SA Drama (oops, Blog) Awards

by Sarah Manners

I thought the drama that resulted from several bloggers massacring Nicole’s design for the blog awards logo on GottaQuirk was bad… that was until I got in this morning and picked up on the drama around the actual awards themselves this weekend (I had an Internet free weekend… it was sublime).

Sure there are some valid points “It strikes me as inappropriate that most panellists are also nominated for awards”. What would really strike me as odd was if they were judging the categories they were nominated in. I guess I’d rather have a host of people that really know something about blogging judging the competition than a group who didn’t.
I must confess that I’ve also thought of it as a bit of an old boy’s club from time to time but they’re not the bloody Illuminati for god sakes. Controlling the blog awards today – taking over the world tomorrow – I doubt it.

As the SA blogosphere is still relatively small the same names to tend to crop up time and time again, but in all fairness they're the ones who have agreed to take time out and contribute to the success of this noteworthy project – perhaps if more people volunteered their services this could be eliminated?

I’ve mentioned the negativity that seems to pervade the blogosphere from time to time before and I just don’t get it. Mostly I just sigh and go “whatever”, truth be told I’m not interested in getting involved in the negativity (it’s bad for my karma) but I feel pretty bad for the organisers at the moment – they’ve all put in a heap of work and I know how crap it feels when the good intentions evaporate and morph into fallout .

I think the most essential thing is that we all remember why the blog awards were started. As far as I know they were started to reward and promote blogging in South Africa, this year there’s been more offline media exposure than ever before. After watching Jon Cherry on Morning live last week Sarah’s dad (other Sarah) phoned in and was stoked that he finally got the whole blogging concept (my dad may need a few more years). It would seem like the goals have been achieved, yes? But instead of celebrating the recognition and strength the awards have gained over the past three years; what do we do, sling mud of course!

So, why don’t we take a step back, get through year 3 of the awards and then all contribute to ensuring that the 2008 Blog Awards is an even greater success instead of ensuring that the 2007 awards leave a sour taste in everyone’s mouths?

Like me I’m sure there are loads of people out there willing to get involved in next years awards. I think that the more of us who get involved the less room there’ll be for the crap that’s happening at the moment.

2007/03/19 | permalink | comments (5) | trackbacks (0)

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