SXSW PanelPicker Trends: More Startups!
The Forrest Four-Cast: August 18, 2018
The 2019 SXSW PanelPicker is home to more than 5000 fascinating speaking proposals from digital creatives from across the United States and around the world. Community voting and commenting on these ideas runs through the end of the day on Thursday, August 30.
Be part of this community voting and commenting process by logging into your SXSW account. If you don’t have an account, then creating one is free and easy via this page.
Every day until the August 30 deadline arrives, we examine one of the many trends and themes in the SXSW PanelPicker. The methodology here is 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’s trending topic to focus on is “startups.” For the 2019 interface, this word comes up in 282 PanelPicker speaking proposals. That is a healthy increase of 34 ideas as compared to the 2018 interface, when the word “startups” was part of 248 PanelPicker entries.
Many of these startup-focused speaking proposals will be slotted into these two SXSW 2019 tracks next March in Austin: “Entrepreneurship & Startups” (March 8–12) and “Tech Industry & Enterprise” (March 8–13). Although these are not the only two tracks that include startup-related content, as the entrepreneurial thread weaves throughout event (particularly SXSW Pitch). To read the full list of 25 programming tracks for March 2019 that cover everything from “Cities Government Politics” to “Food” to “Sports” to “VR/AR/MR”, visit this page.
Uncover other trends 2019 PanelPicker trends by entering your favorite keyword in the “Search” bar on the left sidebar of the interface. Or, better yet, keep track of the running list ideas that are getting the most traction in this year’s interface by simply bookmarking this post from Medium.
Around 10–20% of the 5000+ speaking proposals in the PanelPicker will be accepted as sessions for March 2019 in Austin. These accepted sessions will be announced via the SXSW website in mid-October.
Register before the early-bird deadline of September 13 so that you can take part in all the discovery, brainstorming, creativity, deal-making, and cross-industry networking that is SXSW. After you buy your badge, then book your Austin lodging for the event. Plenty of convenient downtown rooms still available throughout the March Magic timeframe.
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.
