Dewey Winburne served as one of the original co-founders of the SXSW Interactive Festival. A teacher who spent much of his energy training at-risk youth to make use of digital technology, Dewey believed that the new media revolution could help level the playing field between the haves and the have-nots in our society.

Although Dewey passed away in 1999, his legacy continues via the lives of the many digital creatives he touched. Each spring, SXSW Interactive honors his vision with the Dewey Winburne Community Service Award. This award celebrates the spirit of community in Austin that we think is unique to SXSW.

An important change for the 2012 Dewey Winburne Community Service Award is that honorees are no longer restricted to the Central Texas region. To this end, the list of 10 honorees for this year include one international representative (Mexico).

Join us at 7:00 pm on the evening of Sunday, March 11 at St. Davids Church (301 East 8th St) to honor these 10 outstanding community activists! Admission to the Dewey Ceremony does NOT require a badge -- so feel free to bring your friends who have not registered for SXSW yet! Free food, plus great Austin music from Mother Falcon!

If you have a SXSW Interactive, Gold or Platinum badge, also consider attending a special Meet Up session with the Dewey honorees on Sunday afternoon, March 11 from 3:30-6:00 pm in room 8A of the Austin Convention Center.

Dewey Honorees for 2012

Judy Brewer
Cambridge, MA
As Director of the Web Accessibility Initiative at the World Wide Web Consortium, and a Principle Research Scientist at MIT, Judy coordinates with industry, disability communities, researchers, and governments on the development of consensus-based solutions to make the web accessible for people with disabilities. WAI standards and guidelines are used by governments and organizations around the world to help ensure equal access to the Information Society.

Laura Deutch
Philadelphia, PA
Laura Deutch is a Philadelphia-based media artist and educator who uses participatory processes to engage communities in expanded documentary production. She is the creator of Messages in Motion, a mobile media studio that provides tools for participants to share personal and social stories about their neighborhood and life experiences. She holds an MFA in Film and Media Arts from Temple University.

Brian Elliot
New York, NY
Elliot founded Friendfactor in 2009, which works to accelerate change for LGBT rights by engaging more straight supporters through online education and advocacy campaigns. Friendfactor developed a groundbreaking click-to-call technology as part of its campaign for New York marriage equality, which mobilized thousands of people to take action on behalf of their gay friends’ rights. Brian received his MBA from Harvard Business School, MPA from Harvard Kennedy School, and BA from Stanford University.

Izzy Johnston
New York, NY
Izzy Johnston has over eight years of instructional experience in software and languages and over 13 years of programming experience. Much of her work focuses on education and the creation of tools that allow people to improve their own lives and the lives of those around them. Johnston is a professor of Information Science at Pratt Institute, teaches with Girl Develop It and is involved with Developers for Good.

Jacquie Jones
New York, NY
Jones is the Executive Director of the National Black Programming Consortium (NBPC), a 30-year-old media arts organization that funds, distributes and produces public interest media for all platforms. She recently launched the Public Media Corps (PMC), a collaborative engagement framework that includes public media stations, producers, schools, libraries and a variety of community-serving institutions as partners.

Becci Manson
New York, NY
In March 2011, Manson joined All Hands Volunteers for three weeks in their tsunami relief efforts in the town of Ofunato in Iwate prefecture. There, she discovered thousands of photos in the numerous evacuation centers around the towns. She spent the next six months organizing a world wide network of volunteer retouchers, retouching and restoring these photos, using widely available and mostly free technology and donated equipment. To date, these teams have restored hundreds and hand cleaned well over one hundred thousand photos.

Jose Gomez Marquez
Cambridge, MA
Gomez-Marquez is the program director for the Little Devices Lab @ MIT. He leads a team of multidisciplinary team of scientists to design medical devices for developing countries. Gomez Marquez developed the Aerovax Drug Delivery System, a device for mass delivery of inhalable drugs and vaccines to remote populations and the X out TB program, now known as Adhere.io, which aims to increase tuberculosis therapy adherence in developing countries using novel diagnostics and mobile technology.

Aleph Molinari
Toluca, México
In 2008 Aleph created the Fundación Proacceso, a nonprofit organization that uses the educational potential of technology to drive the social and economic development of people living in marginalized communities. In just over two years Proacceso has built 70 educational centers with more than 180,000 users in Mexico. Today the RIA is recognized as an exemplary model for digital inclusion and has been presented at the World Bank, the OECD, TEDx Talks and the World Technology Summit.

Josh Nesbit
San Francisco, CA
Nesbit serves as the CEO of Medic Mobile, a nonprofit company using low-cost, mobile technology to improve healthcare across 15 countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Josh also founded Hope Phones, a recycling campaign designed to engage millions of Americans in global health efforts. He is an Ashoka Fellow, PopTech Social Innovation Fellow, Echoing Green Fellow, Rainer Arnhold Fellow, Strauss Scholar, and Haas Public Service Fellow.

Humberto Perez
Pflugerville, TX
Pérez teaches video technology and heads Cougar Productions at Connally High School. He also recently co-founded the Cinema Du Cannes Project (CDCP). The mission of this non-profit organization is educate, empower, develop, and celebrate the next generation of emerging artists to be productive citizens, creative individuals and active participants in shaping our communities in the 21st century through the art of cinematic digital storytelling and digital media production.