Irish Blog Awards

Bitbuzz has come forward and suggested a new category that they’d like to sponsor – Best Technology Blog/Blogger. I know it is late in the day but I am going to go ahead and seek nominations for this category. Send emails to irishawards [at] gmail.com with the subject of “technology blog”. I will take nominations until February 3rd. As a result the public vote is put back by a week to allow for public voting in this category.

Bitbuzz has also offered to supply the event with free Wifi if anyone wishes to liveblog the event.

EDIT: I should also explain what the Best Contribution to the Irish Bloggersphere (Tech wise) is about in case there are any mixups. The Contribution to the Irish Bloggersphere award is to honour the person or group of people who through using technology has increased the value of the Irish blogging community. These are the people who worked with technology to entice in a new audience, or created software or a service that gets more people blogging.

Still counting up the nominations and testing the voting system but voting will start on Monday morning. Will leave it open for two weeks I think.

EDIT: With the addition of a new Category, public voting will instead start on Feb. 6th.

12 Awards, they all need trophies of some kind. Something more interesting than the usual bits of marble and gold looking plastic. They must be cheap too. Any ideas? Barbies spray painted gold? Edible trophies i.e. easter eggs wrapped in gold and silver?

UPDATE: New venue is Alexander Hotel

Initially it was looking like it was going to be March 4th but Rick O’Wonderful Host is going to be away that evening. So, unless everyone is unhappy with March 11th, that is when the awards take place. Buswells Hotel, around the corner from the Dáil.

Room cost is €200 ex vat and I’m sure that if everyone puts in a fiver each we should be able to cover the cost of it. Post in the comments or email irishawards [at] gmail.com if you are going to come along. The venue holds 70 comfortably and a few more at a squeeze. If you want Tea/Coffee and biscuits the cost is €4 per head or €8 if you want tea/coffee and sandwiches. I will need numbers in advance if people want to avail of these. There’s a bar in the Hotel and so you can bring alcohol you bought in the bar into the room with you. No sneaking in naggins!

I’m going to try and get everyone free wireless access too.

Map to Buswells:

Rick O’Shea has offered to MC the Irish Blog Awards. Woo! Nice one Rick. How the heck am I going to pay for a limo though? A bowl of M&Ms without the red ones isn’t it?

Phew. Now to sort them out. I may be moving hosting providers in the next day or two so hold on! Pity there’s no easy export function with Wordpress.

170 emails sent in nominating people.

41 blogs nominated for best blog so far. 20 for best blog post and lots of other stats when my eyes readjust from staring at gmail all day. Nominations close in the morning and then we’ll try and get voting up and going.

24 hours into my appeal and good news – we have 4 category sponsors so far, 8 to go.

Blacknight Solutions are sponsoring an iPod Nano for the Best Blog. Damn, that was fast and it was generous too. Thanks guys. Additionally Wiki Ireland, Boards.ie and FirstPartners.net have also shown me the money and have sponsored categories. Boards.ie are also sponsoring some money towards some food. As I also mentioned the IrishBlogs folks have designed the voting sytem, so thank you for that and also must mention Spoiltchild who created our logo. We also have a few bottles of wine for spot prizes which were donated, thanks John! Still looking for more spot prizes.

Remember that if you sponsor early, your sponsor name will be displayed on the voting page next to the corresponding category you’re sponsoring. That will be seen by a LOT of people when the public voting round starts.

EDIT: Politics.ie are now sponsoring a category.

EDIT: BEECHER.NET have also sponsored a category.

EDIT: Hosting365 are also sponsoring a category.

EDIT: Nooked are generously sponsoring a category.

EDIT: Spark Ireland have now sponsored a category too.

EDIT: Imagefile Ireland also sponsored a category.

EDIT: SSI-Developer.net have now sponsored the penultimate category.

1 Category left to find a sponsor for.

A lot of you guys have been asking me about sponsorship. I gave first refusal on sponsorship to one or two people but they haven’t come back to me. As a result I’m now throwing it open to the public. If you wish to sponsor a category then let me know. Prices are below.

Just a reminder: We have 12 categories

Categories:

• Best Blogger
• Best Blog Post
• Most Humorous Post
• Best Photo Blog
• Best Fictional Piece in a Blog
• Best Arts and Culture Blog
• Best Political Blog
• Best Group Blog
• Best Comment/Commenter
• Best Personal Blog
• Best Use of the Irish Language in a Blog
• Best Contribution to the Irish Bloggersphere (Tech wise)

I would like if possible to have someone sponsor a category for 50-70 euros. Except the Best Blogger prize which I think should be more significant such as an iPod Nano or something like that.

The 50-70 idea is that if someone sponsors the iPod then I’d ask for 50 euros to sponsor each category but if nobody stumps up for it, then I would ask for 70 euros to sponsor a category, with 20 going to fund the iPod. 11 x €20 should get a 2gb iPod Nano. The 50 euros would then be spent on book or cd/dvd vouchers or if anyone wants to suggest prizes for each category costing 50 eurs or less, please say!

Edited to Add: I have a feeling that many sponsoring might be nominated, so because of that I would like to choose which category that you sponsor, just in case.

I’d also like spotprizes on the night*, so if anyone has any vouchers left over from Christmas and wishes to donate them let me know. If you are a company and don’t want to sponsor money but want to donate your product or service for a spotprize then send me a mail.

You can contact me on IrishAwards (at) gmail.com to talk about sponsorship of the categories.

* That is if we have enough numbers to book a room. I’m still waiting on feedback about who can attend. Only two people have let me know so far and I don’t think booking a room for that many is going to be the best idea.

Thanks, Damien.

Roger Galligan and his team from IrishBlogs have been up all night listening to late night radio as they code a voting system for the Blog Awards. Hopefully after some private testing and all the nominations have been sorted, the public vote can start on Tuesday the 24th of January and go on for two weeks.

I have yet to hear a “Yay” or a “nay” about whether can go on the suggested dates. I’ll make a post about category sponsorship tomorrow.