Dewey Winburne Community Service Award

Dewey Winburne served as one of the original co-founders of the event that we now know as the SXSW Interactive Festival. A man of tremendous energy and vision, he imagined this event would come to showcase people who combined technological innovation with massive creativity. Fourteen years later, this vision has proven to be remarkably accurate as SXSW Interactive has evolved as an international mecca for trend-setting creative thinkers.

Teaching multimedia skills to teenagers, particularly teens of low-income and minority descent, was one of the great passions in Dewey's life. Many of the students who gained their initial new media training from him have gone on to achieve incredible careers in the local and national tech community.

The Dewey Winburne Community Service Award celebrates the vision that technology is society's most effective tool to level the playing field between the haves and the have-nots. Like the man whom it honors, the criteria for judging this prize is somewhat open-ended and fluid: candidates need to primarily live in the Central Texas area and be involved with a grass-roots effort to use convergent media to better the lives of this community's less fortunate citizens. Beyond these two stipulations, qualifications for this award are largely dependent on the skill sets of the nominees.

Dewey photo above by Carlos Austin of Austin Photography.

Community Technology in Action: Lodis Rhodes Wins 2008 Dewey Award

Congrats to Professor Lodis Rhodes of the LBJ School as well as the nine other honorees for the 2008 Dewey Winburne Community Service Award. The founder and chairman of the Austin Learning Academy, Rhodes is also considered a national leader in community technology strategies, helping to start Austin Free-Net in 1995 and securing grants from the National Science Foundation and others that have strengthened ties between the University of Texas and community technology programs in East Austin.

Other honorees for the 2008 Dewey Award are Betty Sue Flowers, Linda Litowsky, Ron Lucey, Lisa Moretti, Heberto Ochoa-Morales, Diana Prechter, Christian Raymond, Gene Rodgers and Glenda Sims. Read more about these outstanding individuals and the amazing efforts they have made to level the playing field between the haves and the have nots in Austin's digital realm below.

2008 Honorees

Betty Sue Flowers
A poet and former English professor, Flowers has pioneered the use of broadcast media in the humanities. Most recently, she convened a group of the best and brightest digital technologists to explore ways to use media for civic purposes. At the LBJ LIbrary, Flowers hosted a weekend seminar for the League of Tech Voters with the purpose of creating an online transparent federal budget to empower US citizens to more directly understand and participate in their government.

Linda Litowsky
With almost 30 years of experience, Litowsky's career spans broadcast and cable television, as well as the documentary, nonprofit, corporate, educational and film arenas. In 2007, the Austin Chronicle awarded her "Most Indefatigable to Keep Access Alive" for her leadership as Executive Director of Public Access Community Television. As the Southwest Representative on the National Board of The Alliance for Community Media, Litowsky is committed to assuring everyone’s access to electronic media.

Ron Lucey
Lucey serves as chair of the Austin Mayor's Committee for People with Disabilities. Though this work, he has been instrumental in improving access to the website, the parks, and other publicly administered services. His recent testimony beofre the school board resulted in Assistive Technology inclusion in a bond proposal, with potential beenfits to more than 12,000 AISD students with disabilities. Wherever community meets technology meets disability, you will find Ron Lucey making a difference.

Lisa Moretti
A relatively recent transplant to Austin, Moretti has been a leader in the Project IT Girl Club for more than a year. In this role, she has been extremely active in teaching local high schoolers how technology can make a difference -- to their lives and to society at large. In addition to helping these future female technology leaders to identify their passions, Moretti has been heavily involved in teaching them a variety of skills to create educational games for the ongoing One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project.

Heberto Ochoa-Morales
Ochoa-Morales a leads the Hispanic Technology Institute, which is a sub-group of the Greater Austin Hispanic Camber of Commerce. The program delivers basic and advanced computer classes and is implementing a mobile technology training program funded by the Governor’s office. As spearheaded by Ochoa-Morales, the Hispanic Technology Institute is opening new job opportunities for people previously at risk of being left out, work that is an important part of closing the digital divide.

Diana Prechter
As founder of TodayinAustin.com, Prechter offers a free marketing channel, for small bricks-and-mortar businesses and the arts community by helping them creatively engage and entertain customers with timely news and events, published as feeds. She teaches and help retailers and arts groups create geo-code blogs using Web 2.0 feeds, web-based iCal calendars, distributed content creation; and the content personalization options for site viewers. Prechter's motto? Keeping Austin weird by keeping it wired.

Christian Raymond
A former screenwriter in Los Angeles, Raymond now leads the Austin Film Society's’ multifaceted education department. As Director of Educational Programs for this group, he has developed and delivers programs to 5-8 underserved elementary and middle schools each year. This programs engage young people in safe, fun and nurturing environments where they can develop and share their creative voices, teaching them how to use film as a tool of empowerment and self-exploration.

Lodis Rhodes
Professor Lodis Rhodes of the LBJ School is the founder and chairman of the Austin Learning Academy, a total-family learning program in East Austin that has helped build and sustain community technology programs since 1995. Lodis is also considered a national leader in community technology strategies, helping to start Austin Free-Net in 1995 and securing grants from the National Science Foundation and others that have strengthened ties between the University of Texas and community technology programs in East Austin.

Gene Rodgers
Rodgers is a living / breathing example of a person using multiple technologies to change the way our society treats and perceives people with disabilities. By using the web to distribute self-produced video products and multimedia presentations that chronicle his many amazing adventures, he has shattered numerous stereotypes. An extremely active quadriplegic, Rodgers was a key advocate on HB2819, the Texas legislation which has mandated accessibility standards for state websites.

Glenda Sims
In her own words, Sims is "all about empowering people with information and functionality on the web. I'm passionate about mobile computing, especially on the Pocket PC platform and I feel my raison d’etre is to transform museums into meaningful interactive experiences using transparent technology. Before blogging and mobile computing came into my life, my primary love was accessibility." Sims also serves as co-chair of the Internationalization committee of the Web Standards Project.