The people have spoken.

Amy Schleicher, 17, of San Ramon has won a Webby People’s Voice award for her student film about Habitat for Humanity. Other winners of this year’s Webby Awards include special achievement honorees Stephen Colbert and will.i.am.

And she’ll be hanging out with them all in New York next month. Winners will be honored at two New York City ceremonies: The 12th Annual Webby Awards on June 10th featuring Seth Meyers of “Saturday Night Live” as host; and The Webby Film and Video Awards on June 9th with Judah Friedlander of “30 Rock” as emcee.

In keeping with Webby tradition, winners will be limited to five-word acceptance speeches. Past speeches include Al Gore (”Please don’t recount this vote”), Beastie Boys (”Can anyone fix my computer?”), and Prince (”Everything you think is true.”).

“My dad booked the flight almost immediately,” Amy says. “I’m going with my mom and dad and I’ve never been to New York before, so this will be a whole new epxierence for me. It’s going to be a lot of fun.”

Amy’s particularly looking forward to the after party for all the winners.

“I want to meet the people there who have more experience than I have in producing videos and get some tips from them,” Amy says. “I definitely would like to go into the film business as a director or editor. Anything with video. I don’t know where this will take me.”

But she knows it will look good on her college application to have a Webby win. She hopes to go to film school at UCLA or NYU.

The Webby categories include Web sites, online film and video, interactive advertising,
and mobile Web sites. In addition, nearly half a million votes were cast by people around the world for their favorite sites, videos, and ads in The Webby People’s Voice Awards presented by Nokia.

Click here for a full list of both Webby Awards and People’s Voice Awards winners.

• Webby Person of the Year - Colbert will be honored for the innovative way
he has used the Internet to interact with fans of The Colbert Report – from
Google bombing to make him the top search result for “greatest living
American” to challenging the “truthiness” of Wikipedia. In his presidential
campaign, the “One Million Strong for Stephen T. Colbert” Facebook group
attracted more than 78 members per minute in its first week, while his
supporters have raised more than $250,000 for the education charity
DonorsChoose.org.

• Webby Film and Video Person of the Year – From his legendary music videos
to his pioneering work in film, Michel Gondry’s inventive visual style and
storytelling consistently set new motion picture standards. His latest film, “Be
Kind Rewind,” in itself a celebration of low-budget, do-it-yourself filmmaking,
introduced “sweding” to the internet, inspiring filmmakers to follow his lead in
recreating scenes from their favorite films and sharing them online. His Rubik’s
Cube videos, showing Gondry solving the puzzle with both his feet and nose,
have become a viral hit of their own.

• Webby Artist of the Year – In a year that saw Internet video become a
dominant political force, The Black Eyed Peas’ frontman, songwriter and
producer will.i.am will be recognized for the songs and Internet videos he
created in support of U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama. The “Yes We
Can” video, featuring Scarlett Johansson, John Legend, and Herbie Hancock,
has been viewed more than 17 million times since its February premiere.
will.i.am’s record label was also behind 2007’s most downloaded single –
Fergie’s “Big Girls Don’t Cry”.

will i. am’s Yes We Can video

• Webby Film and Video - Best Actor: Comedy heroes Tim Heidecker and Eric
Wareheim will be honored for their cult hit timanderic.com. Poster children for
the kind of weirdness that could only take off online, their skits won them a
rabid fan base and a contract with Adult Swim on the Cartoon Network.

timanderic.com commercial