LIVEdigitally - living digitally (Ld)

Last night at the Fillmore in San Francisco, WIRED put on its annual Rave Awards event, celebrating leading innovators across a wide spectrum of topics. The editors from WIRED nominated visionaries in categories such as Scientist, Tech Innovator, Architect, and introduced their newest category, Blogger. While WIRED is often looking at technology and innovation that is likely to appear by 2050, the Awards was a refreshing look at what's in play in 2005.

This was the first time the LIVEdigitally team made it to the Rave Awards, now in its sixth year, and we walked in not really knowing much to expect. The brand-spanking new Range Rover Sport parked outside was a good start, as it's not often we see a $75,000 SUV in the new signature Halloween Orange color. Once inside, we found ourselves in the middle of, for lack of a better phrase, a large party.

The Fillmore, one of San Francisco's legendary live venues, has a large hall, with a huge stage, a bar which spans the left side of the hall, and an upstairs lounge area. WIRED designated upstairs as a VIP area, which was a little more secluded and quiet, but missing the tasty hors d'oeuvres served downstairs. Around the hall were a dozen or so plasmas, and up on stage was a huge screen, with all the displays showing a looping video slideshow of all the nominees, and the winners.

In an interesting twist to an Awards event, the winners of the Rave Awards were announced several hours before the actual party. Here are the winners:

The Rave Awards
Film: Brad Bird
Business: Shigeyuki Hori
Science: Steven Squyres
Medicine: Robert Lanza
Architecture: Rem Koolhaas
Music: Danger Mouse
Television: Blair Harrison
Blogs: Kevin Sites
Books: Jeff Hawkins
Industrial Design: Burt Rutan
Technology: Mark Fletcher
Art: Jennifer & Kevin Mccoy
Games: Pete Parsons

Over the next few hours, the Bay Area's technologists, designers, and industry influencers enjoyed the delicious delicables, the open bar, and some great music. Danger Mouse (also the winner of the Music category) DJ'ed an amazing set, we even heard the Amelie Soundtrack in the mix! Later, 20 or so men and women adorned in colored robes took the stage, carrying trumpets, a French horn, and even a harp. The Polyphonic Spree is the name of the group, although I overheard a reference to "The Revenge of Band Camp" during their lively performance.

Overall, it was a fun night, and we're looking forward to the 2005 WIRED NextFest, coming this summer to Chicago!

Here's our photo gallery of the festivities: