Dewey Winburne Community Service Award

Dewey Winburne served as one of the original co-founders of what we now know as the SXSW Interactive Festival. Clearly, the event would not have made it to Year 12 without the vision, legacy, drive and energy he brought to those early years.

Teaching multimedia skills to teenagers, particularly teens of low-income and minority descent, was another great passion 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.

2005 Dewey Award Winner: Roger Steele

Born in Los Angeles, and living equally between the Rio Grande Valley and Austin, Steele has always had an interest in educational technology. While studying philosophy at UT Austin in the early 80's Roger bought his first computer, a TI-99. After postponing graduating he moved back to the Rio Grande Valley where he completed his degree in philosophy and then attempted a career as a Juvenile Probation Officer. After six years Steele decided that teaching children was his true calling in life. Steele's career as an educator began with Lake Travis ISD doing assistive technology. Following this assignment was Hill County Middle School in Eanes ISD, as a Technology Specialist. Steele is working on his Masters in Educational Technology from UT Brownsville from the UT Telecampus.

Currently the head of the technology program at Menchaca Elementary School, Steele teaches students to use iMovie software to generate entertaining claymation QuickTime movies on subjects ranging from nutrition, the Alamo, ecology, classic movie reenactments. Steele also uses his experience as a musician to help the students write musical compositions in GarageBand. The music of his students has been played on John Aielli's Eklektikos Show on KUT-FM. The creativity of his students had been scheduled to be showcased in an upcoming feature on the website for Apple Computers. In addition to these movies, Steele's students have used other new media technology to put together various other amazing multimedia projects.

Past winners for this award are Janet Blake of True Light Day Care (2004), Teresa Ferguson of AIR-Interactive for the Arts and Jayne Cravens of the United Nations (2003), Sharron Rush of Knowbility (2002), Rachel Muir of Girlstart (2001), Dave and Jennifer Evans of MAIN (2000) and Dorothy Winburne (1999).

Past nominees for this award are Ilena Abounader (Genaustin.org), Stephen Amos (4empowerment.com), Bianca Bickford (Girlstart), Dennis Borel (Coalition of Texas with Disabilities), Gary Chapman (LBJ School), Perce Collins (Computers for Kids), Tiffany Galligan (Lance Armstrong Foundation), Lisa Goldman (Jokoclub.com), Danny Gomez (Hispanic Connect), Mona Gonzalez (Rivercityyouth.org), Steve Guengerich (Austin Social Ventures), Richard Halpin (American Yourhworks), Wendall Handy (Austin Black Film Festival), Rondella Hawkins (City of Austin), Tim Harrell (Computers for Learning), Josie Hughes (Austin Student Digital Film Festival), Kat Jones (Milkshake Media), Karen Krepps (Net Ingenuity), Jon Lebkowsky (veridiandesign.org), Walter Lenoir (Travis High School), Herman Lessard (Austin Urban League), Adina Levin (EFF-Austin), Nick Lewis (Progressive Blog Alliance), Rich MacKinnon (Austin Wireless City Project), Jan McSorley (ATSTAR), Monica Roesch (TIM Awards), Chip Rosenthal (savemuniwireless.org), Keith Rutledge (Travis High School), Randi Shade (charitygift.com), Trent Sharp (Reagan High School), Ana Sisnett (Austinfree.net), Leroy Smith (Captial Area Training Foundation), Sharon Strover (University of Texas), Artis C. Street (Austin Black Technology Day), Adam Weinroth (EasyJournal), Melvin White (Digital Workforce Academy) and Kevin Zeppernick (Katapultz).

Know someone who is using new media technology to level the playing field between the haves and the have nots? Read the guidelines page for more information on how you can nominate an individual for the 2006 Dewey Winburne Community Service Award.

 

 

 

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