In June 2010 Empire Entertainment produced the 14th Annual Webby Awards, . This marked the 6th consecutive year Recognition Media LLC chose to partner with Empire on the project which has been referred to as "the Internet’s Highest Honor" by the New York Times. The Webby Awards is the leading international award honoring excellence in web design, creativity, usability and functionality. The event is perhaps best known for allowing winners just 5 words for their acceptance speeches, which has led to many touching, hilarious, and creative moments over the years. On the night of the event, more than 900 of the best and the brightest minds on the net came to Cipriani Wall Street to honor and be honored for their contributions to the World Wide Web.

The gala kicked off with a cocktail reception, during which over 100 Webby winners were invited to film their five-word speeches. These speeches (as well as many of the highlights from the event) were then uploaded to the Webby Awards YouTube channel later that same evening (you can see all of the speeches and highlights at www.youtube.com/webby Empire secured B.J. Novak from “The Office” to host the event. In his opening remarks, Novak proved why he is one of the NBC hit show’s head-writers, remarking on the irony of the New York Times receiving an award from the internet “the very thing that threatened to destroy it”, and adding “who knows, maybe next year we’ll see the environment accepting an award from BP.”Novak's energy and humor throughout the night kept the ceremony light and entertaining, as did some hilarious videos created especially for the event by The Onion and some of the cast from the VH1 hit show, "Best Week Ever".

Novak introduced many winners to deliver their brief speeches from the stage, including Buzz Aldrin, Lisa Kudrow, Arianna Huffington, Animal from the famed "Muppet Show" (who proceeded to attenpt to eat the trophy), Isabella Rossellini, and more.The biggest winners of the evening included the band OK Go! Who were honoured as the Film & Video Artist of the Year, Saturday Night Live’s Amy Poehler (who was presented with the Best Actress Award by husband Will Arnett and friend Jason Bateman), and Zach Galifinakis as Best Actor. In one of the evening’s great moments, PS22, a children’s chorus that had achieved millions of YouTube hits for their renditions of current pop and R&B hits was introduced as Artist of the Year by one of their heroes, Ne-Yo. They then proceeded to bring the house down by performing their take on one of Ne-Yo’s biggest hits “Closer”.

And in one of the most poignant moments at the event in recent years, Jimmy Fallon (who had been honoured as the Webby 2009 Person of Year) presented the 2010 Person of the Year Award to renowned film critic Roger Ebert. Ebert had recently survived a well-chronicled and very difficult battle with cancer, a battle that left him without vocal chords and able to talk only through a computer which now provides his voice. Ebert received a standing ovation from the audience who were not disappointed when Ebert delivered only a three-word acceptance speech: “Veni, Vidi, Vici” (which translates from Latin to “I came, I saw, I conquered”.But perhaps the most exciting and inspiring acceptance speech of the evening was delivered by the 2010 Lifetime Achievement Award winner, Vinton Cerf. Cerf, now Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist for Google, Cerf is widely considered "Father of the Internet”,and got a roar fro the crowd when he took the podium and announced “You ain’t seen nothing yet”. Empire Entertainment again provided oversight of nearly every element of this complex event, including signage, catering, décor, registration, staffing, audio, video, stage set & lighting designs, stage management, and more.

Empire is a leading producer and/or partner on many Awards events each year, including the The Gotham Awards, The PR Week Awards, and The Executive Council Ten Awards. We take pride in clients such as Recognition Media who choose to work with us annually on their most important projects.

The third annual Internet Week New York festival featured over 200 events around New York City between June 7-14, 2010. The founders of the event entrusted Empire Entertainment to produce the many events that took place at the festival headquarters at the Metropolitan Pavilion.The ground floor of the Pavilion was divided into two sides, one of which was set up as a full theater for conferences and presentations, and the other as a digital playground where sponsors including Yahoo!, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, Pepsico, IAB, Southwest Airlines, Aquent, AOL, and many others showed off new technologies, and set up incredible installations that drew the attention of thousands of attendees over the course of the week.

