In this episode, I chat with Mandy Spaltman and Sebastian Graeff, co-leads of the data team at The European Correspondent, a volunteer-driven journalism initiative covering news across Europe. They discuss how their team of passionate designers and analysts craft daily data visualizations, their creative process, the tools they use, and the challenge of maintaining a cohesive style while allowing artistic freedom. Hear how they balance storytelling and design, and what the future might hold for interactive and multilingual content.
Resources
Check out the European Correspondent!
Guest Bio
Mandy Spaltman is a data visualization enthusiast raised in the Caribbean and currently based in the Netherlands. With a background in cognitive and behavioural sciences, Mandy’s journey into the world of data visualization is shaped by her passion for understanding how humans perceive and interact with information. Having honed her skills through various research and data-related roles at renowned multinational corporations, Mandy brings a wealth of experience to her role. Her ability to translate complex data into visually compelling narratives has garnered attention both in corporate settings and as a freelance information designer.
Sebastian Graeff is a German-South African data visualisation designer based in Amsterdam, where he studies Computational Social Science at the University of Amsterdam. Sebastian has previously published data visualisations for digital media outlets and also under the pseudonym DataForAfrica on social media. His passions lie in geopolitics, data analytics and journalism. He is especially interested in uncovering stories from regions of Europe with less media coverage and in exploring the complex relationship between Europe and Africa.
Different Ways to Listen to the Show!
New Ways to Support the Show!
With more than 250 guests and 11 seasons of episodes, the PolicyViz Podcast is one of the longest-running data visualization podcasts around. You can support the show by downloading and listening, following the work of my guests, and sharing the show with your networks. If you’re interested in financially supporting the show, you can sign up for my Patreon platform, make a one-time payment via PayPal, or shop one of the show’s sponsors.
Transcript
00:02.12
Jon
Hey, Mandy and Sebastian, good to see you. Thanks for coming on the show, taking some of your, I guess your evening, my morning to to chat. um Good to see you both.
00:10.97
Sebastian
Yeah.
00:12.56
Mandy
Thank you.
00:12.66
Jon
How how are things?
00:14.09
Sebastian
Good to see you.
00:14.36
Mandy
and Thanks for having us. We’re very excited to be here. Things are good.
00:17.82
Jon
uh good uh yeah i’m i’m very excited to chat with you all about uh about the work that you and the team are doing um we’ve got a lot of ground to cover so i thought we would just start with like introduction so folks especially on this side of the pond can kind of get to know some of the folks behind all of the work um so maybe we could just do like um where you’re based and how you you like you’re you’re um
00:18.87
Sebastian
Very.
00:45.73
Jon
not necessarily education per se and all that kind of stuff but like how you got into like data and data storytelling and then and then what your role is at the do we say European correspondent or we just say the ec because the ec sounds much kind of cooler i don’t know okay all right we’ll do well all right um uh man do you want to get us uh going to get us started
00:58.32
Mandy
We can do both.
01:04.92
Mandy
Let’s go. Yeah, sure. ah So yeah, my name is Mandy. I’m based in the Netherlands, i grew up in the Caribbean. um My well educational background, if you will, because that is part of the story of how I got there, is in ah neuropsychology and in behavioral science.
01:21.41
Mandy
um so more from like that scientific point of view i was like oh these graphs suck the posters presented at like scientific conferences suck like this can be done so much better and that’s kind of how i got excited about it and sort of shifted a little bit but still i think the background in neuropsychology and behavioral science still does shape ah how I approach data visualization.
01:43.93
Mandy
I’m still very much interested in the human ah information processing and and cognitive biases that come into play when you design and interpret data on both sides.
01:55.75
Mandy
um So I think that i still I still have a little bit of a mix of that in there as well.
01:55.90
Jon
Yeah. Right.
