Rules for 2008 South African Blog Awards
- A "weblog" is defined as a webpage with dated entries.
- Only blogs written within the Republic of South Africa and / or blogs written by South African citizens are eligible to be considered for the awards.
- The contest is open to any weblogs that existed for a period of time during the year 2007, so weblogs that were discontinued during 2007 are also eligible.
- Only one nomination form and one finalist voting form may be submitted per person.
- E-mail addresses are required to nominate and vote. You must use your own address and confirm the validation e-mail.
- If you attempt to submit a second ballot, your first one will be replaced.
The Process
The voting process is split into two separate stages: The Nominations Phase and the Voting Phase.
Nominations Phase
Nominations from the general public will be open from 11 February 2008 to 25 February 2008.
- URLs are required.
- The maximum number of weblogs you may nominate for a category is three (3) for most categories and four (4) for Weblog of the Year.
- At least three (3) different weblogs in total must be nominated.
- There is no limit to the number of categories a weblog may be nominated for.
- Nominees have to fit the category they are placed in.
- You will be asked to give an honest reason for your nomination.
After 25 February 2008, the top 10 blogs with the most nominations (taking into account relevance to the category they have been nominated for) in each category will go through to the finals.
Voting Phase
Once again, only one vote per email address will be accepted.
Final voting will be open to the public from the Wednesday 5 March 2008 till midnight Wednesday 19 March 2008.
Voters will be asked to review the ten blogs per category in the finals and vote for their favourite blog in each category.
This year the awards will work a little different, in the way we find a winner, to how we did things in the past. This is to ensure that the results are as accurate and as fair as a possible.
The final voting this year will be weighed three different groups:
- YOU - the general blog reading public [counts 70% of the final vote]
- A small panel of 'celebrity' non-blogging judges. [counts 15% of the final vote]
- A larger panel of international (non-South African) bloggers. [count 15% of the final vote]
The blog which receives the highest weighted votes from the public, the celebrity judges and the international blogger panel, will win in their category.
The celebrity non-bloggers include:
- Laurence Mitchell - Commissioner of the Cape Film Commission
- Andrew Boraine - Executive chairman of the Cape Town Partnership
- Dave Murrey - Clickthinking
- Mike Pearson - FoxP2
- Porky Hefer - Animal Farm
- John Maytham - 567 CapeTalk
International Blogger judges include:
- Josh Spear - Joshspear.com
- Marcus Fairs - Dezeen.com
- Andrew Zolli - curator of Pop!Tech
- Dan Germain - Innocent drinks
- Brendan T. Lynch - nvohk
- Marshall Kirkpatrick - ReadWriteWeb
- Erik Hersman - White African
- Piers Fawkes - psfk
The Awards Ceremony
The South African Weblog awards ceremony will take place at UCT Tennis Club in Cape Town on Wednesday, 2nd April 2008 - 6:30pm for 7pm. Please note - there will be no Joburg event.
What about prizes?
Apart from the honour of being the best, the winner of the Best overall South African blog will win a purse of 2008 South African cents (R20.08).
Prizes will be handed out at the Awards Ceremony at the end of the Blog Awards.
Disclaimer: This year's 4th annual blog awards is a non-profit project made possible by the hard work of a small team of volunteers; Andrew Smith, Shane Dryden, Miguel dos Santos, Rafiq Phillips and Jonathan Cherry. As with any person involved with the organisation of the awards their blogs (Ideate.co.za, Webaddict.co.za and Cherryflava.com) are therefore not eligible for entry into this year's awards.
