My lack of blogging of late can be put squarely down to losing my blogging mojo. I’ve had lots to talk about, seen tonnes of weird and wonderful things, and been engaged in some fantastic conversation with folk of late. But I really ought to put more effort into publicising the up-coming Irish Web Awards. More about these great awards in a sec.

But First…

While at CreativeCamp in Belfast a few weeks back I got talking to Maryrose from Brightspark. She mentioned that she’s sick of seeing the title of my VHI post in her reader, so I thought I’d personalise this post to say hi! (the downside being that if I keep my current post frequency poor old Maryrose will see me saying hello for God-knows-how-long).

BTW Maryrose, a quick SEO tip – you should lose that META refresh on www.brightspark-consulting.com/latest_blog.htm as Google is still indexing the wrong page for your blog

Back to The Awards

This year sees the inaugural Irish Web Awards. Organised by Damien ‘Dynamo’ Mulley, the Awards are going to be a fresh take on the until-recently stale awards scene. And given that my friends over at the Golden Spiders are a bunch of spammers*, I’m doubly delighted that Damien is taking on the big-boys with what be inevitably be a far more transparent and credible awards for Irish web properties.

(*While the folks over and Business & Finance might have had the wherewithall to avoid spamming me at Red Cardinal, they managed to spam me at another email address they had on record from some years back. Of course I hadn’t signed up for GS drops, or any other drops from Business & Finance for that matter…)

Best Online Publication – Sponsored by Red Cardinal

I was thrilled to sponsor a category for the awards, and duly convinced Damien to put my company name next to the Best Online Publication category. Today the shortlist for the category was announced, and the following sites made it through the initial round to the final shortlist:

• The Clare People
• The Belfast Telegraph
• The Irish Independent
• Silicon Republic
• The Irish Times

I took part in the initial judging, although I did not judge any of the sites in this category’s shortlist. The judging criteria was well thought out, and I have to say that Damien is doing a fantastic job in pulling together an awards event that truly is underpinned by merit rather than vested interests.

Supporting the Irish Web Awards

If you can support the Irish Web Awards I strongly urge you to do so – given that the Golden Spiders have been shown to have little or no credibility left it really is important to build a strong foundation upon which to promote innovation in the Irish web industry. While the IIA does a great job to recognise individuals with the Net Visionary Awards, I think we really need to recognise web innovation in general. I think the Irish Web Awards are taking a brave step in this direction.

Come along if you can

The Awards take place on October 11 2008 in the funky Radisson SAS Royal Hotel in Golden Lane (that’s just off George’s Street). Register here now and you can hang out with the bright and brilliant of Ireland’s web scene at the inaugural Irish Web Awards. Tickets costs €30, and you wont feel all stuffy as it’s definitely not black tie.

Finally… For 2 Free Tickets…

As a sponsor I was given 2 golden tickets to the event. Unfortunately I’ll be out of the country, so I’d like to offer those tickets to anyone who cares to tell me below which of the five sites shortlisted for the Best Online Publication they think should win the category and why. I’ll pick a winner shortly after getting a few comments.

Best of luck to all sites nominated this year, and I look forward to hearing how well things go on the night.