Candice Digby

In honor of International Women’s Day, we wanted to again celebrate our first ever Edge Woman of the Year, Farah Papaioannou, Co-Founder and President of Edgeworx, Inc. This award was created by  State of the Edge in partnership with Edge Computing World. Teams from both organizations worked with a panel of judges to select Papaioannou from ten impressive finalists and presented her with the award at Edge Computing World 2019 conference last December. 

The judges recognized Papaioannou for her outstanding impact on the edge computing industry and her multidimensional leadership in the technology industry including venture capital, edge cloud computing, and open source projects. Under her leadership, Edgeworx has become widely recognized as one of the leaders in the Edge Cloud Computing category and  Papaioannou has been lauded for her relentless work on the ioFog open source project, which is part of the Eclipse Foundation. ioFog is the fastest-growing Eclipse IoT project with core parts of the project being downloaded over 100,000 times a month.

Matthew Trifiro (Vapor IO), Farah Papaioannou (Edgeworx), Gavin Whitechurch (Edge Computing World)

As the edge computing industry grows, innovative leaders like Papaioannou will become the driving force behind the future of data infrastructure and tomorrow’s networking technologies. The Edge Woman of the Year Award seeks  to highlight the important contributions female leaders are making in the industry and the value of their voices in its future evolution.

This year’s Edge Woman of the Year 2020 Award will begin accepting nominations on June 16th. This year’s award ceremony will take place in October at the Santa Clara at Edge Computing World 2020. 

Edge Computing World 2020 will be expanded to include a dedicated two day developer conference on the Developer Stage, which will be the main feature of a 22,000 sq ft exhibition of edge solutions. Programming content for the show will also double in size, from two tracks to four. The conference will emphasize vertical markets,  featuring several one-day vertical summits, including the Industrial Edge Summit, Auto Edge Summit, Cloud Gaming Summit, Retail Edge Summit & Telco Edge Summit. The show will also feature technical summits, including an Edge AI Summit. The annual event is the leading place to share the latest edge information and best practices. 

For more information on Edge Computing World 2020, visit: https://www.edgecomputingworld.com/2020-edge-computing-world-brochure/

For more information on the Women in Edge Award visit: http://www.edgecomputingworld.com/edgewomanoftheyear.

Last December, State of the Edge and Edge Computing World presented edge industry leader Farah Papaioannou with the First Annual Edge Woman of the Year Award 2019.  It was a great honor to present Papaioannou, Co-Founder and President of Edgeworx, Inc., with a trophy at the Edge Computing World on December 11, 2019, hosted in Silicon Valley. 

Listen to Papaioannou discuss edge computing and women in the industry in this exclusive  IT Visionaries interview. 

Matthew Trifiro (State of the Edge), Farah Papaioannou (Edgeworx), Gavin Whitechurch (Edge Computing World)

The Edge Woman of the Year 2019 award recognized Papaioannou for her outstanding impact on the edge computing industry and her multidimensional technology leadership, including venture capital, edge cloud computing, and open-source projects. 

The Edge Woman Award highlights the growing importance of contributions and accomplishments of women in this innovative industry. As the edge industry continues to grow, increasing the diversity of voices of those who drive this industry forward will become essential to its success. By recognizing the work done by female leaders in the field, the creators of this award hope to promote the future growth of female opportunity and leadership in edge.

The organizers encouraged the edge industry to nominate their colleagues, and also encourage qualified women to nominate themselves for the award. Nominees impacting the direction of their organization’s strategy, technology or communications around edge computing, edge software, edge infrastructure or edge systems applied. The “Top Ten Women in Edge” list of finalists alone is an impressive snapshot of the difficult choice faced by the panelists and judges when it came time to award the designation.

Papaioannou is one of those ten outstanding women recognized by the judges for their leadership efforts. Under her leadership, Edgeworx has become widely recognized as one of the leaders in the Edge Cloud Computing category, having also been recognized as a finalist for the Leading Lights Award for the Most Innovative Edge Computing Strategy.

Papaioannou has worked tirelessly to move the edge computing industry forward via the ioFog open source project, which is part of the Eclipse Foundation. ioFog has been promoted to a top-level project at the Eclipse Foundation, and is the fastest-growing Eclipse IoT project with core parts of the project being downloaded over 100,000 times a month.

“I’m honored to have been chosen as Edge Woman of the Year 2019 and to be recognized alongside many inspiring and innovative women across the industry,” said Papaioannou. “I appreciate the recognition and look forward to continuing my work in the industry; together we have a lot to accomplish.”

Don’t forget to listen to Papaioannou discuss edge computing and women in the industry in this exclusive  IT Visionaries interview.