Registration open for Visual 1st

The initial program for Visual 1st, Sept. 29-30, at KQED headquarters in San Francisco, has been announced. Register here for Super Early Bird $150-off tickets now through at midnight PDT Tuesday, May 26!  The event is co-chaired by Hans Hartman and Alexis Gerard. As is customary, The Dead Pixels Society will host a meet-up on the morning of Sept. 29.

The program is still taking shape, but the Fireside Chat presenters have already been announced:

Andy Parsons, Global Head of Content Authenticity, Adobe; Steering Committee Member C2PA, leads Adobe’s content authenticity work, overseeing the Content Authenticity Initiative (CAI) — a global coalition of more than 6,000 members including the Associated Press, The New York Times, NVIDIA, and Universal Music Group — and representing Adobe on the Steering Committee of the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA). His work centers on building open standards and tools that bring transparency, trust, and attribution to digital media through Content Credentials, a provenance “nutrition label” for content.

A recognized thought leader in the space, Parsons was named Technologist of the Year by Fast Company in 2024 and included on the TIME100 AI list of most influential people in AI in 2025. He has been widely quoted in WIRED, MIT Technology Review, Reuters, and others.

Before Adobe, Andy founded Workframe, co-founded Twill Health, and served as CTO of McKinsey’s educational technology group. He holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Tufts and an M.A. in Jazz Composition from the Manhattan School of Music — and spent years as a professional jazz musician.

Thomas Mehls is Chairman of the Executive Board of the Neumüller CEWE COLOR Stiftung and CEO of the CEWE Group. He studied European Economics and International Business at the University of Bamberg (Germany) and the University of Arizona (USA). Before joining CEWE, he held leadership roles across the Bertelsmann Group, including at Gruner+Jahr and Motor Presse Stuttgart, and also worked at the international strategy consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton.

Mehls has been with CEWE since 2013. He has served as a member of the Executive Board since 2014 and became CEO in 2025. Initially, he was responsible for Marketing and the German B2C business, later also overseeing the company’s sustainability activities. Today, he helps shape the Group’s strategic and cultural development and leads international growth, as well as product and marketing innovation. A key focus of his work is guiding CEWE’s transformation from white-label provider to a house of brands — a long-term and ongoing investment in customer-centricity and sustainable, profitable growth.

In addition to his role at CEWE, he is Chairman of the German Federal Association of Large Photo Labs (BGL) and a member of the Advisory Board of EWE Baskets Oldenburg.

Andrea Anner, Artist, Roboticist and Thibault Brevet, Artist, Roboticist, AATB, push industrial automation far beyond factory logic, transforming robotic arms into performers, collaborators, and sometimes awkward companions. Their practice merges engineering with choreography: software becomes gesture, precision machining becomes play, and human–machine interaction turns into a staged, slightly uncanny intimacy. By placing robots in everyday, non-industrial contexts, AATB reveal how deeply automation already choreographs our movements and desires.

Their work has been featured at leading international institutions including ZKM Karlsruhe, V&A Dundee, Ars Electronica Linz, New Museum New York, Venice Biennale of Art, Venice Biennale of Architecture, Chengdu Biennale, Unfold X in Seoul, APS in Shanghai, Beijing Art and Technology Biennale. They have been in residence at CERN and Atelier Luma in Arles, and they received the Swiss Design Award in 2021.

As educators, AATB have taught internationally at Seoul Institute of the Arts, Design Academy Eindhoven, HFG Karlsruhe, Iceland University of the Arts, and in Switzerland at ZHDK, ECAL, HEAD, HGK, HKB, and SUPSI. They have been lecturing worldwide. AATB live and work in Zürich, Switzerland and Marseille, France.

Panel themes

This year’s Panel themes: Innovating to empower …

• Visuals for Memory — Preserving the present and reimagining the past with next-gen tech

• Visuals for Commerce — Turning visuals into revenue engines

• Visuals for Connection — Transforming shared media into social glue

Speed Insights

This year’s new sessions: Speed Insights — one-on-one interviews.

Speakers to date:

• Larysa Shooshan, Co-owner & COO, SIA Albums Inc (o/a The Boudoir Album)
• Pavel Machalek, Founder, Eternity Photos

Show & Tell sessions

This year’s judges:

• Anna Dickson, Group Product Manager, Google
• Sami Niemi, Partner, Spintop Ventures
• Eran Steinberg, Co-Founder & Chairman, FotoNation
• Rudy Burger, Founder & Managing Partner, Woodside Capital