The HQ kicked off on Monday, June 7th with a private preview for dozens of members of the press who turned up and wrote glowing reviews in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and many more national outlets. The preview was immediately followed by an HP press conference where Vyomesh (VJ) Joshi, the head of Hewlett-Packard’s $24 billion printing empire, showed off the company’s brand new ePrint technology that allows users to email documents from smartphones directly to printers that immediately print the attachments.The HQ was then opened to the public who were able to enjoy the HP sponsored Media Center, images on a 17’ x 12’ media wall provided by Yahoo, demonstrations of Microsoft Expression design technology, and many stimulating keynote speakers and panels taking place on the Broadcast Stage while they relaxed with a snack and a beverage in the Pepsico lounge.

Meanwhile, in the theater side of the Pavilion, Microsoft held a two-hour conference highlighting the new features of Microsoft Expression, the company’s design software. After a very quick turnaround in the roon, the Yahoo! “Provoke Summit” featured a keynote presentation by viral marketing guru Ze Frank and stimulating panel discussions on the future of social media. Pepsico also utilized the theater portion of the Pavilion later in the week for the launch of “The #Promise” - an initiative to advance the best ideas for how companies and consumers can work together to address pressing global challenge.

The conference was a full-day live-streamed affair, featuring presentations by GE, MTV, and Nokia, as well as a keynote presentation by Hollywood star Ed Norton in which he announced new online charitable initiative “Crowdrise” which he called “pretty much the most fun you can have making a difference without taking any illegal substances.” “The #Promise” conference also featured live Twitter feeds to the video screens which flanked the stage allowing observers in the audience at the HQ as well as those watching via live stream to comment on what the presenters were addressing, and allowing the speakers to respond. Each day at the HQ culminated with cocktail parties sponsored by IAB, Yahoo!, Blip.com, Ignite, and Internet Week New York itself.Empire oversaw the 3rd Annual Internet Week New York festival headquarters from conception to completion, coordinating registration for the thousands of guests, stage managing and producing all of the presentations in the theater and on the Broadcast Stage, and managing the event sponsors from the design process for their footprints in the space and all of their needs from load-in to load-out.

Empire is proud to produce Internet Week New York, and to provide production support to other festivals including The New York Film Festival, The World Science Festival, The Tribeca Family Festival, and more.

The World Science Festival, co-founded by Brian Greene and Tracy Day has a mission "to cultivate and sustain a general public informed by the content of science, inspired by its wonder, convinced of its value, and prepared to engage with its implications for the future."Following a successful inaugural Festival in 2008 and follow up in 2009, Empire was thrilled to once again be chosen to produce and manage production of over thirty major programs throughout seven New York City & Brooklyn venues in a span of just four days. The 2010 World Science festival culminated with an all-day outdoor Street Festival in and around Washington Square Park.

This years diverse programming appealed to all demographics and included moderated panel discussions with some of the most brilliant scientific minds today. Some of the many participants and moderators in this years' World Science festival programs included John Hockenbery, Sylvia Earle, Marc Hauser, Michio Kaku, Charlie Kaufman, Lawrence Krauss, Robert Krulwich, Oliver Sacks, Richard Besser, Alan Alda, Elizabeth Vargas, Brian Greene, and many others. This year's festival also included an original production of Icarus at the Edge of Time, written by Brian Greene, composed by Philip Glass, and moderated by Liev Schreiber and the popular World Science Festival Street Fair in Washington Square Park.

The response to this year's World Science Festival was phenomenal. Thousands ofpeople participated in the Festival's events and programs, with lines again wrapping around city blocks for possible stand-by tickets to the many sold-out programs.As in previous years, Empire's support on the project included technical and stage management of seven venues including oversight of set design & construction, sound, lighting, video playback and technical direction for programs that were often technically challenging due to the nature of the content and technology.The World Science Festival project is an ideal example of Empire's capability to act as a behind the scenes partner on all types and sizes of programs, including multiple-day festivals.Empire Entertainment was once again proud to serve as the production partner for the World Science Festival.

