by Jordana Jarrett
They're the leading pioneers, innovators, creatives, thinkers, artists and icons across digital, and now they're this year's Lovie Special Achievement Award Winners.
Each year, The Lovies honours a select number of Special Achievement honourees alongside our winners. These are European innovators who have changed the possibilities for digital work and continuously use the Internet in pursuit of a better world. Learn about the Special Achievement Winners we'll be honouring this year on stage at the 7th Annual Lovie Awards.
Dr. Quentin Stafford-Fraser, Lovie Lifetime Achievement
Dr. Quentin Stafford-Fraser, a renowned computer scientist and entrepreneur, is this year's Lovie Lifetime Achievement winner for his role in inventing the first webcam.
Through his invention of the XCoffee client program in 1991—utilising a video feed that showed a coffee pot captured in just three frames per minute—Stafford-Fraser took the first step toward making the connection between live video and the web. As a result, he helped pave the way for the present-day proliferation of live video chat online and on handheld devices.
Livia Firth, Lovie Emerging Entrepreneur
Livia Firth is leading the fight for sustainable fashion as the founder and creative director of Eco-Age, a brand/marketing consultancy that helps businesses to grow by creating, implementing and communicating sustainability solutions.
With online efforts like the Green Carpet Challenge, Ms. Firth skillfully uses the Internet to both educate the public about ethical and sustainable fashion consumption—and to put pressure on brands to do more to meet sustainable business practices.
She also was executive producer on The True Cost, a documentary tracing human rights & environmental abuses within fashion culture—which was distributed online via streaming platforms.
Firth continues to make great strides with Eco-Age and is leading the charge both as an activist and a talented entrepreneur.
Project Discovery, Lovie Be Greater with Data
Project Discovery is the brainchild of two friends: Attila Szantner, a Hungarian Web entrepreneur and Bernard Revaz, a Swiss physics researcher, with one purpose—to integrate scientific research and video games.
An amazing use of the Internet, Project Discovery allows EVE Online players to play a mini-game with a telescope, while gathering real astronomical data to discover exoplanets. Players submitted over 40 million classifications in the first two months of the project alone.
Project Discovery represents the very best of the Internet's democratic power and is an excellent example of using technology to improve the world around us. (And it's really fun.)
SuperSamStuff
Sam Saffold (best known by his YouTube moniker: SuperSamStuff) is this year's Lovie Creator for Change. The award, developed in partnership with YouTube and the YouTube Creators for Change Programme, honours creators whose work exemplifies the programme's mission: to use the global power of online video to combat misunderstanding, fear and intolerance on the Internet.Saffold is doing just that, captivating subscribers and viewers everywhere by creating poignant films and vlogs that spread positivity while addressing critical social issues.
By marrying his passion for filmmaking and quick wit, SuperSamStuff provides the Internet with raw discussions on topics from growing up in the digital age to diversity—and beyond. His recent short film, "A Welcoming Place," is a radically inventive 26-minute social thriller that implores viewers to question the fear of "otherness."
Through the Internet, Saffold continues to inspire the next generation of YouTubers to be their full selves: beautifully insightful and weird.
Special Achievement Winners will be honoured along with all Lovie Winners at the 7th Annual Lovie Awards on Thursday, 16 November at Picturehouse Central in London. Subscribe to The Lovie Newsletter to get the highlights from the 2017 Lovie Awards in your inbox.
Best of the 7th Annual Lovie Awards
Watch Winners Declare Their Lovie at The Lovie Awards