Fifth Annual UU Blog Awards

Howdy folks, a bit of a late start on the blog awards this year...

Last year I remember thinking when I saw Aaron Sawyer blog post about presenting at an award show how uninteresting an awards show would be if the accounting firm of "so and so" simply walked on stage, thanked everyone, then tacked up the winners on a poster board. This seems to me to be what I have been doing with the blog awards. Dull, uninspired. But if I got some of you good people involved….How much more exciting and interesting!

In sum, I need volunteers this year to host each award category. This is what I am thinking:

• Volunteers will respond to this blog post to claim a category (see below) It may be best not to claim a category for which you suspect you may be nominated!
• Contact me with your e-mail address
  
• Put up a post on your blog to collect nominations
• Collect, vet, and make sure we have a link for all nominations, preferably title as well. Oh, you will probably also get people saying "thanks but no thanks" that will need to be removed before being finalized.
• When nominations close send the data to me. I will handle the ballot and voting per usual. I will allow the votes to show for a while, but then towards the end voting will go into mystery mode where the results will not be revealed until the end. Unless folks think I should keep it in mystery mode the whole time.
• Once the voting is done, I will e-mail you the results to be revealed/presented on your blog.
  

Award Categories:

• Best Religious Writing or Theological Commentary (Single entry and Best of Class)
• Best Anecdote or Narrative (Single entry and Best of Class)
• Best Political Commentary (Single entry and Best of Class)
• Best Review or Cultural Commentary
• Best Design or Use of Visuals
• Best New Blog
• Best Non-UU-Themed Blog
• Best UU-Themed Blog
• Best Minister Blog
• Best Seminarian Blog
• Best Lay Blog
• Best Writing

Once we have the volunteers we can set a time line for when nominations, voting, etc. will run.

And of course, questions and comments are welcome.

Update: Life needs my attention devoted elsewhere. If anyone else wants to "host" awards this year, please do. Otherwise Philocrites started a top ten meme.

UUpdates small screen rendering

If you have checked out UUpdates in the past on a mobile phone like the iPhone, then you might want to check it out again. I won't go into the technical details (unless asked), but suffice it to say it should look much better now that I have been able to look at it myself.

I recently got a G1 Google phone and I have to say I am very impressed with the idea of cloud computing. Within minutes of signing in on the phone I had access to all my Google apps (like Gmail) and associated contacts. I imported the phone numbers that previously only existed on my phone's SIM card and now I have them in an easily editable format online. With other mobile devices the Palm Handheld there was always the big worry of making sure it got synched so you wouldn't lose your data. I trust the data integrity on Google's servers more than I do a portable handeld device.

Anyway, if there are any comments on the updated layout. For example if it broke something, or doesn't look better please let me know.

For the children of Knoxville

I saw the following suggestion in FaceBook. I thought it was worthwhile to pass along.

Please send paper cranes to the children of TVUUC

It is a very tangible way to show the children how many people are thinking and praying for them.

The address is

Tennesee Valley UU Church
c/o Brian Griffin, DLRE
2931 Kingston Pike
Knoxville, TN 37919

I got the idea from a Fred Small song "Cranes Over Hiroshima" which was inspired from this story:

http://www.sadako.org/sadakostory.htm

http://www.amazon.com/Sadako-thousand-paper-cranes-Eleanor/dp/0698118022

My families thoughts and prayers are with all those involved in these tragic events.

UU Blog Awards - Winners

The winners of the Fourth Annual UU Blog Awards have been posted. Congratulations to all our winners and nominees, and thanks to all who have participated in the process.

UU Blog Awards - Nominations Closed

Thanks to everyone who took the time to show their appreciation for our UU bloggers by nominating their work for consideration in the awards. A special thanks from me for those who helped pre-sort posting by identifying posts you thought were good candidates for specific topics, and to all those who used the select features instead of writing in blog names.

Please take some time to review the nominations for the 2008 UU Blog Awards and let me know if anything looks strange, out of place etc. What sort of feedback am I looking for? Well, lets start with a great comment that came in.

Noticed that two cross-posted posts are listed separately. (CC's and Ministrare's.) Could they be listed together, since the content is the same? I think they have a good chance of winning, and it'd be a shame to split the votes between them.

Makes sense to me considering it looks like it was co-authored. I'll plan on combining those.

It would have helped me to read a reminder to click on the "nominate" button at the bottom of the page-----before I got there!

The page has been updated, thanks for the suggestion. I also noticed PeaceBang commenting that process seemed complicated. Any comments on making things easier would be appreciated.

I find it depressing that you have to check for irregular voting patterns. I know that's the way it works, but it's too bad.

Well, if it's any consolation I have never found anything noteworthy in those reviews. The comment is their primarily to discourage any activity along the lines of ballot stuffing.

Sad to see the Best Commenter go, but I understand why you took it down.

Well, there wasn't much feedback in support of the category. If others felt it was a good category I would certainly bring it back next year. I am sure if there are any particular commenter that you wanted to nominate they may appreciate you giving them a nod on your blog. One of the big benefits of the process is highlighting all the great contributions throughout the year - win or lose.

Thanks for doing this every year!

I think it's a worthwhile effort, glad it's appreciated.

So, are any blogs nominated in the wrong category? (Seminarian, minister, etc.) Any New blogs that are really old blogs?

Also, anyone nominated that would prefer to withdraw various nominations so that votes are not split please post here.