EUROPRIX Multimedia Festival, now third time in ever so wonderful and hospitable Graz, was once again unforgettable. Populated by members of the 20 nominee teams, digital media industry representatives, lecturers and students the three days were filled with energy and creativity plus all other fun stuff.


On Thursday the festival was opened at the regional TV-station with an exhibition of nominee projects and get-together. Friday morning I participated in a project consortium meeting, and then moderated the Academic Lounge with my friend Jak Boumans, secretary general of European Academy of Digital Media. We had most awarding discussion and networking with colleagues from universities cross Europe.

In the afternoon we joined other festival participants for the "4 SCREENS 4 YOU CREATING CONTENTS" event with inspiring keynotes by Alois Ferscha (Research Studio Pervasive Computing), Juha Kaario (Nokia Research Centre), Charly Pall (Google) and Madanmohan Rao (Mobile Monday Global), moderated by Latif Ladid (IPV6 Forum) and tasted with excellent discussion.

Friday evening we opened another nominee project exhibition at Kunsthaus Graz, then young people disappeared to Graz by night and elderly gentlemen like me went to hotel.

Saturday was the most important part of the festival. All day long we saw the nominee teams present their projects. This has always been the most giving content for me; after having seen all the entries already during the jury work and having fell in love with a number of them it is a hilarious experience to see the young talents showing them alive.

Saturday evening witnessed the most exiting part of the festival: The EUROPRIX Awards gala. The winners this year are:

• Online/Web projects: Donkeypedia, Netherlands
• Mobile applications: Showtime!, Austria
• Games: Swords & Soldiers, Netherlands
• Category Interactive Computer Graphics: Vuvox, Israel
• Content Tools & Interface Design: Flow-er, Israel
• Interactive installations: Akustisch, Switserland
• Digital Video & Animations: Desconstruct, a stereoscopic experiment, Germany

Overall winner: Swords & Soldiers, Netherlands

The Special Award for the project with the best business potential went to Moogo.com (Finland), and The Adventures of Tinger (Germany) got the Special Jury Mention for a game with a high level of interactive storytelling.

Donkeypedia also won the Nokia Ubimedia MindTrek Award in October.

More info about winners and nominees (europrix.org)
More about EUROPRIX in this blog

During the festival it was also agreed that the cooperation between EUROPRIX and School of Art and Media will be continued in many ways. EUROPRIX will be present at our International Week and Tampere Art Factory Festival in May.

Pictured: The Moogo.com team (Finland) was awarded with The Best Business Potential Award, from left to right Antti Ala-Ilkka, Mikko Nurminen, Kimmo Pekari