02:02.75
Mandy
In my full-time job, I work as a data and AI designer in the health technology sector. And then in addition, um I co-lead the data team at the European Correspondent or the EC ah alongside Hannah who unfortunately could not be here today um and Sebastian who is and yeah Sebastian if you want to take over.
02:15.29
Jon
Yeah.
02:22.27
Jon
yeah
02:22.91
Sebastian
Yeah,
02:25.75
Sebastian
yeah um so I’m Sebastian. I am also co-leading the team, like Mandy said. um My journey into data business was also just like everyone else, a bit peculiar, I guess.
02:40.14
Sebastian
um I grew up in South Africa, but I’m German through my family. And I moved to Germany to pursue a degree in mechanical engineering and then realized, hey, engineering is maybe not really my thing. So I started exploring different things on the side.
02:58.10
Sebastian
And I always thought design was quite cool. And I started doing some data analysis courses um on the side of the studies, which I wasn’t focusing too much on at the time. um So I started experimenting a bit and somehow just started making infographics. that are posts and a little pseudonym on social media and that took off a bit and then that just motivated me to explore a bit more, ah create a few more infographics and then I found out there’s a whole field out there called data visualization which was a great find.
03:33.42
Jon
Yeah.
03:35.27
Sebastian
um So I pivoted and I’m now doing a degree in computational social science at the University of Amsterdam. um full-time and on the side I’m doing that and this work here at the European correspondent.
03:51.77
Sebastian
But easy.
03:52.00
Jon
That’s great. ah Yeah, we need to talk about the, ah because i it’s not clear to me that that most people know that the EC staff is volunteer and volunteer led. So you both have these like full-time jobs and doing this on the side. um It’s also interesting, Sebastian, to to hear you talk about getting started, because it’s like, I i wonder, kind of two things ah piqued my interest. One is like, I wonder how new people sort of Or finding sort of the lack of a good database social media community does like throw little things out there and get started but also like your path is interesting because a lot of the European correspondent stuff kind of feels that way like it’s these a lot of it is this like little one chart that’s like one little story.
04:37.93
Jon
um So maybe we can start broader and then and then dig into that. Like what is the correspondence goal? What is its makeup and and sort of how is it structured and what are what are the goals that not just the data team, but like the entire team is trying to trying to do. I don’t know who wants to start.
04:56.89
Sebastian
Yeah, I can pick that up. um Yeah, so the European correspondent is a media startup, a journalistic startup, whatever you may call it, um of now a bit more than 150 journalists ah spread around all of Europe.
05:14.38
Sebastian
in almost every European country from Azerbaijan to the UK and across the whole continent basically, ah covering all the pressing events, geopolitical events, anything that really occurs across the continent with the goal of having this this news outlet for Europeans and that kind of brings Europeans together. um And so what we often say is some kind of New York Times or The Economist or something for Europe, for all of us. um So that kind of brings together all these characters who want to tell stories about the continent. and So we are 150 volunteers who are really driven by this idea of creating this kind of journalism.
06:02.12
Sebastian
um Yeah, and that brought the data team into this as well. um One year ago now. um And we are 10 people out of this chunk of 150 people. um And yeah, we created data visualizations every day, um about every region also specifically because the European correspondent is split up into regions.
06:27.06
Jon
Hmm.
06:27.05
Sebastian
um So ah we go through southern Europe, northern Europe, ah the Balkans, every region on every day of the week. So it kind of loops every every week um through these six different regions and then one European affairs newsletter.
06:44.26
Sebastian
um
06:45.80
Jon
So how does your team, well, let me, let me ask that kind of a two part question here. So maybe it’d be helpful for folks who haven’t checked it out.
06:56.85
Jon
Either there’s, so folks who don’t know, there is the website, obviously, um where you can check out every day’s post.
07:01.67
Sebastian
Yes.
07:03.25
Jon
There’s the newsletter, which you can get every day delivered right to your email. And then there’s an app, which the app is really interesting. It’s a very, I would say kind of different for a news app, because it’s sort of like a horizontal scroll which is kind of interesting. um But also, it’s really interesting you can play the audio you can you can have it play an audio sort of read of everything which I, which is really interesting.
