Just when I thought this week was going to be as bland as the last, the cosmos conspire to give me something good for a change.

First, this:

Dear Mr. Carlo [baleeted!],

Good day!

We like to invite you again to be one of our semi-finals judges for The 9th Philippine Web Awards.

Your kind cooperation and participation made in previous years’ competition/s credible in the eyes of the participants and therefore, made The Awards very successful. We are thankful for your commitment to the development of Filipino web design and it would truly honor us if you can be part of The Philippine Web Awards once more.

As you know, The Philippine Web Awards is an award-giving body that honors the best Filipino-created Web sites. Now on its 9th year, the Awards has gained industry-wide acceptance and is one of the most highly anticipated events in the Philippine Internet community.

Like in the previous years, the event will be organized by Media G8way Corp., the Philippine representative of the global technology publisher International Data Group, which publishes Computerworld, PC World, MacWorld, Infoworld, CIO, and numerous other titles.

The Pre-Finals Judging and Semi-Finals Judging are critical stages in the competition and we need competent, credible, and experienced Web professionals who can help us choose the semi-finalists and finalists. As a judge, you will score the screened official entries for three categories that will be assigned to you. Screened official entries have already been checked for eligibility and proper category. All you have to do is give a score for the four criteria for your assigned categories.

The Pre-Finals Stage (where the top 10 semi-finalists per category are drafted), and The Semi-Finals Stage (where the top 10 are further narrowed down to the top 5), will begin a few weeks prior to The Awards Night which is tentatively scheduled on November 2006.

As a show of our appreciation, we will feature your profile (brief background and portfolio) on the Philippine Web Awards Web site, e-mail newsletters and on the souvenir program during the event. This will help enhance your exposure to thousands of PWA participants, the media and potential clients. You will also be acknowledged as one of the judges during the Awards night.

Should you accept our invitation, we will be discouraging the submission of your personal sites to the competition so as to minimize conflict of interests. Your clients, however, are free to nominate sites that you developed, although you will not be judging in the categories that they will compete in.

Also, please provide us the following:
Full name
Nickname
Company (if applicable)
Tel. No. (landline and mobile phone)
Postal address
Web development training (seminars, courses, etc.)
Areas of expertise (Flash, HTML, ASP, PHP, XML, etc.)
Years in the industry
List of clients (including URL)
Personal/Portfolio site
Digital photo (300 dpi)

Additionally, our Technical Committee is in the process of looking for other judges for the competition. We acknowledge your immersion and expertise in the field and would greatly appreciate your referrals should you be familiar with any similarly credible groups and/or individuals who might be interested in participating in the judging of The 9th Philippine Web Awards.

Thanks very much and we hope to hear from you again soon!

Sincerely,

Amalia V. Curva
Technical Committee Chairperson
The 9th Philippine Web Awards

A little history lesson is in order. I was a pre-finals judge for the Webbys 4 years ago, in 2002. After that, I had no involvement with it as a judge or as a competitor. Now, it seems like I’ve been upped a little because now I’m being invited to be a semi-finals judge.

I have never been too excited about events in the local scene. I’m no scenester, and I tend to have a cynical or skeptical approach to things. I have a somewhat keen eye for work that’s really good and for those that are just pretentious. I think my nature of being not easily impressed will give a nice counter-balance to at least some of the judging.

The second good thing is, I’ve been contacted by the guitarist of Eternal Now, a local progressive metal band, for the purpose of making them cover artwork for their upcoming concept album. Apparently they held a contest for the artwork and still want more choices.

Several weeks ago, cross-posted on a couple of forums of my intention to make album cover artwork for free. I simply wanted to add some more credentials under my belt, and this one is a good opportunity. I emailed back asking for details, hopefully he will reply soon and nab me at least 2 seconds worth of popularity.

What these 2 things mean is that I’ll actually have to set aside time to update my portfolio. Not the most favorite thing for me to do, but it’s gotta be done.