Yesterday afternoon I had the opportunity to make a presentation to a number of greater Boston's civic and business leaders about what the world is saying about Boston.  It's the second or third time we used Prezi rather than Keynote or Powerpoint by the way, and its great.

Sponsored by Boston World Partnerships, my presentation was an analysis of the online conversation related to Boston as a place to do business, a hub of intellectual capital and innovation.  We collected data in English-only (this time) from outside of the United States during a good chunk of last summer -- and compared Boston's data to San Francisco -- and here's what we found: 

• Boston’s conversations were dominated by discussions of Harvard - the college being mentioned in almost 50% of the cases during the examined time period. Harvard mentions outlined research coming out of the university and commented on the general prestige of the school, as well as the expected success of its graduates. MIT, Boston’s other premier institution, was mentioned only 9% of the time.
• In content that mentioned neither college, technology and finance were the most discussed topics. The three biggest subtopics within technology included scientific advancements, biotech, and software development.  The finance topic was more general but included Harvard Business School in many of the posts (40%).
• Boston’s image is defined as an international city full of intellectual capital. However, few posts out of the 2,182 source conversation talked about Boston startups (7%) and and even fewer posts described Boston as a good place for entrepreneurs (< 2%).

• Over half of the entire San Francisco conversation included technology keywords. Large companies like Google and Apple were mentioned often, but other, unique companies were noted as well. The second largest topic, which included startup keywords, took up 24% of the San Francisco conversation.
• San Francisco and Silicon Valley were essentially synonymous in the  conversation. Stanford hardly impacted the conversation - it only took up 1% of the total mentions.
• Conversations about San Francisco often mentioned that the city is a prime startup location, and that entrep reneurs flock to the area to start their careers. San Francisco is known mostly for innovative software and technology.

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