To celebrate the 10th Anniversary of O Magazine, The Hearst Corporation planned and presented the Live Your Best Life Weekend in New York City. The centerpiece of the weekend’s events was a one night only, one-woman original show featuring none other than Oprah Winfrey herself. For this major undertaking, Hearst Corporation and Executive Producer Scott Sanders Productions partnered with Empire Entertainment to serve as the production company. The original show traced the arc of Oprah’s life & career, was written by Oprah Winfrey and directed by renowned theatrical director George C. Wolfe. The show was be supported by a ‘living magazine’ backdrop of projected visual media created by Batwin + Robin.

The show, performed live before a full house, was also taped for use on oprah.com and potential future broadcast.On the evening of Saturday, May 8, the O Magazine 10th Anniversary show took place and Oprah Winfrey bought down the house with her powerful, moving show. The presentation featured Oprah talking about all aspects of her life and career, and featured much rare imagery on three large projection panels. At the end of the program the Radio City Music Hall Rockettes came onstage to perform a number and brought out a cake that revealed Hugh Jackman who led the entire house in singing “Happy Birthday.” In the midst of planning this already substantial production, Oprah's production company, Harpo, decided to take this opportunity to also bring The Oprah Winfrey Show to Radio City Music Hall. Responding quickly to this major shift in plans, Empire worked closely with the Oprah Winfrey Show to support the extensive needs of their production within a single, unified production design.

In addition to Oprah Winfrey, the show featured a live performance by Christina Aguilera and, for the first time, Dr. Mehmet Oz, Dr. Phil, Suze Orman, and Nate Berkus all shared the stage together on one live program. The show also featured actress Cybill Shepherd and her daughters, Ariel Oppenheim and Clementine Ford, who participated in a "Mother Daughter" fashion segment. For the O Magazine 10th Anniverary show, Empire managed a wide portfolio of responsibilities including production design, technical direction, venue coordination, set design & construction, lighting design, staging and set, audio, lighting, video projection, music supervision, camera and broadcast facilities, all labor coordination, contracting and payroll, performer releases and rights clearances, street permitting, front of house logistics, backstage arrangements and even facilitated a live radio broadcast by Gayle King and Oprah Radio.

Empire is a leading production company in the field of staging live, broadcast events.

Each year Google, Inc. invites kids from all over the U.S. to create their own versions of the Google logo – the ubiquitous six letters that appears on millions of desktops everyday, all over the world. The contest culminates with Google flying 40 finalists to New York City to attend a grand event in their honor. The event is called “Doodle4Google”. This year, Google enlisted Empire Entertainment to design and execute Doodle4Google, one of the marquee events in their marketing event stable. Doodle4Google 2010 began with a celebration of the kids’ work at an awards ceremony at Google’s New York headquarters. A panel of judges, which included Sesame Street star Elmo, gave the kids lots of art-making tips before handing out awards to every child, including the 2010 Doodle4Google winner, 9-year-old Makenzie Melton from El Dorado Springs, Missouri.

At the conclusion of the awards ceremony, the children piled onto luxury charter buses to head up to see their winning entries on display at none other than the Cooper Hewitt Design Museum, where their work would be on public display through August 2010. The final stage of the Doodle4Google celebration took place at Central Park’s Great Hill, which was studded with white tents and colorful balloons (in the Google colors, of course), welcoming the children and their parents to afternoon of delicious eats and family fun activities. Google’s own, official “Doodlers” were on hand to sign doodles and talk art with parents and children alike.For this multi-location, precision-timed event, Empire worked closely with the Google events team to develop detailed creative for each aspect of the three separate events.

Empire provided design and decor, set design, stage and technical management, tenting, permitting, catering, activities and coordination of the live events in each location.

Each year TIME publishes the Time 100: A global list of the 100 most influential people in the world. In conjunction with this highly-anticipated editorial event, TIME hosts an exclusive Gala event in New York City attended by many current and past TIME 100 honorees, celebrities, entertainers and world leaders. Heavily covered by global media, The TIME 100 Gala is one of the highest profile newsmaker events in the world. This year's TIME 100 Gala took place on May 4, 2010 at Frederick P. Rose Hall, home of Jazz at Lincoln Center. The event consisted of multiple red carpets, an intimate cocktail reception, a seated dinner and program that combined toasts, speeches, performances, and a cocktail party following the dinner.

