It’s more than four months away, but the 2013 International CES (January 8-11, 2013, in Las Vegas) is already on our horizons. Our sister blog, Brand Name Awards, spotted the call for entries for the Innovations 2013 Design and Engineering Awards.
It turns out this is only one of several CEA awards programs. There is also the International Academy of Web Television Awards (IAWTV); The Technology and Engineering Emmy® Awards; and, of course, the Best Of CES Awards.
The Innovations 2013 Design and Engineering Awards will be awarded in 29 categories, truly covering the waterfront; everything from Gaming Hardware and Accessories to Health and Fitness to Home Appliances to In-Vehicle Navigation/Control/Telematics, and more. New this year are awards in the categories Accessible & Universal Design Technologies, and Tech For A Better World. (The Benthamite in me immediately reacts that the whole CES could be subsumed in that latter category.) The sponsors elaborate (not that helpfully, IMO): “Products that share a common goal or ability to impact the world in a positive way, whether domestically, or on a faraway corner of the globe.” (Again—what at CES wouldn’t fit under this description?)
The International Academy of Web Television Awards (IAWTV) is described as the first award show within the Web television industry to be presented by content creators, for content creators. These awards were inaugurated in 2012. For the most part, the 33 categories cover the areas you’d expect in any sort of TV awards, with the addition of “web”: Best Comedy Web Series, Best Writing (Drama), Best Host (Taped), Best Costume Design, Best Editing, etc. The “webbiness” makes its appearance in categories such as Best Supplemental Content and Best Interactive/Social Media Experience.
If IAWTVs are the new kids on the block, the Technology and Engineering Emmy® Awards are the elder statesmen, having first been presented in 1948. These awards are constrained loosely (if at all) by categories: “…presented to an individual, company, or to a scientific or technical organization for developments and/or standardization involved in engineering technologies which either represent an extensive improvement on existing methods or are so innovative in nature that they materially have affected the transmission, recording, or reception of television.”
“I’ll be here ‘til Thursday! Try the veal!”
With two of the four categories aimed at video in some form or another, they inspired our follow-on post. Anyone who gives out Awards of any sort has a certain amount of moxie, in that they are publicly making a judgment that may or may not stand up very well over time. (One might accurately, if narrowly, define The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences as “The people who thought How Green Was My Valley was a better film than Citizen Kane.”) So, we’re going to take advantage of hindsight, and see how well previous CES Innovations Design and Engineering Awards winners fared in the real world. The CES site lists winners as far back as 2009. In electronics generations (of about 18 months), that’s about the equivalent number of human generations since…well, Citizen Kane. (Or How Green Was My Valley, if you’re sentimental and Welsh).
Next time out: hits, misses, and, as Chou En-Lai famously said of the French Revolution: “Too soon to tell.”
–Greg Marus
I’ve said that least 185833 times. SCK was here