2012 Winners

(To be made nicer looking later)

Winner photos.

Best Online Publication – sponsored by CFOServices

And the winner is: Totally Dublin

Best Web Only Publication – sponsored by Pi Communications

And the winner is: TheJournal.ie

Best Radio Website – sponsored by SpunOut

and the winner is: Newstalk

Best Independent Podcaster – Available to sponsor

and the winner is: Arseblog

Best Sports Site

And the winner is: The Score

Best Music Site – sponsored by Poll Daddy

and the winner is Golden Plec

Best Entertainment Website – Sponsored by Hosting Ireland

And the winner is: Entertainment.ie

Best Arts Website

And the winner is: Cork Opera House

Best Technology Site – Sponsored by BH Consulting

And the WINNERS are:
Silicon Republic for the 5th time
And The Sociable

Best New Web Application/Service – Sponsored by Noone Casey

FixMyStreet.ie

Best Discussion forum – Sponsored by EURid

And the winner is: Boards.ie

Best Government and Council Website

And the winner is: Dublin City Cycling

Best Education and Third Level Website

and the winner is National College of Art and Design

Best Student Web Project – Sponsored by National College of Ireland

And the winner is: BetterExaminations.ie

An Suíomh Gaeilge is Fearr – Sponsored by Gaelport

And the Winner is futafata.ie

Best Microsite

And the winner is: 2012.photoireland.org

Best Financial Services Website

and the winner is: Bonkers.ie

Best eCommerce / Services Website – sponsored by Wolfgang Digital

and the winner is Volta.ie

Best SME/Small Business Website – sponsored by CFOServices

And the winner is: DublinTown.ie

Best Mobile Site – sponsored by iQ Content

and the winner is Luas

Best Responsive Design

and the winner is Kooba

Best Practice – Sponsored by Newsletter.ie

And the winner is UCD Medicine

Most Beautiful Website in Ireland – Sponsored by Blacknight

Sam’s Potatoes

Most Useful Website in Ireland – Sponsored by Martin Insurance Brokers

DoneDeal.ie

Most Innovative Website – Sponsored by WhatClinic.com

DublinTown.ie

Web Agency of the Year – Sponsored by Brand Social

Kooba

Best Website in Ireland – Sponsored by Realex Payments

Entertainment.ie

Are we there yet? Countdown to November 1st

The 2012 Finalists list is out. The Technical categories and Gaeilge will be out on Thursday and will be added to that list. Tickets are now on sale for €30. If you know one of the Finalists, let them know they made the list, in case they never noticed. (It happens)

About the event itself:

  • The ceremony takes place in the Mansion House, Dublin.
  • Doors open at 7pm for an 8pm hard start.
  • There is no sit-down meal, we have the awards given out from 8.15pm onwards, the seating is theatre style.
  • There is finger food after the ceremony (around 10pm)
  • It is informal attire, no tuxes are required. Bow ties are cool though. Just saying…
  • All winners get to make a thank you speech. Highly emotional speeches are not frowned upon.
  • If you win, go to the stage, collect the very heavy trophy, make your thank you speech, leave stage right and have your photo taken with the sponsor.
  • The running order is as the category list here.

Web Agency of the Year 2012 – Long list

Web Agency of the Year – Sponsored by Brand Social

Updated: The Short List is out now.
We should have had this up a few weeks ago. This is the long list for Web Agency of the Year. When the short list comes out for nominated websites, we’ll be making a short list for these too in the following few days:

(This category is now reserved)

Nominations close Friday 14th 2012

The nominations are closing at 5pm on Friday September 14th. We also put a few testimonials up from winners from last year if you need convincing to nominate some websites.

If you are thinking of sponsoring, having your name and website next to the longlists that come out next week would be quite beneficial. Prices also go up at the start of October for sponsorship slots. So early sponsors = maximum exposure, cheapest price. Get nominating here.

What are the scores, George Dawes?

We keep saying, keep promising and keep reneging on publishing the scorecards. Mostly it’s been out of laziness or being sick to death of the energy investment into the running of the Web Awards. We’ve been harangued by a few people (Hi Tony!) in the past year and rightly so. A promise is a promise.

Web Awards Score Cards

The scorecard for Round 1 for 2011 is now public and the scorecard for Round 2 is also public. For Round 1 a site was evaluated by itself on areas such as UI Design, Content and Interactive Design. For Round 2 websites were compared against the other websites in their categories and evaluated on their purpose. The scorecards have the top 6 scoring websites for the categories as that was moved into the second round judging system. We’ll see can we retrieve the rest from round 1. For 2012 we’ll be moving sites into round 2 in a different way so we should have all the scores for all judged websites.