07:26.87
Jon
um but from a um from the data team’s perspective, how do you how how is it structured? How do you make assignments? How do you sort of get things in the queue to sort of line them up and and where do the ideas come from?
07:43.51
Mandy
Yeah, I’ll all tell you a little bit about that. I think our process is, some its it usually starts off with a lot of collaboration and creativity. so we try to organize regular brainstorm sessions. We do those weekly or biweekly, um where we just sit down altogether and we pitch ideas to each other. We share inspirations. We identify emerging trends and data sources. And um those sessions usually really help to spark ideas. um And then each person in the team has their own ah individual background and preferences that they sort of relate
08:20.36
Mandy
Like some people relate more to certain stories than other people, ah which it results usually in a really great mix of of different topics. um So yeah, those sessions usually really um spark ideas, but they also help us align priorities and fill the schedule for the coming days or the coming weeks.
08:39.19
Jon
Yeah.
08:39.46
Mandy
And then from there, the journalists are pretty self motivated and self driven. They then go through a cycle where they formally pitch their ideas, their final ideas. They draft an initial version of the visual. um They write a short text that accompanies the visual so that it all ties back together to the broader story. And then And that draft goes through like a feedback loop basically between the journalists and then us as co-leads, where we really play more of a supportive role.
09:12.15
Mandy
um So we provide guidance on data sources, on chart types, on design choices, on storytelling techniques, whatever.
09:20.07
Jon
yeah
09:20.16
Mandy
And we ensure that each story also aligns with our broader journalistic and design standards. um And then once the feedback is incorporated and the vinyl version is polished that’s when the story is ready to be published.
09:36.07
Mandy
um So that’s in short that are very structured but still collaborative workflow I would say that yeah that really helps.
09:40.41
Jon
Yeah. and And does everybody on the team have their own preferred tool and workflow?
09:50.29
Mandy
Um, we have, uh, structured the the tooling a little bit, which, um, Sebastian can tell you more about, but, um, um, workflow. Yes. So like you said, everyone’s volunteer volunteering to do this, right?
10:04.13
Mandy
So everyone is doing this on the side of whatever else they have going on in their lives.
10:07.30
Jon
Yeah. Yeah.
10:08.81
Mandy
So, you know, that also means that people have different availabilities and different, um, yeah, workflows also that go along with that. But the structure I just explained is sort of the general structure that works for everyone.
10:20.61
Mandy
And then for some people that goes way quicker and they create a visual weekly, and then other people um take two weeks to create one visual and put more effort or more time into it spread over two weeks, for example.
10:32.85
Mandy
um So yeah, that’s super personal. And yeah, everything we’re very open to everything and making it work for everyone individually.
10:38.65
Jon
Yeah. do you be i do want Sebastian, I do want you to talk about the tools in a second, but Mandy, on the on the workflow piece, on the pacing, are are members of the team, are they required to produce some?
10:54.51
Jon
like Like I can imagine, it’s volunteer driven, right? So like that’s, I can imagine like the management part’s pretty hard because you don’t have many like carrots and sticks to motivate people um aside from what drives them personally, right?
11:06.45
Mandy
Yeah.
11:06.64
Jon
So um do you have like minimum requirements on what people need, like how many they need to produce, what they need to produce, what they need to attend, meetings they need to attend, e etc et cetera, et cetera?
11:17.80
Mandy
That’s a really great question and something something that we’ve talked about a lot also, the three of us.
11:22.47
Jon
Yeah.
