Thursday night was the Best of 604 Awards at The Cellar. Miss 604 (and 778 and 250) Rebecca Bollwitt and her hardworking posse hosted a event which went off better than anyone could have expected. I mean, an inaugural event to give prizes to bloggers? Would anyone show up? Would anyone care? Yes and yes!

While our co-workers partied at the office, Kris and I headed to Granville St. with a band of scallywags. The place was packed, the beverages flowed, and the conversations didn't stop.

While i know *a lot* of people here in Vancouver who are writing blogs, recording podcasts etc., i couldn't help but notice how many faces i didn't know. A quick chit-chat proved that we are all just one degree of separation away and this internet-y stuff has moved out of the basement and onto the red carpet (despite the whining by a few notable yet clueless trolls).

Thanks to your votes and support, Raincity Studios' Blogs and Pods won the award for Best Company Blog. Thanks for that - really, thanks.

Started back in the day (Spring 2004) with Rob and Mark writing about Legos and CSS, before moving onto Will Pate and Megan Cole writing about building community with insightful and witty missives and interviews.

The blog continues to evolve through to today with a deep mix of long-form essays about technical, business, and cultural topics - the Olympics, Drupal, jQuery, geek camps/event/un-conferences, international open culture biz and software ... you are pleased and that makes us happy.

Since this event is sure to turn into an annual event, i'll advise Rebecca to get a platform and a podium to address her minions next year and there also needs to be a theme song/fanfare to keep the hyper-social attendees focused. I could bring my conch shell to blow perhaps.

Congrats go to lots of our pals who won like: Victoria Potter's Demicouture winning in Fashion and Colleen's Buzz Networker edging out Techvibes.

I also enjoyed the tight race for Best Political blog finishing 1. The Tyee 35% 2. Matthew Good 22% & 3. Jonathon Narvey 18%. The Tyee had a huge night with 3 awards and Beyond Robson got some love for Events.

Even the third place finishes (like Monica's Your Dose of Lunacy, and Terri's The Conveyor Belt) were reason to party as this was all about community and being part of something larger.

Friend of the Raincity Studios' Miss 604 is expanding her online empire with the new Best of 604 Awards. Everyone gets to Vote for Best of 604 to decide the best resources across a variety of categories from best sports blog to fave tech blog.

Here's how Rebecca puts it: "Best of 604 - The people's choice awards for the best sites and blogs in Metro Vancouver - 100% of awards night donations will benefit the Greater Vancouver Food Bank Society."

With heaps of our pals and faves nominated, i'll try to go easy on the vote influencing and instead issue a flagrant personal plug by recommending the following for your consideration:

Favourite Company or Business Blog

Raincity Studios (http://raincitystudios.com/blogs-and-pods)

Favourite Photo Site or Blog

Kris Krug (http://staticphotography.com)

Kris is Raincity Studios' company prez and ambassador by day and an ace editorial, fashion, rock n' roll photographer by night - Static is where the remarkable shots in his Flickr photostream get some context and narrative to go along. Actually, he is both prez and photog, all day and night.

Kris is also photo dude for http://theconveyorbelt.com with fashionista Terri Potratz nominated in the Best Style/Fashion Site or Blog.

Favourite Audio/Video Blog or Podcast

Gravelly Beach (http://gravellybeach.wordpress.com)

Choogle On (http://choogleon.com).

Within the diverse variety of Bryght-hosted Drupal sites, occasionally we're blown away by an amazing site. Homeless Nation recently won two awards so we are chiming into say "most excellent work" from both a technology-use and community-building point of view.

New media in action

In Canada, homelessness is a political topic which is opportunistically bandied around like a hot potato and punted from city, to provincial, to federal governments for missing leadership. While the elected leader and bureaucrats chatter, Homeless Nation is improving lives and certainly deserve awards, accolades, and support.

Here's a short blurb about the Homeless Nation awards by Chris Aung-Thwin

We are proud to announce that Homeless Nation has been recognized by the Canadian New Media Awards (CNMA) and by the Society for New Communications Research (SNCR).

On Friday, November 14th, HN was presented with an award for: Excellence in New Media Creation/Social Media Production/Nonprofit Division by the SNCR - a US-based non-profit organization.

On Tuesday, November 18th, HN was again honoured, this time here at home, with an award in the category of Excellence in Social Media Websites by the CNMA.

A community home

The hallmark of a true web community is when the participants define the culture beyond the organizers. Reading the heartfelt and respectful interaction between participants in the blogs and comments, you can see that this is truly a collaboration between the builders and participants.

The culture of Homeless Nation was incubated by Daniel Cross, a documentary filmmaker who makes films about social justice and Canada's homeless. After making a series of film projects, he conceived the website with an aim of providing essential resource info as well as a forum for therapeutic self-expression. Read the whole story about Homeless Nation - they are doing the real work where is matters.

"Homeless Nation's outreach workers across Canada work in a variety of ways in collaboration with the homeless community. We work in shelters, day-centres, squats, at protests, community events, on the street and online. We are dedicated to ensuring that digital tools for media, learning and communication are made available for homeless Canadians."

We know Drupal is great and, of course, we're not the only ones. On Halloween, Packt Publishing announced Drupal as the overall winner of their annual open source CMS award - repeating the win from 2007.

The award is judged by both a panel of industry professionals as well as votes on the website.

Here's the blurb which mentions Joomla as #2 and DoNetNuke as #3:

Packt’s annual Open Source Content Management System (CMS) Award reached its climax today with the announcement that Drupal has won the Overall category, collecting a first prize of $5,000. Three months after it was launched and a staggering 20,000 votes later, Drupal finished ahead of Joomla! and DotNetNuke to retain the Award it won in 2007.

Packt includes the obligatory brief history of Drupal which you probably know, so instead ... here's a quote from Drupal Godfather Dries giving props to the community:

 "These awards are a testament to the valuable contributions from dedicated Drupal community members around the globe" said Buytaert in response to the news. "Working together, the Drupal community is building the future of the dynamic web so that anyone can quickly build great social publishing websites" he concluded.   

Every year during the Vancouver International Digital Festival (VIDFEST) the POPVOX awards are handed out to the winners selected by the Voice of the People! The POPVOX awards celebrate and recognize all the fields of digital media in a variety of categories. The winners are annunced at the Gala event scheduled May 23rd (pretty soon) so buy your tickets.

Nominees submit their projects and the masses then vote for their favorites online (that's why they are the people's voice awards right).

The Vancouver International Digital Festival is an event for the top creative minds working in digital media. Attracting visionaries from games and digital entertainment, Web 2.0, interactive design, animation and mobile applications, it is an annual ‘must-attend’ in Vancouver, Canada.