It will be highlighted to all nominees that the score for their website will be made public and people can compare them to other sites.

Countdown to November 1st 2012

The 2012 Web Awards will take place on November 1st in the Mansion House.

In the next few weeks we’ll be making a series of announcements about the structure of the awards. Thanks for the emails and requests. To answer some questions:

Nominations:

  • Nominations will open towards the end of August and will stay open for a few weeks.
  • Nominations are free.
  • You don’t have to own/run/design the website to nominate it but please do include contact details.
  • Sponsors can’t be nominated in any category.

Sponsorship opportunities:
Sponsors from last year have first refusal.
We’ll be doing early-bird sponsorship this year.

Categories:
We are looking at killing off some categories and adding some others. We need to find a balance between categories that make sense in terms of getting nominations and the timing of the event. Too many categories = a very very long evening.

Ticket sales:
We’re going to hold off on ticket sales until the finalist list comes out in October. Experience has shown us that putting ticket sales on early results in people who don’t reach the final demanding refunds on tickets they bought.

Housekeeping:
We’ll be updating the logos and images too in the next while. This is just a teaser post to let you know we’re working away in the background.

Updates:
Check in here or on Twitter to get up to date information.

2011 Winners

Congratulations for getting nominated and congrats again to the winners.
Headline Sponsor – Realex Payments

The winners in the 2011 Realex Payments Web Awards are:
News and Media

Best Online Publication

Best Web Only Publication

Best Radio Website

Best Independent Podcaster

Entertainment and Arts

Best Sports Site

Best Music Site – sponsored by Poll Daddy

Best Entertainment Website – Sponsored by Entertainment.ie

Best Arts Website

Technology and Social

Best Technology Site – Sponsored by BH Consulting

Best New Web Application/Service – Sponsored by Red Cardinal

Most Innovative Website – Sponsored by ESOF2012, Dublin City of Science

Government, Education and Community

Best Discussion forum

Best Government and Council Website – Sponsored by Exigent Networks

Best Education and Third Level Website

Best Student Web or Social Media Project – Sponsored by National College of Ireland

An Suíomh Gaeilge is Fearr

Best Microsite

Commerce and Mobile

Best eCommerce / Services Website – sponsored by OnlineAdvertising.ie

Best SME/Small Business Website – sponsored by Pivotal Communications

Best Mobile Site – sponsored by iQ Content

Technical Awards

Best Practice – Sponsored by Surveys.ie

Most Beautiful Website in Ireland – Sponosored by Kooba

Most Useful Website in Ireland – Sponsored by DoneDeal.ie

Web Agency of the Year (Open to sole traders too) – Available to sponsor

Grand Prix
Best Website in Ireland – Sponsored by Realex Payments

2011 Thank Yous

Thank you to the website owners, the website creators and those who surf the Irish Web for encouraging good website design, structure and taking a chance with developers.

Co-conspirators at the 2011 Web Awards

Thank you to Rick O’Shea and his great MCing of the event. Getting Twitter riled up that the Presidential candidates were attending was a nice move. Thank you to all the sponsors who without their sponsorship help the Web Awards would be an event where we’d be charging you a nomination fee and a high charge to come along on the night.

Thank you to John Williams for his DVD work. Brian Greene for his sound work. Sound man is that sound man. And thanks to his intern. Voice overs were done by the bloke that does voiceovers, known as Voiceover Bloke. Amazing photos were done by Ryan Whalley as per usual. An easy and gifted photographer to work with. Thank you to Alexia, Klara and Charles. Serious stress-relief happened due to the organisational and planning work of Michelle. Talk to her about your event. Thanks to the flying man too. Thanks to the folks at Pivotal Communications for organising goody bags for 300 people. Thanks to comics supremo Tommie Kelly too.

Crazy web work was done by John Blackbourn. Props as usual to props man Fran Hollywood who has now become a co-conspirator at Mulley Comms events now. Big thanks to Catherine and all at Entertainment.ie for their online coverage of the event through posts, photos and videos.

Super awesome mega thanks to the 100+ judges who judged sites. Each site was judged about 8 times in round one and about 9-10 times in round 2.

And very big thank you to Colm O’Regan for getting the crowd going with his fantastic standup and powerpoint routine. Book him for corporate events and liven up your event.