Winning an award might be life-changing, but it is first and foremost a celebration of your achievement, a recognition of your vision and all the hard work you put into your project. We have written a lot about past shortlisted projects and individuals as well as winners – we encourage you to stroll our blog for the interviews and showcase we did in the past. We also thought that adding a few quotes from this year’s jury members about what they are on the lookout for and some from the people behind the great projects would be a good way to convince you to enter this year’s award. While you might not win, getting eyes on your project and free promotion around it might generate that exact lead that you need to take to the next level or find you a new mentor!

From jury members:

A piece of advice from Michael Royce, Executive Director of the New York Foundation for the Arts: ”The jury is international, so the narrative or explanation needs to take that into account.  Individuals with different perspectives and different expertise knowledge all need to understand the main points being put forward that are easily understood.”

Rachel Sebban, CEO at SAGA Invest, and vice president of the Paris chamber of commerce adds, ”I think people who submit their projects have to be passionate, ambitious, curious in life and focus on achieving goals.”

Finally, Jean-Baptiste Costa de Beauregard, CEO of Beaux Arts & Cie, says: ”I’ll be looking for projects that bring something significant to the industry, solve issues, open up new fields of creativity, and offer monetization possibilities for artists and/or cultural institutions and businesses. ”

From past shorlisted projects:

Since being shortlisted in 2021 ”Cuseum is proud to experience continued growth and has added over a hundred new customers to our roster of leading museums and arts organizations in the past year. Amidst all of the flashy and distracting tech buzz that has flooded the sector over the past year, we attribute our growth to our disciplined, focused, customer-centric approach.” – Brendan Ciecko, CEO & Founder | Cuseum

And we pushed this a little further by asking a few questions to Fernando Verboonen – Co-founder of Curio Invest. Their project was part of the shortlist of last year DIIA. Here is our mini interview!

  • How did your project change since your participation in the DIIA?  

We increased our pipeline of assets to tokenized $200M assets. 

  • What is the biggest lesson you learned in the process?  

Education and UX are key.  

We are increasingly improving the way users sign up, onboard and learn how to use our platform. 

  • Is there one mistake you made, and you would do it again because, looking back, it wasn’t a mistake?  

Pricing is key. Users are required to learn a pricing structure in a clean and simple manner. 

  • Word of wisdom for the people who are about to walk in your footsteps and create a project that bridges tech and art?   

 Customer feedback is key. Do surveys, and reach out proactively to users on how to improve onboarding. 

We hope this was inspiring to you, and we can’t wait to see all the amazing projects that will enter the competition this year. Creative minds always find ways to push innovation, technology and art further altogether!

There is still time to be the winner of the 2022 edition. Entries are open till Sunday, July 17th. Don’t wait and enter now!

You can find all the details here.