SXSW PanelPicker Trends: 379 AI Proposals
The Forrest Four-Cast: August 8, 2018
Community voting and commenting has now begun for the 5000+ speaking proposals in the 2019 PanelPicker interface. Getting involved in this process is easy, but you will need a SXSW account to participate. If you don’t already have an account, signup is free and only takes about two minutes to set up.
Over the next three weeks (until the polls close at the end of the day on Thursday, August 30), this space will explore some of the most prevalent themes in this year’s PanelPicker, themes that are a function of the total number of speaking proposals on a given topic.
For today’s installment of this series, let’s examine “AI” (which is the commonly used abbreviation for artificial intelligence). The 2019 PanelPicker includes 379 proposals that include the term “AI” in the title or the description. Many (but not all) of these speaking proposals are part of the popular “Intelligent Future” track, which goes from March 8–14. Learn about all 25 of the programming tracks for SXSW on this page.
By comparison, the 379 PanelPicker proposals that list “AI” in the 2019 interface is a pretty steep increase from 2018, when only 201 speaking proposals listed this word. The 2017 PanelPicker included 153 AI-related speaking proposals.
Use the “Search” function on the left side of the interface to find other trends and themes in the SXSW PanelPicker. Or, better yet, click on this page to read about the ideas that we see bubbling to the top.
About 10–20% of the 5000+ speaking proposals in the PanelPicker will be accepted as sessions for the March 2019 event. These accepted sessions will be announced via the SXSW website in mid-October. Buy your badge now so you can be part of all the discovery, brainstorming, creativity, deal-making, and cross-industry networking that is SXSW.
Hugh Forrest serves as Chief Programming Officer at SXSW, the world’s most unique gathering of creative professionals. He also tries to write at least four paragraphs per day on Medium. These posts often cover tech-related trends; other times they focus on books, pop culture, sports and other current events.
