Earlier this month, Kieran of the DeadRoo kindly offered to compile the lists of the blogs nominated as I couldn’t find the time to do so myself. I haven’t heard back from him yet… then I went to check Collective Apathy to check the comments there, and it would appear if they’re experiencing some technical difficulties.

So, I guess the voting phase of the awards may be a way off yet… perhaps I should send a few emails and find out some details… I bet those guys at Collective Apathy don’t even know that their site is buggered.

Collective Apathy

Not much has changed… pretty much the same categories as 2006… same procedure… but hopefully with fewer stuff-ups (on my part) and bitching (from disgruntled bloggers)… but I’m not going to hold my breath on either of those.

So, go and nominate your favourite local blogs, and spread the word about the 2007 Australian Blog Awards.

Now, you may or may not remember that I was in two minds about puting myself through this again… but what can I say… I’m a sucker for punishment.

Anyway… I hope to do things pretty much the same as last year, assuming the guys at Collective Apathy are happy for me to hijack some of their bandwidth for a month or so.

If there are any suggestions, new categories etc, let me know in the next week or so. I hope to announced the start of the nomination period in early-ish December.

Last year one of the most common complaints was that people didn’t even know that these awards were on. Now, this is the 4th year for these awards, and they’re always on at the same time of year, so hopefully people will remember… but it might be an idea to let your readers know, just in case people have forgotten.

So… swing by again in about a weeks time for the official call for nominations… but until then, if it’s not too much to ask, could you please spread the word.

Speaking of junkies, while reading the comment on my last post on the World Cup Blog, I discovered a very cool local site dedicated to football in Australia… Confessions of an A-League Junkie.

The thing about this site that suprises me is that it was nominated in this years Australian Blog Awards and I missed it… I guess I was a little to busy running the stupid awards to fully appreciate the quality of the nominations.

Now, I’m just going to remind myself, and anyone else who want to listen why I do this each year… in my own time, for no financial gain… no gain actually.

I do it because there are some great local blogs out there and this is a great way to get them noticed and to give readers the opportunity to discover something they otherwise may not have. That, and that alone is the motivation.

Sure there were flaws in the process… there always have been… old ones are fixed and new ones arise… but I’m doing this by myself… I still have a 9 to 5 job to do… I still have a family to spend time with… I still have something that resembles a life… and I don’t have time to fix every problem when it happens. As it is, this years process was simpler than it has been in the past… no emails to me, then waiting for a reply which took upto 48 hours (if you were lucky). This year it was automated, and the longest people had to wait was ONE HOUR - which was the interval between updates of the voters registrations list with any new registrants to Collective Apathy. People claimed that they had to wait longer, but I checked that things were working, and if their (those complaining) email was listed, and they were, so the only problem there was probably with the complainant not refreshing their cache properly… and there is nothing I can do to fix that.

Other complaints were about the polls closing early. What? They closed at 12pm, as I announced would happen… people had 3 or so weeks to vote… okay, these complaints might be about the brief window of time when the ballots said “The deadline for this poll has passed.” but that was fixed within half an hour… before midnight and with a good 12 hours to go with voting.

The last thing I’m going to address here is my stuff-up in regards to Road to Surfdom winning two of the location categories (Overseas and South Australia). This I should have picked up, and should have eliminated one of the nominations (whichever location he spent less time in during the past year). But I didn’t notice it, it got passed and unluckily for me, it managed to win in both categories. I’m sorry I stuffed-up…

I think that’ll do for venting… for now. IF I put myself through all this again next year, things will be different. Changes will be made… I’ll take suggestions from the people and make things a little easier for people to vote… however… some thing won’t change. It’ll still be:

• Optional Preferential Voting – none of this panel of judges or first past the post rubbish… hell, it’s the Australian way.
• One Vote Per Person – it’s only fair.

I guess everything else will be up for discussion.

That is IF I do it again next year.

Conratulations to all the winners, thanks for your patience and understanding (some of you), and happy blogging. I hope you discovered a blog or two that you like.