Irish Blog Awards

Edit: Slightly modified this post as it appeared I was going ahead with the below suggested categories. Nothing has been decided yet.

From the comments on this post there have been about 13 additional categories suggested. These are:

• Best Female Blog
• Best Podcast
• Best Parenting/Family Blog
• Best Designed Blog
• Best Sport & Recreation Blog
• Best Food Blog
• Best New Oldperson
• Best News/Current Affairs Blog
• Best Education Blog
• Blog with the best interface and most useful features
• Best Niche Blog
• Best Lifestyle Blog
• Best Charity Blog

Have I left any out? Suggest more if you like. No decision will be made on these yet but I would like opinions on whether an additional 13 or so on to a list of 18 already is enough or too many? Are 30 categories too many? We had 13 last time for the awards. That’s going to be a lot more acceptance speeches compared to last year.

In regards to suggesting a category, I would much rather seeing a category being formed if there at least 10 blogs that would qualify to be in this category. That way we can at least see some competition from the long list to short list section.

I’ve been considering the categories for the blog awards for 2007. I’ve added some and removed one. The best comment/commentor was hard to get submissions for and hard to judge.

• Best Blog
• 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
• Best Technology Blog/Blogger

New Categories:

• Best Newcomer
• Best Regional Blog
• Best Business Blog
• Best Music Blog

I’ll also announce another 4 “surprise” categories closer to the event. Anyone got suggestions for other categories?

I don’t wish to have the event overly commercial but the bills still need to be paid. I’m looking at various ways of getting sponsorship. One way is to have one overall sponsor to cover all costs, these would be: Pay for the room, MC, DJ, trophies, catering, printing, postage, advertising, web design, hotel accomodation, video intros. Given that, I will not allow it to be called “The Microoogle Irish Blog Awards” but what about “The Irish Blog Awards sponsored by Microoogle” if there was going to be just one sponsor?What are peoples opinion of that?

The other option like last year is to have sponsors for each category. Last year each category sponsor paid 50 euros and the money was handed directly to the category winner. It was said to me that people were really just interested in a trophy and the money did not matter as much. Were that the case then the money taken from each category sponsor could be used to pay all other costs. I would still like the Best Blog winner to get a trophy and also get a prize.

To run a good event will cost around €6k-7k and to run a great event would cost €9- €10k. Crazy money isn’t it? That’s a lot of money for a single sponsor who would naturally consider they have some input on how the show is run but they really won’t have much input at all. There’ll be around 20 categories this year so category sponsorship would range from €350 to €500. Would you think I’d get that many sponsors at that price?

The usual stuff comes into play with sponsorship in that sponsors want to get bang for their buck: I had one sponsor last year wanting posters, banners at the event and asking me to fill in a sheet outlining how many mentions on the night from the podium they’d get. Asking for way too much in my view.

Just an update to let people know that the planning has started for the Blog Awards. Hope to confirm venue and date soon. The Alexander the last time seemed like a good location so I hope we can use that again. Also looking at the end of February or start of March, as before.

I hope to make the event bigger and better with more categories and I hope to have a band or DJ to keep everyone entertained after the ceremony itself so that we can keep celebrating and talking and partying and not disperse so quickly like last year. Some bands and DJ booking companies have approached me about using them but I don’t think they realise that the Blog Awards are dirt poor. Unlike other Awards, we will not be spending 30k on the event although the costs are a high enough fraction of that.

I hope to make the event less commercial this year and less or even no spot prizes during the event itself. Possibly afterwards or else give people goody bags like the Oscars. (Minus the thousand dollar watches)

Suggestions welcome.