The 23rd SXSW Innovation Awards Nominees and Hall of Fame Honoree Just Announced

Starting in  June of 2019, innovators from around the world submitted their projects for the South by Southwest® (SXSW®) SXSW Innovation Awards ceremony taking place on Monday, March 16 at the Austin Convention Center. During SXSW, the 23rd annual SXSW Innovation Awards presented by Sprinklr will recognize tech developments in the connected world across 13 different categories. From these categories five finalists were selected to showcase their projects for SXSW attendees and a panel of judges at the SXSW Innovation Awards Finalist Showcase on Saturday, March 14. The winners of the Best In Show and People’s Choice Award will also be celebrated, alongside the induction of Nonny de la Peña, CEO and founder of Emblematic Group, to the SXSW Innovation Awards Hall of Fame.

SXSW Hall of Fame Honoree Nonny de la Peña

Nonny de la Peña, CEO and founder of the award-winning innovation company Emblematic Group, will be honored as the newest inductee to the SXSW Innovation Awards Hall of Fame. The Hall of Fame recognizes pioneers within the interactive community whose career achievements have charted the course for the future of the digital industry. Often acknowledged as “The Godmother of Virtual Reality,” de la Peña is a pioneer of virtual, augmented, and mixed reality who is widely credited with inventing the genre of immersive journalism.

Under her leadership, Emblematic has built a critically-acclaimed body of work that includes tracking the chaos of the Syrian civil war to working with AT&T on projects that leverage the future of 5G technologies and machine learning. Her newest breakthrough is Emblematic’s WebVR platform REACH, which creates scalable distribution in the medium, democratizes content authorship and empowers new voices to share their stories.

Innovation Awards Finalist Showcase

In advance of the Awards Ceremony, finalists will have the opportunity to exhibit their work at the Innovation Awards Finalist Showcase on Saturday, March 14, 12 pm-6 pm CT, at the Austin Convention Center (Exhibit Hall 1). The Finalist Showcase offers SXSW Interactive, Music, Film, and Platinum badge holders a first look at the most exciting tech developments, including achievements in AI and machine learning, health technology, robotics and hardware, wearable tech, and VR, AR and MR, plus a chance to place their votes for the People’s Choice Award. Registered media and official awards judges will have exclusive access to the Showcase and finalist demos that morning, 11 am-12 pm CT, and to vote to determine the winner in each category, as well as the winner of the Best of Show Award. All award winners will be announced at the SXSW Innovation Awards ceremony on March 16, 2020.

2020 Innovation Awards Finalists

AI & Machine Learning

Climate, Culture, & Social Impact

Health, Med, & BioTech

Innovation in Connecting People

Music & Audio Innovation

New Economy

Robotics & Hardware

Smart Cities, Transportation & Logistics

Speculative Design

Student Innovation

Visual Media Experience

Wearable Tech

XR

SPECIAL HONORS

Hall of Fame

Honoring those exceptional trailblazers whose work has helped shape the connected world and who continue to guide the direction of the digital industry.

Best of Show

The finalist from the competition who overall best exemplifies the values of innovation, inspiration, and creativity.

People’s Choice Award

The public’s favorite finalist from the Innovation Awards.

David Carr Prize

Award for a top emerging writer which honors David Carr and his breadth of work as a journalist, author and longtime speaker at SXSW.

We will be on ground zero covering SXSW 2020 live and will also continue to post updates till day one on March 13th. For more information, please visit sxsw.com. To register for the event, please visit sxsw.com/attend.

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Source: SXSW