The Data Visualization Society
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| The Data Visualization Society | |
|---|---|
| Name | The Data Visualization Society |
| Founded | 2019 |
| Type | Professional association |
| Headquarters | San Francisco |
| Region served | Global |
| Leader title | Executive Director |
The Data Visualization Society is a professional association founded in 2019 that serves practitioners across sectors involved with visualizing information, data storytelling, and visual analytics. The Society connects designers, researchers, journalists, engineers, educators, and policymakers through online platforms and in-person gatherings, fostering cross-pollination among communities such as Nielsen Norman Group, IEEE, ACM, Microsoft Research, and Google. Its membership includes contributors from institutions like The New York Times, The Washington Post, ProPublica, Tableau Software, and Amazon Web Services.
History
The organization was incorporated amid a surge of interest following high-visibility projects at institutions like The New York Times Graphics Department, FiveThirtyEight, The Guardian's datapress, and academic labs including MIT Media Lab and Stanford University's visualization groups. Early collaborators and advisors had ties to initiatives at Reuters, Bloomberg, IBM Research, Microsoft Research Cambridge, and the National Institutes of Health. Founding conversations referenced conferences such as IEEE VIS, CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Strata Data Conference, and Eyeo Festival. Growth accelerated through partnerships with organizations like Wired, Harvard University's data science programs, Columbia Journalism School, and NYU Tandon School of Engineering.
Mission and Activities
The Society's mission foregrounds professional development, ethical practice, and the craft of visual communication, drawing inspiration from standards discussed at ACM SIGGRAPH, SIGCHI, and policy dialogues at European Commission research initiatives. Activities align with pedagogical efforts at Coursera, edX, and Udacity pathways, while advocacy work has intersected with debates in venues like United Nations forums and World Economic Forum sessions. The Society has also engaged with industry players such as tableau, Power BI, D3.js contributors, and academic publishers including IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics.
Organization and Membership
Governance is administered by a board and volunteer committees with officers drawn from companies and institutions like Google DeepMind, Facebook AI Research, LinkedIn, Slack Technologies, and universities such as University of California, Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon University, University of Washington, and University of Cambridge. Membership tiers accommodate practitioners from NGOs like Amnesty International, think tanks such as Pew Research Center, and media outlets including BBC News and Al Jazeera. The Society maintains code-of-conduct provisions informed by frameworks from ACM, IEEE, and legal counsel experienced with nonprofit statutes in California.
Events and Conferences
The Society organizes meetups and an annual flagship event that complements established conferences including IEEE VIS, CHI, Strata, SXSW, and OpenVisConf. Regional events have been hosted in cities tied to major academic and industry hubs such as San Francisco, New York City, London, Berlin, Tokyo, and Sydney. Programming often features panels with figures from NPR, The Atlantic, Quartz, and labs like Microsoft Research Redmond and Adobe Research, plus workshops led by practitioners affiliated with Wikimedia Foundation and Mozilla.
Publications and Resources
The Society curates newsletters, toolkits, and learning paths that reference textbooks and monographs from authors associated with MIT Press, Oxford University Press, and Springer Nature. Educational resources cross-reference seminal works and software projects such as The Grammar of Graphics, ggplot2, D3.js, and research articles published in IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics and proceedings from ACM CHI. Members contribute to blogs and guides that cite case studies from The New York Times, ProPublica, and technical write-ups from Google Research and Facebook Research.
Community Initiatives and Chapters
Local chapters and special-interest working groups mirror community structures found in organizations like ACM SIGGRAPH, IEEE Computer Society, and International Journalism Festival. Initiatives have included mentorship programs partnering with universities such as Harvard Kennedy School and Princeton University, scholarship schemes modelled after grants from Knight Foundation and collaborations with nonprofits including DataKind and Human Rights Watch. Chapters operate in regions with active tech ecosystems including Silicon Valley, Boston, Seattle, Tel Aviv, and Bangalore.
Impact and Recognition
The Society's influence is visible in cross-sector projects that informed reporting at The New Yorker and policy briefings at World Bank and OECD. Members have been recognized with awards from institutions including Peabody Awards, Pulitzer Prize teams, CHI Academy, and paper awards at IEEE VIS. External commentary has appeared in outlets such as The New York Times, The Guardian, Wired, and academic citations in journals like Nature, Science, and Journal of the American Statistical Association.