France, Brazil and Japan Take Home Prizes for Web Design at WIF 2010 in France (A069)

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"I’m thinking of you." Such was the theme of WIF 2010 (Webdesign International Festival). This top-level, 24-hour digital creation contest brought together the world’s top 35 web design teams from June 3 to 5, 2010, in Limoges, France.

Chicago, July 30, 2010 (word count: 759)
"I’m thinking of you." Such was the theme of WIF 2010 (Webdesign International Festival). This top-level, 24-hour digital creation contest brought together the world’s top 35 web design teams from June 3 to 5, 2010, in Limoges, France. Each team was to build a web solution to communicate their presence to a loved one, in the context of mobility. France, Brazil and Japan took the top three places and more than €75,000 in cash prizes and equipment was awarded during the festival.

The winners’ list unveiled by the international jury met all expectations. Following a closing ceremony placed under the sign of the digital revolution, WIF 2010 President of Honour Remy Bourganel, design director and head of user experience at Orange Vallée and co-director of ENSAD’s mobile digital ID search lab, announced the verdict. France’s Bobbie Team came first, winning €15,000, followed by runners-up Vitrolaspin from Brazil and the Japanese team "o(_____v(__w__)v___ _)_". The full list of winners and their creations can be viewed at www.webdesign-festival.com/2010/-wif2010-winners-.

The Great Hopes Prize, rewarding a student group, went to Argentina’s "Emedele." The Originality Prize was awarded to "Kaptein Internett" from Norway. New in 2010, the Public Prize (via a web app) helped Italy’s "Ochodurando" attract the audience’s favor.

WIF, an internation gathering
This year, more than 40 nationalities took part in the pre-selection phases. On the occasion of the 2010 edition, nine countries joined the franchised territories network. Local, physical pre-selections were held by web agencies Dogstudio in Belgium and Nel Segno dell’8 in Italy, universities Tama School Art in Japan, Educacion IT in Argentina and IGM in Norway, the cities of Obninsk in Russia and Nabeul in Tunisia, and the Filigrane Agency, an expert in French/Chinese relations, all of which helped WIF extend its community over the five continents.

WIF DEMOS: a business night full of surprises
The first WIF DEMOS gave eight start-ups the opportunity to present a technical, marketing or everyday use innovation to a demanding audience made up of investors, venture capital players and potential buyers. A jury (Orange Vallée, Groupama Innovation, France Angels, Legrand, Groupe Réflect) voted for the most innovative 2010 demonstration. Les Editions Volumiques, sponsored by Etienne Mineur, garnered substantial support with their two interactive games, Pawn and Pirates. Keeping with the studio’s spirit, both games combine the fun of a board game and an interaction via modern interfaces.

WIF CONGRESS: Top-level conferences
WIF conferences and workshops, organized by the Elopsys competitiveness cluster, gathered more than 400 viewers during the three-day period. The HTLM5 workshop conducted by Peter Lubbers of the Kaazing Company was highly successful.

According to their respective interests, viewers were able to learn about interface prototyping with Fred Beecher of Evantage Consulting, new developments from CSS with Dave Shea, as well as attend a much-appreciated address by Stéphane Hugon, a sociologist and researcher at the Sorbonne’s CEAQ, in which he spoke about societal change and technological innovation. On the topic of body and interface, Etienne Mineur of Studio Incandescence captivated the audience with an address about a return to tangible matters throughout the media.

In marketing and business model terms, Manuel Diaz of Groupe Reflect presented an introduction to attention marketing, which sets the consumer at the heart of the process. Also, Jean-Noël Portugal of Intuneo made a clear, concise presentation during which he took stock of web business models and gave highly informed advice to project leaders.
Benoît Drouillat, president of Designers Interactifs, and Olivier Marcellin of Textualis, expanded on information design and the online press, topics that were both further explored during a round table conducted by Sébastien Genvo, a teacher and researcher at Limoges University.

The WIF President of Honour Remy Bourganel from Orange Vallée ended this conference cycle with a presentation on the mobile communication models to follow the Internet/Telecom convergence. There were also numerous other conferences, coming soon via podcast on the WIF website.

Quick facts about WIF:
- Nine organizing countries, with one final competition held in Limoges, France
- An online community of close to 3,000 professional web designers
- More than 15,000 visitors from 80 territories and 65,000 pages accessed on the WIF website
- Real-time web really took off, ranking #WIF in 3rd position of French trends (with a frequency above 10,000 tweets during the closing evening session)
- The France3 Limousin Poitou-Charentes television station recorded more than 50 live broadcasts at WIF that were posted to the www.france3.fr website
- Close to 250 traffic sources listed
- In three days, more than 300 emails sent and 17 publications on the WIF Facebook page
For more information, please contact:
LIMOUSIN EXPANSION
Aude Bourliataux
Webdesign International Festival
Immeuble Cassiopée
Parc d’Ester
26, rue Atlantis
87069 Limoges cedex
FRANCE
Tel.: +(33) 5 87 21 21 82
Fax : +(33)5 87 21 21 79
E-mail: a-bourliataux@webdesign-festival.com
Web: www.webdesign-festival.com