In 2018, SXTXState introduces a new feature, a Data page analyzing panel and topic trends throughout the SXSW Festival. Working with data and creating visualizations are important parts of the curriculum in Texas State’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication, so adding a data element to this year’s coverage is a natural progression of our program’s competencies.

Here are some highlights:

• This year’s conference features 5,136 panel sessions spread across 25 tracks. Tracks are grouped between four categories: Interactive, Film, Music and Convergence.
• Nine keynote speakers will head up each day of this year’s conference, sharing presentations and insights from their industries. Keynotes for this year’s Interactive festival is philanthropist Melinda Gates and New York Time’s bestselling author Esther Perel.
• The Interactive festival will begin Friday, March 9. The largest portion of sessions are panels, making up 30.7 percent of all sessions, followed closely by speaker sessions at 17.5 percent.
• The Music festival conference will take place from Monday, March 12 to Sunday, March 18. In addition to rich sessions, where attendees can learn about innovation in the music industry, SXSW is well known for bringing in hundreds of artists to play during the festival. This year, a total of 1,846 music acts from 61 countries across 35 different music genres and 96 different secondary genres will come to Austin and perform across the city.
• The Film festival conference will take place from Friday, March 9 to Saturday, March 17. Attendees can learn from industry leaders in three conference tracks and also enjoy film screenings throughout the festival.  A total of 339 films will be officially screened, and of those the top film genre will be documentary with 93 films.

View the full data analysis of the main three conferences on the SXTXState Data page.