Well, this week I did something I wasn’t entirely expecting… I attended the .net Magazine awards 2010 at the Ministry of Sound. I didn’t win anything of course. but that’s a moan for another day… Richard Keys offered to take me as his “+1”, and with me being such an easy date, I accepted without much convincing!
Everyone had already sorted out travel by the time I was going, and the Megabus was the cheapest and easiest option (note the lack of “comfiest” in that list), so we all went with it; this just meant two seven hour trips with stops at every major city in the north-east. Consequently, we ended up trying to sort out a bit of entertainment for the trip. On the way down, I caught up with the sixth Harry Potter film while everyone else slept, and on the way back, I wrote most of this while Chris built some more of his new website while Lauren and Richard seemed to spend the entire trip on Twitter. Craig#mce_temp_url# built an iPhone app based on Richard’s vocals for “Hey Jude” (we’re all hoping for App Store submission soon!) and played Scrabble with Kat.
This was also the first time I’d ventured forth towards the capital city, normally being a typical northerner and never going further south than Sheffield at most, and the sheer size and complexity of London did overwhelm me slightly. I have no idea how anyone navigates the Underground, or how postmen manage to do a serviceable job, when we got lost in a group of six people, five of which own iPhones with GPS and Google Maps capability, and one with an Android just to be safe. The tube seems stupidly expensive to me, we spent £10 each for two-days travel, so how anyone affords it when they’re commuting every day is beyond me. I wasn’t prepared for how many people it was physically possible to cram on a train either, or the fact that personal space is a privileged option unavailable to the users of London’s public transport, nevertheless, it seems to work! We got around easily and without much swearing…
We were stopping overnight in the EasyHotel in Victoria, and had little idea what to expect, other than a minimalist room with bright orange walls. Unsurprisingly, that’s what we got, however this didn’t prove to be as bad as we all thought. The room was comfortable enough, the facilities all worked, and most of us slept reasonably well after a night of boozing, so I was happy enough.
The actual awards ceremony started at 7pm, so we got the down to Elephant & Castle, stumbled around trying to find the Ministry of Sound, and then went straight in when we found it. Underbelly had pitched up outside with a photo booth that included a wind machine, so after we’d all messed up our carefully sculpted hair, we went into the main club, where we were greeted by free champagne with strawberries, and free beer. Two hours later, I was quite nicely hammered when the main awards ceremony started, with Jack Whitehall as host. Jeffrey Zeldman managed to bag three awards! The awards announcements were followed by a trip to a free burger van and some old-skool PacMan gaming, then, when the free beer ran dry, we headed back to hotel in a typically expensive London taxi.
I’d like to thank the .net Magazine for putting on such a great awards night and being such fantastic hosts, and for providing a night of drunkenness and debauchery for a lot less cost than normal! I’ve made a quick list of all the award winners below:
- Web App of the Year – Typekit
- Community Site of the Year – Ravelry
- Best API Use – Flipboard
- Interactive Site of the Year – Chrome Fastball
- Blog of the Year – Smashing Magazine
- Podcast of the Year – SitePoint
- Video Podcast of the Year – The Big Web Show
- Design Agency of the Year – Happy Cog
- Innovation of the Year - Node.js
- Web Personality of the Year – Jason Santa Maria
- Viral Campaign of the Year – Old Spice
- Standards Champion – Jeffrey Zeldman
- Open Source Application of the Year – Modernizr
- Redesign of the Year – BBC News
- Mobile Site of the Year – Flickr
- Mobile App of the Year – Dropbox
Everything else on the .net Magazine Awards website.
