Achievements of US domestic diva honored at the DLD conference in Munich

On the opening day (January 20, 2008) of the future conference DLD (Digital – Life – Design), American entrepreneur Martha Stewart received the Aenne Burda Award for Creative Leadership. The award was presented by last year’s laureate, Flickr founder Caterina Fake. It recognizes women in the media who develop a unique vision and implement it.

“I consider it an honor to give this award to Martha Stewart because she is a symbol of everything the Aenne Burda Award stands for: She inspires women all around the world to follow their dreams and be creative. A true role model, Martha Stewart has created an exceptionally successful company by following this strategy,” said Caterina Fake.

This is the third time that the Aenne Burda Award for Creative Leadership has been presented to one of the leading ladies of the digital world. The first laureate, in 2006, was Google manager Marissa Mayer. The award is a tribute to the visionary entrepreneur Aenne Burda, an icon of post-war Germany, who died in November 2005. Starting in 1949, she turned a small publishing house into the world’s largest fashion publishing company. In 1987, in the times of the Cold War, she and her Burda fashion magazine managed to overcome the Iron Curtain and expand to Russia.

Aenne Burda’s ideas have arrived in the digital age with burdastyle.com, an online community launched during last year’s DLD conference. At currently 32,000 users and 1.6 million page impressions, the US-based open source platform has been doing very well in its first year. Users of the BurdaStyle community share copyrights for designs and sewing patterns. Successfully bringing do-it-yourself content to the multi-media world is once again proof of the pioneering spirit represented by women like Aenne Burda and Martha Stewart.

Martha Stewart founded “Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia” in 1999. In the United States, she is considered “Queen of Domesticity”, providing a comprehensive offering of services in the areas of gardening, cooking, decorating and fashion. With attractive information marketed to media outlets and different formats addressing a wide audience, Martha Stewart meets the demands of today’s variety of modern lifestyles.

Images available for download at www.burda.de/dld.

background information:

From January 20 to 22, 2008, the international innovation conference DLD (Digital – Life –Design) takes place at the HVB Forum in Munich. For the fourth time, the event’s chairmen, publisher Dr. Hubert Burda and high-tech investor Dr. Yossi Vardi, gather leading global experts, decision-makers and pioneers from the digital world, the media, arts and design for an exchange of ideas. Information is updated daily and available at: www.dld-conference.com.