I’ve spent the bulk of my energy thinking and planning 2011 and the contributions I want to make to our local blogging community. In those planning sessions, one of the major decisions I needed to make was whether or not to pursue #influenceSD for a second year.
While we had a successful event in my opinion, there was some obvious first year flaws. I think the good overshadowed the bad and we ended up pulling our community closer together, which was always the ultimate goal.
As we were reflecting on the pros and the cons of the event, it became clear that the selection process seemed to cause a lot of friction with the nominees and the community. Some of the more influential folks in our space didn’t feel the need to solicit votes as aggressively as some. The unfortunate byproduct of that format was some local bloggers didn’t make it to the finals for judging consideration who probably deserved to be there.
It’s clear to me that we need to judge more nominees, not just 5 finalists in each category. In fact, I’d like our panel to judge all of the nominees, but they simply don’t have time to evaluate and debate 500 websites. There in lies the problem and opportunity.
This year, I’d like to propose that we judge all entrants based on a Rubric, or set of metrics which will be the same for each blog that will guide the selection process. These metrics will potentially center around Google footprint, Alexa Ranking, Average of Compete and Quancast numbers, and other indicators touching on U/I, content and branding. This ‘Blogging Rubric’ will serve as something we can use to determine whether or not to accept and evaluate the nominees.
In order to have a better voting format we need to increase our judging capacity and reduce the number nominees to a reasonable level. The best idea I can come up with to accomplish this is to switch the nominees from open to closed invitations–essentially making #influenceSD an invite only awards ceremony.
The benefit of doing that would be we’d get to hand select who is judged and in what category. As an invite only awards ceremony, you would apply on our website for consideration. All applicants would be listed in our directory, but not necessarily considered for voting as a nominee. It would still be free to submit a nominee application and you can submit other bloggers for consideration.
If you are selected as a nominee, you will be invited to join the awards ceremony. At that point you will be asked to pay a nominal entrance fee as a nominee. This fee will allow us to dramatically increase our judging, reviewing, and operations capacity. This fee will also include your ticket to the awards show.
[Update 1/8 @ 10am] Good feedback from @californiakara. She suggested that both an entrance fee and nominee eval fee would sully the vetting process. I tend to agree. Feedback taken. We’ll need to think creatively about fundraising how we will close the resource / funding gap.
All nominees will be reviewed by our judges, with written evaluations posted on our website. From there, the community will vote on their People’s Choice winners, similar to last year. We are going to curb excess voting by making people login to either Facebook or Twitter in order to vote.
The community will vote up their favorite nominees and have a chance to influence the results. The top 3 blogs in each category will be declared the People’s Choice champions. The final winner will be hand selected by the panel of judges from the nominees. The People’s Choice champion and judges selection will not be mutually exclusive. Both the People’s Choice and judges selection will be recognized at the awards event.
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In my mind this gives the right balance of community input, hand curation, checks and balances, and–accomplishes the biggest goal of all–recognizing upcoming talent amongst the field of local content creators.
But.. what do you think? I want to hear resounding support for the voting format before we press forward and publicly commit to another year. We don’t want to push #influence on a community that doesn’t support it. We think this event serves our community well and gives up-and-comers access to a spotlight that they wouldn’t otherwise have. We also feels like it ushers in a passing of the torch amongst the local blogging leadership. However, the process has to be right in order to achieve that mission.
So, you tell me! Does this proposed process give us the right balance of community input and curation from the judges? Would you say the balance of power and winner’s tiers are fair? Does this make for a better awards show? I’d really like to hear your opinion. Either shoot us a Tweet below and or write a guest post with your thoughts on changes to the voting format and we’ll publish them here. We’d love to hear your ideas, and frankly, we need to hear them if this event is going to live on.
Over to you.
We’re still kicking the tires on our new theme and staffing up to meet our goals this year. We plan to officially debut the site in mid February. In the mean time, we will do our best to keep you updated with what’s going on with us and other local bloggers.
