Thought I’d do a little analysis on the 2013 SXSW Interactive selects. I’m working through the selections as data to compile insights from the proposals selected. The part that will take me the longest is copying the submitted proposals (3256 total) into Excel. From there I’d like to provide some insight based on who got in and who didn’t.

So far, I’ve compiled a list of all 2013 SXSW Interactive proposals using the PanelPicker search term”strategy”. This produced 732 proposals. I then copied the list of those selected proposals and cross referenced against my list of “strategy” proposals. Of the 3256 proposals submitted, 732 had a reference to strategy (23%). Of the 732 proposals with “strategy” referenced, 27 were accepted (3.7%). You can also look at it as 5.5% or 27 of the 495 total accepted mention strategy.

Where is the prominence? I then copied all of the selected proposal titles and created a word cloud using Wordle.com (that’s the picture here). In 2013, the hot topics, or those words most frequently used in the title anyway, include:  social, media, digital, design, and new. This makes sense to me. I just wish strategy were up at the top as well. Afterall, centering on strategy helps advertisers and marketers connect social, media, digital, and design in meaningful and ROI driven ways.

Next steps:

– Copy all of the selected proposal content and analyse to see if other big percentage buckets of content pop to the top. I’ve just analysed the titles- does selected proposal content offer more insight?

– Pull forward any other big proposal spaces and determine the SXSW representation. In other words, are there other big spaces like strategy that were largely proposed upon that have a similar low percentage representation? Working here from that 23% of submitted proposals that used “strategy”, yet 3.7% or 5.5% actually got in.

– Share my analysis here providing a close-up look of those strategy related selected proposals (proposals referencing “strategy”) for SXSW 2013 Interactive. I’m curious how strategy is being represented and if that matches with my professional know-how as a strategist. I will need to cross strategy as it applies to creativity provided SXSW Interactive 2013 Programming shares, “The one common thread amongst this programming is massive creativity, which serves as the ongoing currency of conversation in Austin in March.”  (http://sxsw.com/interactive/talks/programming)

More to come shortly…