2018 Visual 1st awards go to Insta360, CaptureLife, Embody Digital and Pixsy

GaryPageau , , , ,

At this year’s just-concluded edition of Visual 1st (visual1st.biz), the premier conference focused on promoting innovation and partnerships in the photo and video ecosystem, a panel of high-powered industry experts presented the four Visual 1st Awards to the most outstanding among 30 products competing in this year’s show-and-tell demo sessions.

The 2018 Visual 1st Awards winners are:

Best of Show winner, Insta360 not only offers a broad range of consumer and professional 360 and action cameras, but also powerful apps for consumers to easily edit and enhance their footage.

Awards Judge Robert Blumberg commented, “We spent over an hour reviewing each of the show and tell participants. We probably considered 75% of them for one award or another. But when it came to the Best in Show award the decision was remarkably easy. We each answered the question: which product would we most like to use ourselves? And the answer was unanimous: Insta360.”

The Best Business Potential Award recipient, CaptureLife broadens business opportunities for labs and professional photographers by making available to them a variety of digital and mobile products that they can offer their clients in addition to the traditionally offered printed photo products.

According to Awards Judge Gary Pageau, “When looking at the various entries, CaptureLife stood out because of the complete process they offer for business solution for labs, for photographers and for different businesses in the imaging chain. It was clear to see the business case for generating new revenues in the CaptureLife ecosystem!”

The Best Technology Award application, Embody Digital offers a variety of 3D technologies that enable the creation of digital avatars for communication and commerce, including games, virtual try-on, virtual reality, social media, AI, bots and natural language interfaces.

Judge Andy Kelm summarizes his take on Embody Digital, “We found that Embody Digital stood out among a very competitive group of technology-oriented entrants. Not only is the Embody technology novel and innovative, but we also found it to be extremely timely given the significant interest and investment going into AR and VR. We see a wide range of commercial options from skins & emotes in gaming platforms to B2B opportunities like Amazon Sumerian, and we look forward to seeing what the Embody Digital team does next.”

The winner of the Special Recognition Award, Pixsy offers photographers and other photo rights owners a set of tools and services to counteract illegal use of their intellectual property.

According to Judge Marcel van der Heijden, “Protecting the rights of media owners is a costly and complex process that today can only be done effectively by large organizations. Pixsy has turned copyright protection into a scalable, manageable, accessible and ultimately profitable process for individual and small business content creators. This Special Recognition Award is for the company’s tireless efforts to make copyright protection possible for everyone.”

The judging panel for the Visual 1st Awards is composed of prominent representatives of the hi-tech media, intellectual property and investment communities, whose endorsement is so critical to app developers. This year’s judges were:

  • Andy Kelm, Managing Director, Palmarés Advisors
  • Robert Blumberg, Managing Director, Soquel Group
  • Marcel van der Heijden, Partner, Speedinvest
  • Gary Pageau, Editor, The Dead Pixels Society

The companies who competed for the Visual 1st awards this year by presenting their products to the conference participants in onstage “Show and Tell” sessions were: