Each year, The Webby Awards honors a special set of Webby Special Achievement Winners—individuals or organizations who have made extraordinary strides on the Internet. From Webby Person of the Year Susan Fowler, who authored the blog post about company-wide sexual misconduct at Uber; to Webby Film & Video Person of the Year Steven Soderbergh, who released the interactive movie app Mosaic, the 2018 Special Achievement Winners expand the possibilities of online work.
See our Special Achievement Winners below, who were honored on stage at the 22nd Annual Webby Awards!
Meet the 2018 Special Achievement Winners
Meet the superstars who are making and breaking all the rules on the Internet—to the benefit of us all. Get to know the 22nd Annual Webby Special Achievement Winners below.
A legendary comedian, Adam Sandler released multiple, high-quality Netflix original films over just a couple of years—including The Meyerowitz Stories, The Week Of, The Ridiculous Six, Sandy Wexler, and more.
Sandler’s stellar performances and impressive roster of films have drawn massive attention to Netflix as the next great frontier for creating and releasing complex, new work, and the power of streaming platforms to bring us his unique storytelling.
David Harbour has taken the Internet by storm since 2016 with the premiere of the streaming economy’s breakout series Stranger Things, with Harbour at its helm.
His performance as the complex Jim Hopper not only drives the show, it illustrates the power of online platforms to tell genre-bending stories.
What’s more, Harbour uses social media to connect and bring great experiences to his fans. Fun Fact: He once challenged a fan to gain over 125K retweets in exchange for a wedding ordained by Harbour himself. It was a lovely reception.
Aside from serving as Chief Lizard Wrangler (go on, look it up), Mitchell Baker has shaped the free and open Internet since 1996.
As a key player in the Mozilla project, and founding chairperson of the Mozilla Foundation, Baker helped actualize Open Source Internet applications—cool, huh? Beyond that, she’s helped push for the idea that the Internet should belong to all users, and not a corporation.
Susan Fowler made a major impact with her blog “Reflecting on a very, very strange year at Uber,” which exposed a deep-seated corporate culture of sexual misconduct and misogyny. The blog resulted in a public reckoning across the tech industry and reverberated throughout the culture at large.
Fowler’s fearless act did more than call attention to the abuses and backlash she received at Uber. It acted as a necessary spark to help fuel the #MeToo movement, addressing the mistreatment and abuse of women across the globe.
Susan Fowler is a shining example of the power and potential of the Internet to drive positive social change.
There are many reasons we love Steven Soderbergh: his incredible films like Traffic, The Oceans Trilogy, and of course his ability to use the Internet to blaze trails in filmmaking—as with his phenomenal work, shot entirely on an iPhone, Unsane.
Soderbergh placed the power of cinema into viewers’ hands with his latest initiative, the Mosaic app, which breaks his HBO hit of the same name into interactive pieces, allowing users to control their viewing experience.
By combining filmmaking, mobile, and great user experience, Soderbergh has carved a path for both media makers and audiences alike to use mobile apps to build theatre-worthy experiences.
Laura Linney has been capturing our hearts across stage and screen, from her roles in Tony-winning Broadway hits like The Crucible and last season’s The Little Foxes, to (of course, fan favorite) Love Actually. And now she’s blowing our minds on the Netflix hit Ozark.
Linney is an incredible talent, which comes through clearly in her role as Wendy Byrde in Ozark. Linney delivers her performance with depth and grace, demonstrating the power of the Internet to showcase great storytelling.
Meet the 2018 Special Achievement Winners
Meet the superstars who are making and breaking all the rules on the Internet—to the benefit of us all. Get to know the 22nd Annual Webby Special Achievement Winners below.
Philadelphia Eagles’ Chris Long is this year’s Webby Best Athlete for serving as a guiding light following the horrific white supremacist attacks in Charlottesville by donating his entire salary to fund scholarships and educational equity programs.
Long also uses his online platform to stand up for former NFL colleague Collin Kapernick, and to call attention to his incredible foundation, Waterboys.org which successfully funds wells in Tanzania.
A true innovator and artist, FKA twigs used the wide reach of social media as the home for her Instagram magazine AVANTGarden, which uses each issue to explore themes from braided hair, to “dream warriors.”
A tech-savvy artist, FKA twigs has also gifted audiences with the surprise release of her EP “M3LL155X” and its accompanying short film, while using the Internet as a creative platform for unique, experimental, and trailblazing music and art.
Fun Fact: FKA twigs started her career as a backup dancer in London at age 17 (which is why she’s able to bust amazing moves in Apple’s “Welcome Home by Spike Jonze.”).
Jesse Williams is no stranger to using digital technology to create positive change, entertain, and even deliver heart-stopping performances (hey, GREY’s Anatomy!). His charades app BLeBRiTY and his Ebroji keyboard invite diverse audiences into the gaming world and Internet culture with great experiences and creativity.
Williams is also doing other great work on the Internet, from connecting students with scholarships through Scholly, to his work with the Advancement Project, and calling attention to the school-to-prison pipeline.
Culinary guru David Chang (pictured, right) released his Netflix series Ugly Delicious in February 2018, and it quickly rose as one of the most popular shows in the streaming economy.
The eight-episode series—focusing on the creation and re-creation of cuisine from pizza, to tacos, to fried chicken—opens up a larger dialogue on food and authenticity, and brings the culinary contributions of Asian communities to the forefront of conversations about global cooking.
The use of multiple storytelling techniques, like narrative storytelling, animation, and roundtable discussions, allows Chang to share great stories of food and history to the delight of online audiences.
Watch our Webby Winners, including all of our Webby Special Achievement Award Winners, at the 22nd Annual Webby Awards, available on demand at wbby.co/watch
