on development.

Being given such responsibility, and being held accountable as any fully-fledged employee should, was not something I was expecting when I first joined. It’s a great feeling to be valued at a company; even though I’m only an intern (and still a student!) I know I can provide value to my organisation and it’s an amazing feeling to be trusted to do so.

On top of this, my colleagues have become my friends, something which has never happened at any internship I’ve had. I can be honest and open with how I’m coping — both with my work but also outside of work, we go for drinks, and recently I have taken the plunge into film photography after a push from my colleagues — something I’ve wanted to do for ages.

What have I learned?

Technically speaking…

On a technical level, I believe the last ten weeks have been as much of a benefit to me as the last three years of university, if not more. I have learned so much in such a short space of time it’s sometimes hard for me to wrap my head around.

During my short ten weeks here I have

• Sharpened my skills in Front End Development, mainly through learning how to use the framework Vue.js.
• Learned how to test effectively, particularly using Jest and Cypress.
• Learned the power of linked data, why we use it and why you should too
• Converted different types of data to RDF (Turtle, N-Triples, JSON-LD & RDF/XML)
• Discovered how powerful OCR engines can be by learning how to use Tesseract
• Learned how to deploy an application using Docker
• Understood the entire process of developing & deploying a modern web application, from a database, to back-end, to front-end, and every step in between, including third party integrations
• & much much more

Figuratively speaking…

During my time here I’ve also learned some truths I wasn’t aware of:

• Working somewhere that encourages you to learn & develop new skills will allow you to do exactly that
• Corporate culture is not just a buzzword — finding somewhere you fit in makes all the difference
• I won’t dread getting up to go to work if it’s a job that I want to be at
• I want to work at a company that strives to make a difference — and I’ve found that here.

What’s Next?

My original ten weeks are at an end, but I am being kept on for the rest of the summer, then part time during my fourth year of University, then, if all goes well, full time after University!

A piece of advice to any fellow students / graduates looking for work who aren’t sure how to deal with the endless applications getting ignored:

Find a company that interests you and take a shot in the dark with an email or phone call. Be honest about what you know, but more importantly what you want to learn.

It’s my opinion that any company worth working for will be willing to invest in your personal growth & development — it isn’t always about what you know but what you can learn, and in turn teach your peers.