Indibloggies, the Indian Weblog Awards flags off its 2008 edition

The Indibloggies, India’s first and foremost blog awards has unveiled its annual nomination process for the 2008 edition on 16 February 2009. This is the sixth year of the Indibloggies award, organised by Pune-based blogger Debashish Chakrabarty (http://www.debashish.com).

The nominations are open in 17 different award categories for Indian blogs from all around the world from 16 February until 6 March 2009. At stake are prizes worth more than Rs 1 Lacs (~ $1600).

The “IndiBlog of the Year” award, the top honors at the event, went to Arnab Ray aka Great Bong for his blog “Random thoughts of a Demented Mind” (http://greatbong.net) in 2006. “I think the Indibloggies does a great job of showcasing the diversity of the blogosphere, and every time it has been held, I've discovered great new blogs to read. I'm looking forward to this year's edition, and congratulate Debashish on the continued success of this event.”, said Amit Varma whose blog India Uncut (http://indiauncut.blogspot.com) won the “IndiBlog of the Year” award at the 2005 edition. The 2007 edition were not organized.

“Fortunately, Indibloggies has been successful in recognizing the outstanding bloggers year after year. Sonia Faleiro, for example, who’s blog (http://soniafaleiro.blogspot.com) was adjudged the Best Topical Blog last year went on to win the CNN Young Journalist award in 2006 and Amit Varma, author of “India Uncut”, who won the “Best New Indiblog” award in 2005 went on to become a columnist for Mint and win the prestigious Bastiat Award in 2007 and a book deal with Hachette India.”, said Debashish

The award process at Indibloggies is three fold.

In the first phase anyone could nominate up to 10 blogs for any category using the form at http://nom2008.indibloggies.org. The nomination phase for the 2006 event would be open from 16 Feb 2009 to 6 Mar 2009. Details on the nomination process are available at the Indibloggies website at http://www.indibloggies.org. This year Indibloggies is also accepting open applications from bloggers to be a Jury member.

For the second phase, a jury comprising of prominent bloggers and those chosen from the applicants would be roped in to rate the nominated blogs. The peer review would result in short listing blogs for each of the 17 categories who qualify for the final phase. This phase is expected to be over by 20 March, 2009.

The final phase of the event, expected to commence on 24 March, 2009 would be the Public Poll where the short-listed blogs will be open to weeklong public voting and the one with the largest votes will be declared the winner in each category.

The winners will be announced in first week of April, 2009.

Indibloggies has 17 award categories as follows, with the categories on Personal, Business and Microblogs making a debut this year.

1. IndiBlog of the year
2. Best Humanities IndiBlog (IndiBlogs covering Art/Craft/Painting, Hobby, Literature, Poetry/Fiction)
3. Best Entertainment Indiblog (blogs on Music, TV, Movies, theater & fashion)
4. Best Sports IndiBlog
5. Best Science/Technology IndiBlog
6. Best IndiBlog directory/service/clique/network
7. Best Designed IndiBlog (Blogs with original designs or with major visible customizations to existing themes)
8. Best Food/Beverages Indiblog
9. Most Humorous Indiblog
10. Best Indi Podcast/Vidcast
11. Best Travel Indiblog
12. Best New Indiblog (IndiBloggers who began blogging on/after July 1, 2008)
13. Best Photo Indiblog
14. Best Personal Indiblog New category
15. Best Group/Community Indiblog
16. Best Business Indiblog New category
17. Best Indi Microblog New category

This year the category of Indic (Indian language) has been removed from the main event. “The number of Indian language blogs has steadily increased over these years and it would be an injustice to confine them to a single category when their English counterparts compete across 17. We propose to organize separate event for Indic blogs during the latter part of the year”, said Debashish, who is one of the earliest of the Hindi bloggers and has been an evangelizer of Hindi on Internet.

The winner of the IndiBlog of the Year will get a scrapture trophy worth Rs. 15,000 made by Arun Verma (http://www.arunverma.com).

Although sponsorship offers are still open, prizes worth Rs 1,00,000 have already been committed from various Bloggers and Organisations. Automattic, creators of the popular blogging platform Wordpress (http://wordpress.com) and Hachette India, publishers of Amit Varma’s upcoming novel “My Friend Sancho” are the Silver sponsors at the 2008 edition. Bronze sponsors include The Problogger book (http://probloggerbook.com), Zoho (http://zoho.com) and Web-1 (http://www.web1.in).

Prizes in various categories include copies of the Problogger book, Amit Varma’s upcoming novel, a book on Photography apart, complete blog hosting packages, apart from cash-awards. Debashish observes that the community feel is rampant at the awards. “More than anything else, sponsors involvement with the event signifies the ethos of the Internet and the blogosphere”, he said.

For additional details, please visit http://www.indibloggies.org. Detailed profile & pictures of Debashish available at http://nullpointer.debashish.com/about/about-the-author.

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Indibloggies is an annual blog-award website targeted at Indian Blogs and was started as a parody clique on the Bloggies. The site slogan says that it showcases the best of the Indian blogosphere. The website awards annually blogs written in English as well as Indicblogs (blogs written in Indian language scripts) authored by Indians and the Indian diaspora.