Trending at SXSW: What’s Hot, What’s Not for 2012

Have you ever started some small task—looking for a folder on your desk, say—and looked up several hours later after cleaning out all your desk drawers, refiling all your folders and rearranging your pencils?

Well, that’s kind of what happened to me when I went into the South By Southwest Panel Picker to check out a few of the proposed talks for the mega interactive conference next spring. It started with just a handful; I was curious to see my own, others in the content strategy category, and those of a few friends and colleagues.

But then I couldn’t stop. The better part of a weekend flew by as I clicked through 110 pages of submissions—a total of 3,278 titles! Rather than get my head examined, I decided to make a project of it (because that way I could say I “worked” rather than wasted my days off).

South by Southwest, aka SXSW or just “South By,” is HUGE in every sense of the word. Last year the escalators at the Austin Convention Center pushed people out faster than they could move to get off, causing claustrophobia-inducing backups (the analog equivalent of the over-capacity Fail Whale). But it’s also where big new ideas, applications and trends take off. By looking at all of the ideas submitted, I thought I’d get a sense of what’s going to be hot in 2012.

Here’s what I found…

Some of the trends from the SXSW 2011 have staying power. Mobile, gamification, mobile gamification and, well, mobile anything are represented in a big way: mobile apps, mobile games, mobile wallets…the list goes on and on.

Other familiar topics include all kinds of apps, content strategy, social media influence, big data, sexy data and data visualization. And there are also frequent mentions of transmedia, social TV, storytelling, serendipity—and zombies. You can browse some of the trending topics here.

In 2012 there are new categories for Health, Government and Green Tech, so the mix is much more diverse, going far beyond the original “interactive” bucket and the more recent influx of branding, marketing and social media topics.

Profanity is popular. With more than 3,000 entries vying for only 500 spots, there’s a lot of pressure to stand out from the crowd. Bland titles get overlooked, so you can understand the temptation to “over salt” the title. I counted close to 20 F-words (with various letters replaced by #$%&), a similar number of S-words and a handful of miscellaneous other naughties.

Dropping an F-bomb in your title may seem like a good way attract attention and votes. But with a few notable exceptions where it actually added appropriate impact, all the #$%& seemed gratuitous and a bit lame. So I laughed out loud when I saw this title: “How the Web Promotes Cussing in the Business World.”

Some other common title motifs:

• Why Your [Website], [Content], [Code], [Fill in the Blank] Sucks
• [X]: Hype or Reality?
• How [X] Is Like [Y]

Two (deux) talks had “ménage à trois” in the title. A couple of others mentioned Star Trek. And I have to mention a sighting of the word (more of a hashtag, really): “friendocalypse.” Let’s just hope this never becomes a trending term.

Now, for an anti-trend: proofreading. (Warning: rant ahead.) Despite the admonitions in the FAQs to use proper title case and proofread your work, there were an astonishing number of typos, misspellings, grammar and punctuation errors—even in the all-important titles. Random capitalization, missing apostrophes and missing spaces are just a few of the sins I saw:

• “Digitial” instead of “digital”
• Separate the wheat from the “chafe” (instead of “chaff”)
• “Plagerism” instead of “plagiarism”
• “Banned Together” instead of “Band Together”
• “Teh” instead of “the” (or is “Teh Internetz” a new thing?)

In some cases the spaces between words appear to have been left out on purpose to squeeze a title in under the 50-character limit—including one that left out all the spaces. Someone on Twitter suggested that if they’d added a # in front of the words it could be considered “creative.” I think it’s more creative to come up with a title that fits without breaking the rules.

Call me fussy, but I believe proofing never goes out of style. Or at least it shouldn’t. That’s why I’ll be in the front row for this talk (if it makes the cut): “Language of Mutilation: Grammar for Ads & Life.” Read this description to see how you can be provocative and compelling–without any F-bombs!

Finally, a little perspective… Last year during SXSW I had dinner with my college journalism professor, who attended the very first Interactive event back in 1993. He remembered 35 or 40 people sitting around in one room—the original Core Conversation! Now there are dozens of those conversations, plus ballroom-sized crowds examining every aspect of interactive media, bit-by-bit, pixel-by-pixel, tweet-by-tweet, Klout point-by-Klout point.

It will be fun to see which talks end up in the final mix. Regardless of the rigor that goes into the selection process, there will undoubtedly be some stinkers, along with unexpected hits that leave sad people standing in line outside the door of some hotel conference room, miles away from their second choice. I look forward to reporting back to you from SXSW 2012!

By the way, Panel Picker voting ends has been extended to September 2 5 at 11:59 pm, so if you want to have a say, do it now.

What trends do you think will be most relevant in 2012? What’s missing from the mix? Share your thoughts in the comments below or tweet me @carmenhill.