I’m excited to kick off Season 12 of the PolicyViz Podcast! In this short premiere, I share a few personal and professional updates and preview what’s ahead on the show. This season, I’ll focus on three big themes: changes to the U.S. federal data and statistical agency ecosystem, a wave of new data visualization books and their authors, and the evolving role of artificial intelligence in data analysis and visualization. With a great lineup of guests and conversations already underway, I’m looking forward to another great year of exploring how we use data to inform, design, and communicate.
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Transcript
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welcome back to the policy of this podcast. I’m your host, John Schwabish.
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Welcome to season 12 of the show.
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That’s right, got an even dozen number of years of doing the show.
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Very excited to be back with you.
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Have got a great set of guests lined up to talk about a whole host of issues in the data and data visualization community.
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I thought I would start with a just a short season 12 premiere to let you know where things are and where things are going on the show.
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It has been a eventful last few months for me both personally and professionally.
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I have one kid off to college at the University of Wisconsin, so that was a big personal shift here in our household as we
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get used to a new world of one kid several hours away and another one here in high school.
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So that’s on the personal front, on the professional front.
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It’s obviously been a challenge the last few months with the new administration and the White House changing how federal granting and contracting is done.
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I’ve had several grants cut or eliminated for a variety of different reasons.
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So a lot of time spent trying to find new sources of funding, getting new projects off the ground, and trying to respond,
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of course, to a lot of the actions coming out of the White House and this administration, from closing different types of
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data or pulling different types of data, down to firing and letting go different agency workers at different federal agencies,
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to cuts in different programs, including Medicaid and the food stamp program known as SNAP here in the U.S. so there’s a lot going on. There’s definitely a lot going on.
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I’ve got a lot of great data and data visualization projects in the works, however, so I’m still managing my time. I’ve got a lot going on. So what about the podcast?
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Well, I’m excited to get the podcast back underway after a couple months off of posting and producing and getting things all together for these episodes.
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I think what you’re going to hear in the next few months of the show, and I’ve conducted several interviews already and some
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will be ongoing as we get further into fall.
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But I think you’re going to hear sort of three themes emerge in these discussions.
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The first, very clearly, is changes in the US Federal data structure and federal statistical and data agencies.
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I’m fortunate to be able to interview several different folks higher up folks who’ve been working in this space for a long time.
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So I’m excited to share what I’ve learned through those interviews with you and so that you can get a sense of what I would
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Consider a danger coming to the US Federal Statistical Data Agency ecosystem.
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If the data that we have, both to track the economy, both to make projections, both to understand who and where are participating
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in different programs, we are going to be less able to provide those programs, provide those services, provide government services better and more accurately.
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And businesses and households are gonna be less able to accurately project their own behavior, their own finances going forward.
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So that is definitely the first theme I’m gonna focus on in at least the first part of season 12 of the show.
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I’m excited to have a few guests on who have worked in this space, fairly high up positions, so that hopefully you can see
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some of the dangers, some of the issues that are emerging from these challenges to the data ecosystem.
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The second thing you’re definitely going to hear about is new data visualization books.
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There’s a whole set of new books that are coming on the market and have already come on the market.
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And I am fortunate enough to be able to interview many of those authors on the show.
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It’s one of the perks of being a podcast host, having done it this long, is I get books, love having books, love reading data
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visualization books in particular, and what people are thinking about in terms of design, in terms of communication, in terms of different tools.
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So I’m excited about, excited to talk to a whole bunch of new authors on the show that’s going to stretch into the new year,
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into 2026, as these books start to come out over the next few months and into the fall. So excited about that.
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And the third theme is, almost goes without saying, is going to be AI, is going to be artificial intelligence.
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How is AI impacting the work that we do, collecting, analyzing and communicating and visualizing data?
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There’s a lot to say here and, and I’m not sure we’re going to answer a lot of the questions.
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I do find it fairly annoying when I see people posting on social media that, you know, they’re not going to read your stuff
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because you have some sort of AI generated cover image.
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I feel like there’s a lot of virtue signaling about how much they hate AI versus people who love AI.
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You know, AI, like anything else, is a tool and we have to use it responsibly.
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But the question is, how can we use it responsibly?
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How can we use it best to improve how we work with data and how we visualize data, and how is that going to impact the jobs in and around this field? Right. What’s going to happen with editing?
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What’s going to happen with annotation when it comes to graphs?
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What’s going to happen with web development?
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What’s going to happen in our data visualization tools? This is the space.
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Personally, I’m most interested in seeing what’s going to happen.
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How is AI going to be integrated into our data visualization tools again, for better and for worse.
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So those conversations are going to pop up, I’m sure, fairly regularly.
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It’s not a conversation I particularly love to have.
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Again, I feel like it’s just kind of beating a horse a little bit here. But we will see.
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I’m going to have a few guests on the show who have developed some of your favorite data visualization tools, and of course
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I’ll ask them how they’re integrating AI into those tools or how they see AI being integrated into those tools in the coming months and coming years.
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So there’s a lot coming up on the show.
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I got a great lineup of guests for you.
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I hope you’ll be able to check out the show wherever you get your podcasts. It’s on Spotify, it’s on itunes. It’s wherever you get your shows.
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You can also listen to it directly on Zencastr, and I embed the player on my website@policyviz.com so you can listen to it there as well.
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Now, before I let you go in this short intro season premiere episode, I would be remiss if I didn’t ask you to please rate
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or review the show wherever you listen to it.
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Subscribe to the YouTube channel where I have all the videos for all these conversations.
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If you’d rather watch my conversation rather than just listen to it, you can check it out over there.
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And if you also have a time, if you’ve checked out or read or use any of my books, if you go to Amazon, Goodreads or wherever
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you buy your books and drop down a rating or review there.
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I’d also appreciate that this show comes to you free every other week, although I may increase the frequency just a little
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bit when we get some topical episodes to get your way. So this show still comes free.
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There’s no paid version, so the only thing I ask of you is to rate and review the show and my books wherever you get them.
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So that’s what I’ve got for you.
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Next week will be the first official episode of season 12.
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So until next time, this has been the policy of this podcast. Thanks so much for listening.
