Just wanted to justify my nomination as Best Newcomer, despite starting my blog in September 2005. My blog only seems to have been discovered by other Irish bloggers in the last few months - up until then my audience was made up of other infertile bloggers and readers from around the world (who still represent the vast majority of commenters). So I feel as if I’m a newcomer to the Irish blogosphere, if not necessarily to blogging.

F

http://2007.bloggies.com/

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From January 1, 2007 until 10:00 PM Eastern Standard Time (GMT-5) on Thursday, January 11, anyone was able to nominate their favorite weblogs.

That Monday, January 15, 200 randomly selected voters received an e-mail. It listed the weblogs that received the most nominations in ten random categories. They had until 10:00 PM EST on Sunday, January 21 to privately submit their five favorites (six for Weblog of the Year) for each category. The five (or six for Weblog of the Year) receiving the most votes became finalists. I (Nikolai Nolan) only voted for the panel in the case of a tie for fifth place. This panel was on an opt-in policy.

On Thursday, January 25, the finalists were announced and voting opened again to choose the winners.

Voting closed at 10:00 PM EST on Friday, February 2. The winners will be posted on Monday, March 12.

Isn’t there guidelines drawn up to help voters understand ‘how’ they should vote? I haven’t looked into this but voting criterion is standard stuff for any kind of awards.

I’m recommending the addition of an award for blogs to my BIMA executive. The first thing you need to do is set some ground rules.

I am of course looking at the above with a very narrow view but I believe we need to put our very best forward if we want to get accepted mainstream.

How the process could be improved is a tricky question, I think from keeping an eye on various blog awards all over the gaff there is no easy way to keep everybody happy.

I’m happy that even up to this point it was all good fun and everybody got a bit of publicity out of it, and as it happens some free consulting!

However if the Blog Awards wish to continue improving I think it would be worth considering the points made above, they are certainly valid.

I think, right now there is huge value in the IBA in the networking and publicity, both on and offline, but with tweaks and improvements made, the actual awards won could be very prestigious - I’m not convinced they are right now.

Now, I must go off and have another go at Twenty Major.

I’m a daily reader of BS newsfeeds and hope you’ve gained readers through the IBA publicity.

if it were decided completely in private I think you’d get a quarter of the interest from everyone because it would just be one (or some people) saying what they like, and then it quickly becomes an issue of an “elite” deciding who is good and who is not… even if Damien or someone else made cuts to the public longlist based on what they thought was applicable or not you’d have the same problem.

While not voting system is perfect, I think the public vote as it stands is best. You’ll always get some people who get votes from friends and family despite not deserving it, but a good blog will get a good audience and will get good votes.

As for the design award, I think some of that boils down to people voting for the most visually appealing blog (or even the blog they like the most) - I’m sure many of the voters didn’t think “how much work did they personally put into this?”, and my own blog is proof that putting your own work into a wordpress template is not always a good thing :D