Amy Koumis
Amy Koumis was a talented young woman whose warmth, creativity and imagination was vibrantly felt by all who met her during her time as a volunteer and participant at IDC 2013. Not long after IDC, Amy tragically passed away on August 21st, just shy of her 24th birthday.
Amy’s mother, Lisa Koumis, said that her trip to the IDC conference was one of the best experiences of her life. Amy presented her project on an Augmented Reality Pop-up Book at the IDC workshop on Bridging Books: Printed Media as a Support for Digital Experiences.
We hope to establish a scholarship fund in Amy’s name to support the participation of other students at future IDC conferences.
Amy Koumis Biography
Amy was a very multitalented person. She had a passion for writing and she was the youngest winner in the history of the Pikes Peak Writers fiction contest for the Pikes Peak Writers Conference in the Young Adult Fiction category at age 16. She wrote four young adult novels and several short stories as well; see an excerpt from the book Emidrion.
Amy loved gourmet cooking, hiking with her labrador retriever Lavinia and her golden retriever Cody, reading books, sewing, running, yoga and travel. She had a fantastic time at the IDC conference as a volunteer; she loved all the activities and she enjoyed making new friends.
She went to the University of Denver in Colorado and she had a double major in Emergent Digital Practices and Studio Art. Amy was excellent at web design and multimedia projects. She loved painting, pottery, and photography and she had an overactive imagination. For a college ceramics project, she made 428 ceramic mice and put them all over campus. Each mouse had a hole with a piece of paper giving contact info to a website so people could write her and tell her where they found the mouse and if how they felt about it! She had received a full scholarship to go to Burren College of Art in Ireland this Fall and she would have been a senior this year.
Amy’s website: amykoumis.com | presentations on Prezi
Personal Reflection from Lisa Koumis (Amy’s mother)
Amy passed away just eight days before her 24th birthday. As her mom, I appreciated her great sense of humor and her amazing artistic abilities and I bemoaned her love of clothes (she was thrilled with the stores in N.Y.) and her crazy boyfriends.
I can’t begin to thank Nitin Sawhney enough for his assistance in helping Amy attend the conference when she had some difficulties putting her trip together. Without him she would not have been at IDC. Also, thanks to Emily Reardon, Meagan Bromley and Jennifer Conley Darling who were wonderful to Amy throughout the conference when she worked as a volunteer.
Amy told me her trip to N.Y.C. for the IDC conference was one of the best experiences of her life. She had never visited N.Y.C. before and we went sightseeing in all of her free time. She especially loved the night IDC bused everyone to the World’s Fair Grounds and she got to go in a fun house and hug Cookie Monster. I came with her on the trip at the last minute and our time together in N.Y. was last happy memory I will have of Amy for the rest of my life. I want to thank all of you for making IDC 2013 so special for Amy and for me.
Please share your thoughts about Amy below.