SXSW PanelPicker Trends: Robots Rising
The Forrest Four-Cast: August 12, 2018
The 5000+ ideas in the 2019 SXSW PanelPicker are now posted and ready for community voting and commenting. You can get involved in this activity from the convenience of your home computer. Just sign onto your SXSW account and up-vote the ideas that most appeal to you (or create a new account here if you don’t already have one).
Also don’t be shy about leaving a few sentence of comments on the proposals that you think are the strongest.
Though the voting deadline of August 30, this space will examine some of the most prevalent trends and themes in the PanelPicker. We do this by comparing the number of speaking proposals on the given topic in the 2019 interface versus the number of speaking proposals on this topic in the PanelPicker from a year ago.
Today we tackle the mechanized humanoid beings that continue to gain so much cultural traction. Yes, our current fascination with all things robots is certainly reflected in the 2019 PanelPicker, as you will find 90 proposals that address this topic in this year’s interface. This number is almost three times what we saw in the PanelPicker a year ago, when the number was only 33.
Find many other trends and themes in this interface by using the “Search” bar that is located on the left side of the PanelPicker. Or, just visit this post from Medium to read the day-by-day list of ideas that seem to be getting the most traction in this year’s interface.
About 750 of the 5000+ speaking proposals in the PanelPicker will be accepted as sessions for the Spring 2019 event. These accepted sessions will be announced via the SXSW website in mid-October. Register now so that you can be part of all the discovery, brainstorming, creativity, deal-making, and cross-industry networking that is March Magic in Austin.
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.
