The video captures the segment of the 2024 Misty Awards ceremony where the host announces the 20th place winner, Noelle Russell, and explains the award’s eligibility rules. The Misty Awards recognize the top 20 participants each year; winners can only receive the award once, while runner‑ups (top 44) may reapply until they win. Noelle is then invited to speak. She thanks the organizers, recounts her career that began at Amazon Alexa where she built over 100 applications in the first year, and emphasizes the importance of device‑software integration. She highlights her work commercializing AI and cloud technologies at Microsoft, her passion for hardware showcased at CES, and the role of neural processing units (NPUs) in making AI more accessible. She expresses gratitude to the hardware community and invites further connections.
Chapters
We're going to start with the 20th place winner. Every single person in the top 20 has won a Misty's Award. Let's be very clear about that. If you're in the top 20, you have won a Misty's Award. We have this other thing called runner-ups, which is the top 44. Every— if you, if you're in the top 24, top 44, and you've never won a Misty's Award, you can keep reapplying every year until you win one. Once you've won a Misty's Award, unfortunately, you can never win one again. You can only win a Misty's Award once, unfortunately. But, but But it makes no difference because in the long term, anyone who's in the top 20, it's all the same. You've won a Misty's Award and that's that. The only reason why we do this whole top 20 thing is just to make it a little bit easier to award prizes, these funny little prizes that we like to have. And this is really not a big deal. We try not to make a big deal out of it, but today we're gonna make a little bit of a big deal out of it, starting with number 20. Commercializing AI and cloud technologies at Microsoft, as well as advocating for AI democratization and digital literacy, Noelle, Noelle, are you on the line?
Congratulations. I was like, commercializing AI, that sounds like me.
It's you. Go ahead and say a few words. We're going to keep you to less than a minute.
Oh, absolutely. Well, thanks for having me. This is amazing. Someone sent me a note and was like— I was like, surely no. But my career started at Amazon Alexa. I'm a builder at heart. I built over 100 applications for that device. In its first year. And what made that special to me is it made me realize how very important device software integration from a team perspective to the hardware and software perspective really was. I've now made CES my home. I love the devices side of the world because I really do think it allows us to make AI accessible to more people. As you can see in my background, I have lots of devices around me all the time. Accessibility is made possible through the ability for us to have these neural processing units and NPUs offload a lot of this work. So very grateful for all of you that are in this world of building hardware that allows us to run software that serves more people. So thanks for having me. It's amazing and I would love to connect. So thank you.
