I mentioned recently that the Netvisionaries had been launched officially.
It transpires that the Golden Spiders intend to run their “awards” on the same evening.
Although I would like to think that the Irish ‘net industry is vibrant I would be either naive or foolish to think that you could run two award ceremonies on the same night.
Then again the Golden Spiders aren’t exactly in the same league as the IIA awards.
Whereas the IIA awards are open, transparent and democratic you would have to be forgiven for thinking that the Golden Spiders were some kind of dinosaur that the great freeze forgot.
I already posted last year on the merits, or lack thereof, associated with some of these awards.
However, whether they hold any merit or not, how can they possibly gain from running their award ceremony on the same night as the Netvisionary ones?
Take it from a pure business perspective.
Both awards rely on their sponsors to make the event viable. Last year the Golden Spiders were unable to find sponsors for all award categories until shortly before the event.
The Net Visionaries, on the other hand, had already secured sponsors for most of the categories prior to the press launch.
In terms of quality, which is quite subjective in some areas, the entrants in the two awards last year were at two different extremes of the quality spectrum.
NetVisionaries awarded innovative entrepeneurs such as Aodhan Cullen who runs Statcounter, which is probably the most popular free stat service on the web at present. The fact that it is actually Irish owned and run is probably ignored by a lot of its users, but it is and should be lauded by the Irish ‘net community.
So who stands to gain from this kind of move?
Michele Neylon :: Pensieri
Technology, Marketing, Domains, Thoughts
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Just looking at the Golden Spiders’ website. It is a complete disaster in that it is only an image and map with no content. A bit like the Golden Spiders really – no content by people who don’t matter in our industry.
John
It’s not a website. It’s a holding page.
I did a check on Google which found a bunch of pages, but they all return a 404 !!
You’d think that they’d keep an archive online …
Your Net Visionary Awards link seems to be broken.
What’s the story with the Golden Spiders? Are they run by Business and Finance magazine or something? Just wondering what was up with the bandf email address on the holding page.
Piaras – Fixed that link – thanks!
I think Business & Finance are one of the backers of the awards.
Michele
B&F bought the award from the liquidators, it’s owned by the mag, in the same way the ICT Awards are owned by Mediatemple (who own pc live, smart company, etc)
Steve
Who owned it originally? Was it dot.ie or am I confusing it with something else?
Michele
No I’m fairly sure it was dot.ie
I think they tried flogging it to Scope at the time.. All these rumours.. so little time 🙂
It was Hogan’s company that originally owned the Golden Spiders. The DotIE magazine was used to promote it. Without the DotIE magazine to promote the Golden Spiders, it is just an echo of Ireland’s dot.bomb period and as equally irrelevant.
Wasn’t the Golden Spiders and Dot.ie originally started somewhere else, as in Hoson bought them?
Yep DotIE started out as a house mag for Ireland Online (based on the Compuserve house mag) and was set up by one of the guys in ICAN.
Irene Gahan, now the chief promoter of the IIA Awards, provided much of the creative editorial decision-making of dotIE which later spawned the Golden Spiders. The industry needs to recognise that the Spiders currently represent a shambolic presentation of Irish web technology.
Bernie
As CEO of the IIA it is only natural that she should be the chief promoter 🙂
With regard to the Spiders, is a shambolic representation justification to continue with the farce?
Michele