What’s hot at SXSW
SXSW Interactive 2014 kicks off today in Austin, Texas.
We’ve analysed the schedule for this year’s conference to see what key themes will be featuring over the course of the next five days, which you can see in the wordcloud above. There’s a vast array of topics under discussion, with gaming, start-ups and design coming though strongly.
It does however clearly point to broader trends in the worlds of tech and marketing. Social media remains an understandable obsession of the industry as a whole, while big data is still grabbing some attention. What’s more reflective of emerging trends is how “maker” is bigger than “entrepreneur” and “making” is bigger than “marketing”.
Once again, We Are Social is at SXSW in force. We’ve been here since Monday for our pre-SXSW management summit. Nathan and myself are part of a 30 strong We Are Social contingent, including the Managing Directors of most of the We Are Social offices; Leila from New York, Jim from London, Gabriele, Stefano and Ottavio from Milan, Bastian from Munich, Simon from Singapore, Julian from Sydney and Leslie from São Paulo, along with other members of our senior team from around the world.
Having settled in nicely – and warmed up our host city with some obligatory team nights out – we’re looking forward to seeing how the themes outlined above play out over the next five days of SXSW.
If you’re here and fancy grabbing a beer and a taco, just let us know. We’ll be at a lot of the talks (well, the ones that start after 11am), and, of course, most of the parties over the next few days.
I’ve linked to everyone’s Twitter IDs above so get in touch, or you can track our antics using (the censored) #WeAreSXSW.