Even though I’d like to see the Blog Awards in Cork since I travel to Dublin far too much already, I think to get the largest amount of attendees Dublin will be where it’s held. So, does anyone have suggestions as to where it could be held?

Who out there in the Bloggersphere will attend if it is held? What kind of facilities are you in need of? A net connection? (Leave the laptops at home, saddos.) A place that sells alcohol?

So why an Awards show/ceremony/shindig for Irish bloggers? There’s what, 649 or so according to Planet of the Blogs? I’m sure there are more than that, but they have not become aware of IrishBlogs.ie and PoTB.

These awards will point out what we (the blogging public) think are the people and the blogs that are noteworthy. They are the blogs which should be recognized for their quality. Be it quality of humour, of debate, of prose or reporting etc. It is a way for those new to blogging or who have yet to blog to see that this is the level of quality that they can try and reach. It’s two-fingers to the nay-sayers who think bloggers are wanna-be journalists or that bloggers are saddos who write poems about their cats at 1am.

We’re a small online community now but with the way blogging is exploding online. It won’t be long before this community is huge, seeing this we can act like the founding fathers and direct this community in a good way, keeping the community spirit and freedoms and looking out for anyone trying to exploit or sense of community.

Karma doesn’t want me to ever have quotes working. Seems when you click on links to the right there or click on the comments link it gives a 404. I’ll need to go and hit something with a spanner when I get home and look under the hood.

Here are some suggested categories. Comments appreciated. If you want to suggest more, please do so in the comments.

• Best Blogger
• Best Blog Post
• Best New Blogger
• Best Contribution to the Boggersphere (Tech wise)
• Best Potential Blogger i.e. Someone we’d like to see blogging
• Best Photo Blog
• Best Fictional Piece in a Blog
• Best Art Blog
• Best Political Blog (Judging for this will be “fun”)
• Best Group Blog
• Best Comment/Commenter
• Best Personal Blog
• Best Irish Language Blog

This is the first post on the blog for the Irish Blog Awards. All information about the awards will be on this blog from now on. And it has comments! Let us hope I don’t break this software too.