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18/09/07 I beat DAFT.ie to a Golden Spider!
LONDON, UK - In 1999 I sat beside Eamon Fallon of DAFT.ie at the Golden Spider Awards. We were at the Young Person’s Award table down the very back of the hall, the place they put those U21 freelancers who couldn’t afford the €300 a seat (€2,600 a table) tickets.
I remember DAFT back then, few know that the ‘Dublin Accomodation Finder Terminal’ is what DAFT stands for. That year I beat DAFT and won the U21 award at age 16 with Mission: Possible. A year later I returned, and won the U21 award a second year running at age 17 with iFairground. Eamon Fallon is now sitting on a multi-million euro business called DAFT, so why didn’t DAFT.ie beat Mission: Possible that night? I believe it was because we had a story to tell.
I used to be a fanboy of the Golden Spider Awards - although it helps when you win it! But in my opinion the standards of the “Oscars of the Irish Internet” have dropped dramatically. It has become the “Oscars of the Irish Corporate Internet”, as entry requires a hefty payment all start-ups and small businesses were deterred. Look at the winners, all corporate websites - no nifty 2-3 guy operations.
So this year when I check it out - I’m delighted to see something new, it’s now a nominations process rather than entry process. It appears it is free to enter. Brilliant! - but now my worry leans to the categories, are we going to just have the same entries winning the same prizes as they’ve gone very niche.
Best Irish Social Networking site
The judges will be looking for a site which is popular, well designed and easy to use. Key factors that will be considered include site functionality and design, tools available to users and overall user experience on the site.
How many entries will we have for this one? How many Irish social networks are there?
Best Irish Blogging Platform
Judges will be looking for well written, well designed blogs which exude the writer’s opinions and personality. They will also be judging your blog in terms of its usefulness within a given sector and the level of feedback on the blog from the readers themselves.
Best Irish Blogging Platform? Um, WordPress? maybe they mean Irish Blog? Why does the best Irish Blog need to be useful? I’d almost bet Beaut.ie will win this. Golden Spider judges love anything corporate/marketing. Them or the ‘blog’ of a corporate will win.
Best Irish Entertainment & Games website
Judges will be looking for a site that really meets the needs of today’s online consumers. The winning site should be well designed, making the best use of latest technologies and user generated trends to offer a highly interactive, functional and content rich user experience.
Why does an Entertainment website need to use the latest technologies? Can it not win if it’s written in something not new? What’s a user generated trend and why’s it required? How many Irish Gaming sites do we have? Why does a gaming site need to be content rich? Simple might be the key to a game.
I often think these descriptions are written last minute by a person sitting in bed on their laptop. No discussion about them. It’s as if they are written with the person visualising who they think the winner should be, and then they right a description of that site a the criteria.
Yawn… it’s just so archaic.
I’m going to keep my eyes open for these awards.
Tags: archaic, awards, boring, daft, daft.ie, golden spiders, internet
2 Comments
I’d have to agree. They’ve become largely irrelevant to the majority of, what I’d consider, the Irish internet industry.
31/01/08 Robin Blandford [ByteSurgery] » CV For Tech: Industry Awards - Digital Media Engineer
[...] has international awards showing their industry interest from an early age. Not to mention winning an U21 award at age 16 [...]
