In this episode, I sit down with Alvitta Ottley and Paul Parsons to recap everything that happened at the 2025 IEEE VIS Conference in Vienna. We talk about our experiences co-organizing the VisCom workshop, the surprising attendance, and the standout keynote from Moritz Stefaner. Alvitta shares insights on accessibility research and the surge of LLM-focused visualization papers, while Paul walks us through his award-winning work on design cognition and how practitioners develop ideas. We also reflect on the evolving identity of the visualization field, from methodological rigor to the role of practitioners, interdisciplinarity, and ethical tensions. It’s a wide-ranging, candid conversation about where visualization research is headed — and what we hope to see next year in Boston.

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Jon Schwabish Founder and CEO

My name is Jon Schwabish, and I am an economist, writer, teacher, and data communications expert. I am widely recognized for advancing clarity and accessibility in how analysts, researchers, and scholars communicate their findings. I am the author of four books—Better Presentations, Elevate the Debate, Better Data Visualizations, and Data Visualization in Excel—which provide practical guidance for people looking to improve how they create, present, and communicate data-rich content. I am also the host of the PolicyViz Podcast, the longest running podcast dedicated to helping listeners better understand data and data visualizations.