The 81st Academy Awards ceremony, presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, honored the best films of 2008 and took place on February 22, 2009, in Hollywood, California. During the ceremony, Academy Awards (commonly referred to as Oscars) were presented. It was televised by ABC, directed by Roger Goodman, and hosted by Hugh Jackman.
"Slumdog Millionaire" won 8 awards, including Best Picture. Other winners included "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" with 3 awards, "The Dark Knight", and "Milk" with 2 awards, and "Departures", "The Duchess", "La Maison en Petits Cubes", "Man on Wire", "The Reader", "Smile Pinki", "Toyland", "Vicky Cristina Barcelona", and "WALL•E" with 1 award. The telecast garnered almost 37 million viewers in the United States.
After teaching himself computer programming in the 2000s, Shefik secured his first position in the field of Internet Technology, as Technical Producer at the internationally renowned magazine TIME and its website time.com. His primary duties involved developing web-based applications, which served millions of website visitors daily. In addition, Shefik was tasked with conducting regular training sessions with key members of the editorial staff, to educate them on the proper usage and best practices of the technology that Shefik developed and maintained on a daily basis. As such, he engaged with staff across TIME's international bureaus, and aligned himself with the understanding of cultural conditions.
Coincidentally, while Shefik worked at TIME, Barack Obama became the 44th President of the United States. Shefik was already in the process of developing a web-based live blogging system for usage at TIME (an idea he proposed). Therefore, the United States presidential election of 2008 served as a launch for the live blogging system. Shefik's development proved to be successful, as his idea came to fruition. Not only did he produce the live blog coverage for the presidential and vice-presidential debates, but also for the historic election night coverage itself, where Obama was hailed as the 1st United States President of African-American descent. For the live blogging system, Shefik incorporated technologies such as PHP and MySQL, utilizing the content management system WordPress.
Due to the success of the live blogging system, Shefik produced coverage of other highly trafficked events at TIME, some of which also became cross-promotions with the editorial teams at the sister magazines People and Entertainment Weekly. This included Shefik producing TIME's live coverage of the 81st Academy Awards, working with journalists Kate Betts, Richard Corliss, and James Poniewozik to bring up-to-the-minute commentary.
Credits
- Technical Producer: Shefik
Last Updated: January 16, 2024
