How South by Southwest Crowdsources New Programming Ideas
Skift Take
For almost any kind of conference to evolve significantly in the future, it needs to leverage the collective knowledge of the community using modern technology to create a more inclusive programming schedule.
About 40 percent of the 2,000 sessions at South by Southwest (SXSW) in Austin last March were chosen from ideas crowdsourced through the SXSW PanelPicker.
Every summer, the conference organizers launch the online PanelPicker platform for a one-month window for anyone to submit ideas for potential sessions in the Interactive, Film, or Music portions of SXSW. The dates this year are June 28 to July 22.
One of the fundamental goals for any event planner in a rapidly digitizing, globalized world is to better engage audience members. However, most conference organizers for even the largest events have found it difficult to set up such an online crowdsourcing system, effectively drive engagement, and deliver real results. That's what makes South by Southwest's platform something of a benchmark for the conference and events industry to study.
The first PanelPicker launched in 2007 solely for Interactive, before expanding to Music and Film in 2010.
Once the PanelPicker submission phase is over later this month, the SXSW community at large will then have a few weeks from August 8 to September 2 to vote on how they feel about the different session proposals. After that, the SXSW staff and SXSW advisory board will vote for their favorite ideas.
The community and staff votes are weighted 3