Performers at the TIME 100 Gala included Prince, Taylor Swift, Saturday Night Live’s Andy Samberg as well as remarks by President Bill Clinton, Governor Sarah Palin, Dr. Abe - singled out by TIME as one of Haiti’s “heroes”, Neil Patrick Harris, Ben Stiller, Elton John and others.For this high-stature event, all of the evening's production components require seamless execution and Empire was proud to once again assist the TIME Events team led by Christine Rosa, Executive Director of Event Marketing and Events Director Robin Bigelli, as Event Producer. Empire’s responsibilities ranged from securing the performing talent to managing venue, catering (provided by Great Performances), design & décor of all spaces, branding, step & repeat, staging, sound, lighting, video projection, video documentation, live media feed, talent and presenter coordination, stage management, staffing and security.Visit time.com to view a brief summary of this year's Time 100 http://www.time.com/time/video/player/0,32068,83166221001_1987389,00.html

Empire Entertainment is a leading producer of high profile media events and is proud to again have been chosen to produce this remarkable program for TIME.

In May 2010, Empire Entertainment returned to Alice Tully Hall to produce the Film Society of Lincoln Center's annual Chaplin Award Tribute Gala. This year's star-studded Gala, the 37th annual, honored Academy Award winner Michael Douglas. The Film Society's Annual Gala Tribute began in 1972 and honored Charles Chaplin – who returned to the US from exile to accept the commendation. Since then, the award has honored many of film's visionary talents, including Alfred Hitchcock, Billy Wilder, Laurence Olivier, Federico Fellini, Elizabeth Taylor, Bette Davis, James Stewart, Robert Altman, Martin Scorsese, Diane Keaton, Meryl Streep, and in 2009, Tom Hanks. This year's gala evening started with VIP cocktails with the honoree in the Hauser Patron's Lounge in Alice Tully Hall and was followed by a seated dinner in the glass-walled atrium.

For the dinner, Empire worked closely the Film Society of Lincoln center events team and with Gala Co-Chair Liz Swig to design a unique, Lucite table with internal LED lighting and a low, geometric centerpiece that contained florals. The dinner décor was implemented fully by Empire Entertainment.Following dinner the 1000+ guests entered the Starr Theater for the all-star program produced by Empire Entertainment. The program began with remarks by this year's event committee chair Ann Tenenbaum and by Film Society Executive Director Mara Manus and Program Director Richard Pena. Then came a career retrospective montage featuring work from Michael Douglas' past films and ending with a clip of the forthcoming, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps. NBC Nightly News anchor, Brian Williams, delivered the first tribute of the evening. This was followed by film clips and tributes by writer/director Milos Forman, actress Erika Christensen, writer/director Curtis Hanson, actor Tobey Maguire, actor/comedian Danny DeVito, and actor Frank Langella.

One highlight of the evening was a live performance by Jimmy Buffett, who performed "Margaritaville" and "He Went to Paris." Buffett's performance was followed by remarks by Michael's wife, actress Catherine Zeta-Jones and by his father, Kirk Douglas, who presented the Chaplin Award to his son. Following the tribute program the guests returned to the atrium for a DJ'ed after party with sponsored drinks by 42 Below and Stella Artois.For this high stature event Empire served as overall event producer and was responsible for overseeing creative and coordinating program participation for all participating presenters and talent, working with Lincoln center to provide necessary production design and supervision, creating the run of show and stage managing the event and working with the various film clips and graphics to integrate them into the program. Empire also designed and implemented all aspects of the red carpet and present arrivals, press and step & repeat, VIP cocktail party, dinner design & décor, catering, and after-party design including DJ booking.The program was immensely successful and the client, all of the participating presenters and Michael Douglas were ecstatic with the results.