11:23.53
Mandy
um But one thing you mentioned yourself, which I think is critical and very needed in ah in a situation or a setup like this, is that everyone is very motivated intrinsically. So everyone really has a passion for for data visualization. They’re doing this voluntarily. That already shows that they have a passion for it, and then they have their own purposes. Some people want to build their portfolio. Some people want to know more about what’s going on in Europe in general, and this is their way to do it. um Some people want to learn more about data analysis or design or whatever it is. um
11:56.80
Mandy
but there’s a lot of intrinsic motivation. So honestly, we haven’t had a lot of problems with like chasing people or anything like that.
11:58.99
Jon
Yeah.
12:03.80
Mandy
People have been super, super supportive and and everything everyone’s created has always been so great. So yeah, luckily we haven’t had a lot of issues with that.
12:10.65
Jon
Yeah.
12:13.59
Mandy
where it comes Where it becomes a little bit more difficult is with the recent like Christmas period, like the holiday time, that that’s when it becomes a little bit more difficult just because everyone’s availability is a little bit less.
12:18.76
Jon
Sure.
12:23.70
Mandy
um But even that, we’ve we figured it out, we worked ahead and we like sort of pre-planned all of our posts and it worked out really well and everyone was collaborating.
12:28.55
Jon
e
12:33.72
Mandy
So it was, yeah, it’s just a really great little community that we have there with with excited people.
12:38.29
Jon
Yeah.
12:39.87
Mandy
So that’s really great.
12:40.51
Jon
Yeah. And then. and we are gonna get to the tools. i keep i keep like i was as as for For folks who listen to this show, they know I just go off on these standards, but um ah I would say, well, you can tell me like what share, but but most of the stuff that I see is as you sort of described, it’s a short little story and then and then ah a main graphic, but there are other bigger, longer project, not longer, but sort of bigger projects, more of those like narrative pieces that have, you know, they’re sort of bigger.
13:10.11
Jon
I would suspect that the shorter pieces make it a little bit, the work a little bit more or a little bit easier for folks is just like a one little bite. But how do the the bigger, longer projects work in terms of farming out who’s gonna do it, how you’re gonna, I assume like youre you’re youre you’re teaming up with journalists who are on the other side of the continent and sort of how does how does that part play out?
13:37.26
Mandy
Yeah, to be honest, those are usually like the really exciting projects for us to work on because usually that means more data, more graphics, all on the same topics.
13:42.00
Jon
Yeah.
13:45.91
Mandy
And you can really could do more like a deep dive and indeed what you were saying, more of a narrative around it as well. And working together with these correspondents that are way more um skilled, I guess, in like the journalistic sense in their countries or whatever, they have more knowledge there. um That teaming up is so great and so valuable. So those are those are usually really fun. Those do require a little bit more time. um Whenever we have those, we just plan those a few weeks ahead. But honestly, usually the ones that we’ve done so far ah consist of around three visuals, similar to the ones that we do typically.
14:23.44
Mandy
So it’s also not like that big a deal. So maybe you we plan it like two or three weeks in advance, and then there’s a lot of collaboration between the data journalists and the local journalists.
14:28.33
Jon
Okay.
14:33.07
Mandy
But other than that, the process is pretty pretty similar to what I’ve explained before.
14:37.81
Jon
Yeah. Okay. I promised we would talk about tools. So you’ve got a team of like 10 people, plus all the journalists, all the, all the you know sort of people working in sort of the more traditional journalism. So what is the kind of range of toolkits and and how have the, the, the, the two of you and Hannah, how have you like,
14:58.40
Jon
try to shoehorn it into like a manageable tool set of tools.
15:04.58
Sebastian
Yeah, and we we kind of leave it quite open to to what tools you can use and what everyone prefers really. um In the beginning, we were using a lot of open source tools like Flourish, um a lot more raw graphs, things like that that make it quite um easy to to create graphs.
15:27.02
Sebastian
Because we’re we’re also a bit under pressure creating um things daily. So that is quite a lot sometimes.
15:32.24
Jon
Mm-hmm.
