2009 WE MEDIA GAME CHANGERS AWARD WINNERS ANNOUNCED
RESTON, VA – Online media star ZeFrank, mobile texting service Twitter, David Plouffe, the Obama campaign mastermind, Japanese digital designer Yugo Nakamura and Kenyan mobile alert service Ushahidi are among nine winners of the We Media Game Changers Awards to be presented at the We Media Miami conference in February.
The other award winners are: The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Innocentive’s crowdsourcing for the science crowd, Humana’s Freewheelin’ and social network Socialvibe.
You can learn more about the winners and their achievements at: www.wemedia.com/awards.
The winners will be celebrated and many will be featured speakers at the We Media Miami conference, Feb. 24-26, 2009, where their stories will become the content of the conference. Register for the conference at: www.wemedia.com/miami
The awards recognize people, projects, ideas and organizations leading change and inspiring a better world through media. Specific recognitions include:
Plays
Key trend: the end of apathy
Twitter is recognized for changing the real-time communication game.
Innocentive for taking Web 2.0 to the marketplace.
The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation for changing its own approach and everyone else’s by shifting it’s money to media innovation and the information needs of communities.
Ushahidi for redefining the ability of people to quickly communicate vital information for action.
Freewheelin for demonstrating that the Internet is not just something on your screen and challenging the fundamental assumption that health insurance is only for after-the-fact care by stepping into preventative and holistic health.
Players
Key trend: society’s new storytellers
ZeFrank, essential contemporary culture, proves that a new type and scale of engagement and entertainment is possible.
Yugo Nakamura, designer of Design and the Elastic Mind, for exploring non-traditional forms of storytelling through interactive systems in digital and networked environments.
David Plouffe, for the mobilization of millions with a methodical media campaign that utilized the Internet, cell phones and personal communication devices as never before.
Community Award
Key trend: social networking gets serious
SocialVibe for unleashing the power of distributed advertising on personal media.
An international panel of pioneers from media, technology, business, social activism and blogging judged nominees for the awards, and the We Media Community award, for Socialvibe, was selected by the public through online voting.
The awards highlight achievements through exceptional story-telling, novel business models, significant social impact, innovative design and powerful visions of media for the connected culture.
The awards are organized and administered by iFOCOS, the media think tank and futures lab that organizes the We Media conferences and global membership community.
The We Media conference also features a media venture startup gallery and an early stage media venture startup competition with up to $50,000 in seed capital awarded to winners.
Register for the conference at: www.wemedia.com/miami
About We Media
The We Media conferences, community and awards are organized by iFOCOS, a media think tank and futures lab founded in 2006 by media visionairies Andrew Nachison and Dale Peskin. They help anyone create, operate and sustain ventures in a media-centric culture powered by everyone. We Media programs function as a marketplace of ideas and actions for business and social innovators. They connect individuals and organizations from across industries who believe the power of media, communication and human ingenuity should be applied to innovate in business and to make the world better through media. More about We Media at: www.wemedia.com