It’s Awards Time Again
Well, it’s that time of year again… awards season for the Irish web industry. This year sees a new awards being launched, making it 3 awards ceremonies for us webbies to go to.
Irish Web Awards 2008
Irish Web Awards 2008 - October 11th
The Irish Web Awards is the new awards to launch this year. Following the success of the Irish Blog Awards over the past couple of years, Damien Mulley has launched the Irish Web Awards 2008. Categories for the awards include News & Media, Entertainment, Technology, Government &Community, Education & Science, Commerce, Speciality, Technical Awards and an overall Grand Prix. There’s something for everyone in there. Damien is promoting full transparency with these awards and has released the scorecard that will be used to judge nominations. Also, sponsors of the awards cannot have a nomination. These awards will be a bit more casual (as you won’t need a penguin suit) but Damien promises it will be more fun. If the Blog Awards are anything to go by, I’d well believe it. Very nice logo I might add… by Spoilt Child I do believe.
IIA Net Visionary
IIA Net Visionary - October 30th
The Net Visionaries are run by the Irish Internet Association, and according to the IIA, are unique in that they are run and voted on by the Irish web industry. They may not be unique anymore with the launch of the Irish Web Awards this year. A large range of categories are available to get nominated in, including Best Business Blogger, Innovation Award, Internet Entrepreneur, Internet Marketer, Student Project Award, Web Designer Excellence, and Web Developer Excellence. There is something new with these awards this year in that if you (or someone from your company) have won an award in a particular category over the past 2 years, you cannot be nominated in that category. Not a bad idea to allow a rotation of winners. The awards night is a black tie affair and having attended these events a couple of years ago, I must say, it’s a great night.
Golden Spiders
Golden Spider Awards - November 20th
The Golden Spiders are run by Business & Finance magazine and always raise debate about the validity of the awards. So far I haven’t seen anything this year but I’m sure it’s on it’s way! Regardless, I stick to the opinion that the Golden Spiders are a business awards and it is seen as this. We’ve won a Golden Spider award twice in the past for clients and it really does help our business and our clients in promoting their website. The difference with Golden Spider Awards and the other 2 above is that they charge for you to enter and you might not get short listed. The cost of entry is €150. There’s a whole host of categories ranging the business community from finance to professional services, property to recruitment, and many more. There’s a new award this year for Young Designer of the Year. It’ll be interesting to see who gets nominated for and wins this one. This year, the Golden Spiders have published their judging criteria on the website and have added additional information about web standards. The Spiders are a black tie affair as well and having attended the past 2 years, I found it to be a great night for networking with a lot of the larger companies in the web industry. I’ve made a number of contacts from these nights.
Well, I’ll hopefully be putting a couple of sites forward to each of the awards this year and in turn, I should be attending each of them. Hopefully I’ll see you there.