15:34.24
Sebastian
But now we’ve kind of managed to spaces out a bit more and give everyone a bit more time and that’s also Kind of changed this and this tool set a bit um we’ve We’ve seen more programming language languages coming into play something like Python or R or just playing around more so one project can contain a Flourish and Python and everything in between kind of. But in the end, this is all brought into Adobe Illustrator um or Figma, if you like. um And then and we be publish those from there.
16:17.13
Jon
Gotcha. Okay. So there’s a manual kind of cleanup piece at the very end of the process and it, and, and, and the graphs all, I guess they have a kind of a similar feel to them.
16:23.57
Sebastian
Yes, yes.
16:31.84
Jon
I want to talk about like, they’re not all bar charts and they’re not all line charts. There’s a lot of like. non-standard stuff, which is which is one of the reasons why I love it. um But is there like a style guide that keeps the team sort of within some basic framework?
16:48.69
Jon
Or is that just my reading of like, I just kind of see it, it feels that way, but it’s not based on anything.
16:53.06
Sebastian
No, we we definitely have a style guide. and It’s an ever evolving piece of a style guide, I guess.
16:55.61
Jon
Yeah.
17:01.26
Sebastian
um It really keeps changing. So we had one in the very beginning, which was really, really basic. um It just gave constraints in in background color ah or text really.
17:14.97
Jon
Mhm.
17:15.32
Sebastian
um And this has now evolved to symbols and where exactly are ah different elements of a chart. But we really want to give the designers as much freedom as possible.
17:27.02
Sebastian
so we We do give all these, these um I don’t know, policies, regulations to where should text or something usually be located.
17:36.05
Jon
Mhm. Mhm.
17:37.80
Sebastian
But we we more or less give them a blank canvas to work with. um we We just say maybe this is a good text size to use and not not any smaller.
17:47.34
Jon
I see.
17:48.01
Sebastian
um and some standard colors, but they’re really free to create whatever they want.
17:48.99
Jon
Yeah.
17:52.94
Jon
Great.
17:53.56
Sebastian
And that’s really important to us because being in a volunteer organization, everyone really wants to do what’s passionate what they’re passionate for and their designs that they’re passionate about.
18:01.33
Jon
Yeah.
18:05.63
Jon
And do you share because ah so much of it is done in Illustrator, do you share like, it’s been a long time since I’ve worked in Illustrator, I’ll be honest, but like, do you remember that you could share like style style pack, like you you share color palettes with folks and like, do you have that, do you have you build those um pieces so that everybody’s sort of working from the same palette and font kit and all that sort of stuff? Yeah.
18:32.33
Sebastian
Yes, exactly. we We give everyone kind of a pack of templates and and then they go from there. It contains everything they need.
18:41.72
Jon
Right. So let’s turn to the fact that ah you don’t see a lot of like ah bar charts and line charts and pie charts. I mean, they do show up, but it’s not like five days a week. There’s five bar charts, right? Like there’s some stuff I’m looking at one that I found, which was from January 2nd. I’ll just describe it quickly for folks. It’s the title is first signs of spring and it’s um there are ah six Flowers and then there’s kind of basically like an area chart line chart combination thing that’s every month and it’s just basically like when these each of these flowers bloom in different areas around around the continent, so um that’s not like something crazy that no one has ever seen before right it’s area charts and line charts, but um It’s not like one chart, and it’s not like just a simple line chart, um and I’m curious where that
19:36.72
Jon
comes from of we are gonna just, I guess, but I’ll put it this way. I found a chart that you guys did, which is why I kind of reached out in the first place and we’ve been chatting for a few months that I loved. And it was this kind of step thing with like little flags of all the countries. And I put it out somewhere and people were like, no, this is terrible because you don’t know what the countries are and there’s not enough tax and it’s not a bar chart. And so like, there is still that world of database, which is like kind of the Tufty, Steven Few view of the field.
