Smiley Award 2008
Last summer, Scott Fahlman was subjected to a huge flurry of worldwide media attention, for the 25th anniversary of his invention of the emoticon :-). While everyone (especially Scott), felt a bit sheepish about the amount of press coverage this was getting, at some point we all just had to give in to it and have fun. A web site was created, to make more public the early history. (See http://www.cs.cmu.edu/smiley.) A whole bunch of alumni and former faculty members “who were there” when the first emoticon happened pitched in money for a big party. T-shirts, smiley cookies, and all manner of schwag were made and handed out to students.
And through it all, Scott took everything in stride. He was interviewed by all the major news agencies (including not only places like the NY Times but even the Iranian news agency!), and was even picked the “sexy man of the week” by some German magazine. ;-)
At some point, we realized that we would actually have more money than we needed for a simple party and smiley freebies. So Scott suggested having an annual “Smiley Award“, to recognize “innovation in technology-assisted person-to-person communication.” With the leftover money and a promise of annual contributions by Yahoo!, the award was officially established.
Well, at a very nice SCS TG party last Friday, the inaugural Smiley Award was announced. A number of very good nominations were received, and in the end the award committee selected Jennifer Gooch and Turadg Aleahmad, creators of One Cold Hand. (Find your lost gloves and help the needy at the same time!) The runners up were Ashwin Bharambe, Amit Manjhi, and Shashank Pandit for Buxfer, and Ian Li for Moodjam.
The party was super-crowded and fun, the food was great (thanks, Yahoo!), and Jennifer and Turadg looked pleased to receive the award, with its cash prize and plenty of other goodies.
Scott should be commended for rolling with the flow on this and creating what I think will end up being a nice tradition. Thanks, also, to our friends from Yahoo! for helping to make this such a nice event. And, of course, congratulations to Jennifer and Turadg!
Peter Lee @ March 3, 2008
[…] So fressen sich etwa Ringelgänse auf den Salzwiesen der Halligen Fettreserven für ihren langen Flug nach Sibirien an. Vom Münster abgesehen? Das ist natürlich der erste Ort, an den man geht. Sie deckte den Tisch.Für den vielfach ausgezeichneten Koch Christian Bau haben Spitzengastronomie und Spitzensport viel gemeinsam. Filmemacher, die wir einladen oder die sich in unseren Auslands-Instituten treffen, tragen den Demokratie-Gedanken weiter, Peter Lee: […]