Empire is a leading producer of high-profile award and tribute programs and is frequently engaged to present programs with international stature talent & celebrities.

When Healing the Divide and The Tibet Center invited His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama of Tibet to again present his teachings in New York City, they engaged Empire Entertainment to serve as the production company. Following the success of His Holiness’ visit to New York in October 2007, Empire Entertainment eagerly agreed to return. Working in partnership with Healing the Divide, The Tibet Center and Radio City Music Hall, Empire worked on every aspect of the program including set design, logistics and technical production. Over the course of three days, His Holiness' delivered six, two-hour sessions on the topics of “A Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life” by Shantideva, and Nagarjuna’s “Commentary on Bodhicitta”. The historic teachings drew full houses for three consecutive days and the public talk entitled “Awakening the Heart of Selflessness”, was introduced by Richard Gere, and was completely sold out.Each session was simultaneously translated into three different languages: Cantonese, Mandarin and Korean. In addition to its role as producer, Empire was able to secure sponsors to donate services in order to keep event costs to a minimum. ABC Carpet & Home generously donated carpeting and staging items while Turning Star discounted their fireproofing services for all flammable items. Empire coordinated the briadcast-quality recording of each session with a four camera, high-definition video package which included one robo-cam to capture His Holiness’ expressions up close. Empire is honored to have had another opportunity to present His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama at Radio City Music Hall. Empire is a leading producer of major public and civic events and programs.

TEDxTokyo 2010, held on May 15th at the Kagaku Miraikan in Odaiba, featured performances and presentations by a wide variety of global innovators including Musician and Composer Jake Shimabukuro, Filmmaker Jin Tatsumura, Brain Scientist Ken Mogi, as well as Techno-Illusionist Marco Tempest.Empire Entertainment Japan is proud to have supported TEDxTokyo 2010 through production of the debut performance of Marco Tempest's Magic Projection, and through helping to secure Symantec Corporation as a Core Partner of TEDxTokyo.Marco Tempest's performance of Magic Projection leveraged the latest application of augmented reality and projection mapping techniques in a perfect fusion of entertainment and technology. p;One website's review stated, "When the robots come to enslave us, Marco will be the only man we can trust to negotiate a truce."TEDx was created in the spirit of TED's "ideas worth spreading" mission, with TEDx events planned and coordinated independently on local basis. The concept has gone viral, and events in more than 60 countries, and a vast number of cities and communities have already been held or are in formative stages. The goal is to spark deep discussions and connections in groups both intimate and expansive.If you would like to find out more about the TEDxTokyo, please visit www.tedxtokyo.com

The Big Lunch, established by The Eden Project in 2009, is an annual event which encourages people to sit down with their neighbors for lunch on one day of the year, in a simple act of friendship and community.Over 750,000 people took part in the inaugural event, but for 2010 The Big Lunch wanted to blow past that initial benchmark and record over 3 million participants in the nationwide July event.Generating heavy media exposure in anticipation of the 2010 event was critical to achieving The Big Lunch's challenging goal of over 3 million participants. The Big Lunch called on Empire Entertainment Japan for a solution to their challenge. Empire enlisted the support of revolutionary 3D 'Trick Artist' Kurt Wenner to create an original artwork that would deliver the world of "The Big Lunch" to viewers and news outlets.

In designing this original work, Kurt Wenner placed emphasis on not only the painted artwork, but also the interactive element of the artwork, helping to underline the community-oriented theme that The Big Lunch represents. The final artwork featured a picnic scene where Londoners interacted with the floating food and other elements picture within the arwork.Kurt Wenner completed the work at a live event at Aberdeen Road in London, and the public, press, and social media response to the work was immediate and overwhelming, with one outlet reporting, "Walking the streets can be incredibly dull. Walking the streets where artist Kurt Wenner has walked before you is generally anything but. Wenner 3D piece for The Big Lunch's kickoff is more than 16 feet by 16 feet and features the largest, most beautiful picnic lunch we've ever seen. This is one sidewalk we wouldn't mind tripping over."