20:07.51
Jon
And I’m curious, it’s clear to me that you all don’t share that kind of rigid view. And and I’m curious, what are the kind of pros and cons of just like, go make stuff and try stuff? That’s a very, very broad question, I admit. right but But yeah, I mean like,
20:28.63
Jon
there are pros and cons to doing it that way. And you all are pumping out a graph a day, which is not an easy task. And so I’m curious how you all think about and how your team thinks about not doing bar charts every day um and trying things that I’m guessing sometimes work and sometimes don’t.
20:46.44
Mandy
i think I think you’re already saying sort of it yourself, like a big part of the reason at least is that we are producing on a daily basis, which is a lot.
20:46.55
Sebastian
Mm.
20:54.58
Jon
Yeah.
20:55.04
Mandy
So if you produce a bar chart every single day, that will not be interesting for anyone to look at every single day.
21:00.86
Jon
Yeah Yeah
21:03.12
Mandy
um So that is a big part of the reason why we challenge ourselves to ah find other ways to visualize. And sometimes it still has to be a bar chart, you know, like we’re not like not doing a bar chart. If if a bar chart is really the best way to visualize the information and ah convey the message but then we’re still trying to add sort of a creative flair I guess to it in some way either I don’t know adding a pattern to it or indeed like now with the flowers you mentioned like having like illustrations there or just make it somewhat more visually appealing or interesting than just a regular old bar chart pulled from Excel
21:43.63
Jon
Yeah.
21:43.86
Mandy
um Yeah, so I think that’s that’s the main reason and again, ah so many passionate people in our team were so excited we’re that’s that’s what we want to do we want to try to try out new things and like find new ways to visualize and we draw inspiration from so many
21:43.99
Jon
yeah
22:00.36
Mandy
amazing artists as well and and we talk about those people and we’re like oh maybe we could draw inspiration from that and like reshape it in a way that works for this topic and yeah I don’t know it’s uh I think I think honestly the answer to most of your question question is is like just intrinsic motivation and true passion for like the field um which is kind of cheesy but it but it is true I don’t know it’s just the passion if you have any more insights there
22:17.63
Jon
Yeah.
22:23.09
Jon
ah
22:27.58
Sebastian
Yeah, and I think you you basically answered all of it already. But yeah, we are in a very tight schedule. But given that we have like these brainstorms, and man, Johanna and me are are still going over pitches because we have a pitch workflow as well. um We can kind of guide the journalists or brainstorm with a journalist what is a better way than a bar chart to to display it and more often than not ah a bar chart is just not the way to go and um even if it’s a bar chart there’s so many ways to still spice it up and add some flair to it which is really good for our readers as well because um
23:02.34
Jon
Yeah.
23:09.73
Jon
Yeah. Yeah.
23:15.04
Sebastian
I think what our match is also a bit, we want to create something that a reader doesn’t usually see, and like something fresh on the eyes. um So that’s kind of what we go by.
23:24.82
Jon
no
23:27.35
Jon
Yeah, but but my experience has been that like when you say flare, I think ah probably a lot of people hear the word flare and they think it’s like just decorative, but a lot of it is not just decorative, right?
23:39.62
Jon
Like it’s helping the reader. But I am curious when you make graphs where it’s like flags of European countries without maybe like the word of the country, whether because your audience
23:42.58
Sebastian
Yeah.
23:54.60
Jon
is Europeans, whether you feel confident that you don’t necessarily need to spell everything out.
24:01.86
Mandy
Yeah, I think that’s one part of it. I think um in general, most Europeans know most flags, but even if they don’t, um I think um for our audience specifically, I think most people would just look for their personal flag of interest and then just see like how they stack up against the others, irrespective of like which country is which exactly.
24:09.62
Jon
Yeah.
24:20.12
Sebastian
Yeah.
24:20.87
Jon
Yeah.
24:26.61
Mandy
i think I think that’s usually most often at least ah sort of the goal for for our reader, who is not like, our our readers are not data vis people, right?
24:29.98
Jon
Hmm.
24:36.37
Mandy
Like our readers is are just like a global like a general broad audience that maybe aren’t even like super data literate necessarily, you know?
24:43.44
Jon
Mm-hmm.
24:45.22
Mandy
um So yeah, I think they just have a different purpose of reading the chart than us data vis people do sometimes.
24:52.12
Jon
Yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean, it is interesting to hear your point about you, you want to see your country, not necessarily where all the, like, it doesn’t really matter where all the, what every other specific country is. It’s like, where am I relative to these other ones? Which leads me to another question, which is how do you all handle languages? So at least the one that I get is all English. Like, are they all English? Have you, have you dealt with the translation issues yet?
25:21.23
Sebastian
And as of now, not yet in terms of translating data visualizations, that’s, that’s something that’s for example, also hopefully in the, in the future that we can also work on um translating our visuals because there’s so many languages in Europe and we we can reach so many more people by, by introducing those different languages.
25:26.24
Jon
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
25:36.86
Jon
Yeah.
25:39.75
Jon
yeah
25:46.15
Jon
Yeah. Um, so, so to date, so far, I think most of the, um, data vis products you’re producing are static. Um, and I have two questions on, on that. So one, are there plans?
26:02.66
Jon
to start creating more interactive charts maybe dashboards or just you know and your kind of classic dashboards or just interactive data visualizations and two whether you feel like the static charts are in some ways harder than a good interactive chart because you kind of you don’t have a filter or a search or a thing to help explain it like yeah I’m looking at this this graph right here um on my screen that like you have to add the annotation to that single image. um So maybe we can handle that question first and then talk about like the future.
26:37.86
Mandy
Sure. do Shall I take it? um So um is it harder?
26:41.09
Sebastian
Go for it.
26:43.51
Mandy
I think there are just two very different approaches, right? So the classical interactive pieces or dashboards are way more explorative, exploratory.
26:54.22
Mandy
That’s the purpose, right? For you to be able, for the user to be able to click around in them freely and not really have like a story to tell necessarily.
26:55.72
Jon
Mm hmm.
27:01.70
Mandy
Whereas with the static pieces, that’s exactly the purpose. You’re telling a story. so that’s That’s also the starting point almost. You have to have a story. We can’t just visualize data and then release it and then that’s it. We we the only visualize data if it tells a story. So I think that’s ah just a different approach altogether. and I don’t know if I would say it’s harder.
27:27.24
Mandy
um for me personally not, but that’s also because I think my my background and just the way my brain works, I like telling stories and making sense of things and explaining things is easier for me than just to explore freely.
27:42.07
Jon
Yeah.
27:42.14
Mandy
um Also as a user, um so on both sides, I guess, but that’s a very personal video.
27:46.69
Sebastian
Thank you.
27:48.20
Mandy
I don’t know if in in general one is harder than the other necessarily.
27:51.66
Jon
Yeah. Yeah.
27:53.08
Mandy
But yeah, what do you think, Sebastian?
27:57.87
Sebastian
Yeah. um andt Yeah, this is, I think we discuss a lot, I think, about static visuals, dynamic visuals, um and
28:07.36
Jon
yeah
28:10.24
Sebastian
we’re We’re always trying to find a few different mediums. um So we’ve we’ve been experimenting a lot with animating different things. um But of course, and this is also where technical limitations for the European correspondent come in. um We are a newsletter. um You can’t really put these kind of reels that you maybe have on social media into a newsletter um or it depends on what but software the user is running.
28:32.81
Jon
Yeah. Yeah.
28:40.53
Sebastian
So there’s quite a lot of technical limitations which we’re going up against. So that’s why we mostly produce static for now and then we see if we can um also pivot to to different kinds of web visualizations at a later date.
28:57.26
Jon
Yeah. Yeah. So what are those? Do you, do you have a sense of what that later day might look like? I mean, maybe not for the whole 150 people and the whole thing, but on the database side, um, what does that, how do you think that what I’ll put it this way. What would you like that future to look like?
29:22.14
Mandy
That’s a great question. And I think there’s like different opinions, even like within the team, you know, like just people have different preferences.
29:23.15
Jon
Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah.
29:29.86
Mandy
um I think just generally speaking, though, like the main aim will always be that we want to cater to the to the reader eventually. Right. That’s the that’s the ultimate end goal.
29:41.04
Mandy
ah So whatever they want and looking are looking for, that’s mostly what we’re we going going to be focusing on.
29:41.11
Jon
yeah
29:46.68
Mandy
And I think um we are naturally always looking to evolve and interactive visualizations are a part of that. where we’re We’re looking into like to what extent that’s possible like Sebastian already mentioned um and I think that could have an ah additional like engaging value to our readers to have like the interactive side of it and to be able to explore more data in different ways.
30:11.58
Mandy
um and But having said that, I think also for our current goals, and I think the static data visualizations are super effective already because um they allow us to convey very complex stories quickly and clearly, which is essential for engaging, like I said, the broader, not necessarily always very data literate audience.
30:37.02
Jon
Right.
30:37.22
Mandy
um So I think for now, We’re focusing on maintaining that clarity and the accessibility that static visuals provide, while also still you know exploring how can we incorporate interactivity in some way to complement that storytelling um in the future, hopefully.
30:53.77
Jon
Right. Yeah, Sebastian, you have similar you have any other any any tweaks on that?
30:55.65
Sebastian
Yeah.
31:03.72
Sebastian
Um, oh man I have ah so many dreams and it comes to interactivity ah and things already since the very beginning of the team.
31:07.88
Jon
ha Yeah, yeah.
31:14.16
Sebastian
and
31:17.15
Sebastian
It’s so tricky. I don’t i don’t ah know when we can jump to that because we’re also still producing daily.
31:22.27
Jon
Great.
31:24.58
Sebastian
So I guess this is something that comes a bit over time. ah we’ve We’ve been doing this for less than a year now. um And so we we still want to perfect the craft of doing static visualizations, which Mandy already said are very, very effective um and have got us pretty far already.
31:45.79
Jon
Yeah.
31:45.84
Sebastian
um So we’ll we’ll keep experimenting with what we’re doing right now and seeing um at what point we can integrate more user-centric or interactive things into the newsletter.
31:58.72
Jon
Yeah. Cool. um Okay. Well, thank you both for for coming on the show. So for um for folks who are not regular subscribers, what should they do? Where they can they go to get all this great content?
32:17.95
Sebastian
Ah, I can take that.
32:20.47
Jon
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
32:20.83
Sebastian
we can we can ah You can go to the newsletter, you can subscribe to the European correspondent for daily data visualizations.
32:33.73
Sebastian
We’re of course also on social media, on all the well-knowns, I guess. um And yeah, if I’m missing something.
32:42.64
Jon
Yeah, and then the and then the app too, right?
32:45.04
Sebastian
And the app too, yes, that’s correct.
32:45.97
Jon
And the app, yeah. um Yeah, so it’s it’s all over. And if folks have ah feedback, questions, they want to if they’re interested, if they’re in Europe and they’re interested in like being a part of the team, like how how can they reach out to either or both of you?
33:04.46
Mandy
I think they can find us on on LinkedIn, for example. They can also go to our website and find our contact information there and and yeah reach out.
33:07.48
Jon
Mm-hmm.
33:08.29
Sebastian
Yeah.
33:12.66
Mandy
we’re We’re always happy to invite more passionate, excited people to our team.
33:18.64
Jon
That’s awesome. Mandy, Sebastian, thank you.
33:20.12
Sebastian
Yeah.
33:21.21
Jon
Thank you both so much for coming on the show. This was ah fun and good luck. I’m excited to see what the what the future holds.
33:27.66
Mandy
Thanks so much for having us. It’s been fun.
33:29.10
Sebastian
Thank you.
