SXSW PanelPicker Trends: Be Creative!
The Forrest Four-Cast: August 30, 2018
Today is the final day for community voting and commenting in the 2019 SXSW PanelPicker. That’s right — this interface closes at 11:59 pm Pacific Time on Thursday, August 30. And once midnight strikes, you can no longer weigh in on the 5000+ forward-thinking speaking proposals in this year’s interface.
Log in to your SXSW account to enjoy the final day voting frenzy. If you don’t have an account to log in to, then no worries — setting one up is free and easy via this link.
Thursday, August 30 is also the final day of our three-week series that explores trends and themes in the SXSW PanelPicker. The methodology of this exploration is fairly simple — we compare the number of speaking proposals on a given topic in this year’s interface to the number of speaking proposals on the same topic in the 2018 PanelPicker.
For our final day of trend-spotting, let’s focus on the c-word concept that is the foundation of March Magic: creativity. You’ll find this concept in the very mission statement for this event (pictured above): “SXSW helps creative people achieve their goals.” So it is not surprising that so many PanelPicker speaking proposals also incorporate this word. For 2019, “creative” appears in 469 of these ideas (a healthy 15% jump from 2018, when the number was 401). Meanwhile, the word “creativity” is just about the same in the 2019 PanelPicker as it was in last year’s interface: 168 versus 163.
Three of the most intriguing creative-focused proposals in the SXSW PanelPicker for 2019 are as follows:
— Creatives in Government
— Designing Your Life: Planning for Creatives
— Women In Creative Industry Meet Up
Experiment with the “Search” button on the left side of the interface to find other thought-provoking trends and theme in the 2019 SXSW PanelPicker. Or just 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. In mid-October, these accepted sessions will be announced via the SXSW. Buy your badge now so you can take part in all the amazing learning, discovery, cross-industry networking and creativity that is South by Southwest.
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.
Deadline to register to vote in Texas for the November 2018 general election is Tuesday, October 9.
