The Awards
The Community Blog Awards is open to all Contour Housing Group residents and was created to motivate the residents to get more engaged in the ‘blogosphere’. This initiative aims to bring the residents close to the community through the encouragement of sharing their thoughts, ideas and opinions in their blogs. Basically, the Community Blog Awards is all about blogging, conversations and interactions within the communities. The Awards will run from 1st July 2010 until 1st August 2010.
What is a blog?
A simple way to explain a blog is to think about the old journals people used to write. Inspired by this old habit, blogs are websites that make it easy for you to write and update your journal, but online. It could be classified as a personal diary, that is public, where you share your thoughts and things of your interest with basically everyone in the world (wide web) on a regular basis and also receive comments on your posts. Blogs are very democratic and enable a great deal of the population of the globe to have a voice. Nowadays millions of people around the world are ‘blogging’ more and more, and also reading blogs that they think are relevant for them or even the ones that are just fun. There are no rules in the ‘blogosphere’, basically whatever you want your blog to be, it can: from simply sharing your opinion about a particular topic to updating the news of your business. There are also no gender or age discrimination, anyone that has Internet access at least once a week can create and update a blog. There are lots of theories and explanations for what a blog is in the web, but this cool video (link) summarises quite well all this discussion. If you think you have some interesting stuff to share on the web, start blogging!!!
Training Session
For those that are new to blogging, but don’t want to miss the opportunity to get engaged, Contour Housing Group will be offering a training session on Wednesday, 28th July. To book your place and for more information about this workshop, email Sam Cooper on sam.cooper@contourhousing.co.uk.
Categories
For the first Community Blog Awards there will be three categories you can enter and the judges will decide among the winners of each of the following categories to be the Best of All Categories winner.
Best personal blog: Sharing personal thoughts and web links about your life and times are examples of personal blogs. Could be photos, what you get up to, poems – it’s like an ongoing diary that’s available on the web. A good example of a personal blog is: http://crinklybee.typepad.com/crinklybee/
Best local blog: This type of blog could be written by an individual or a group and is about an area or community. Things like ‘whats on’, ‘where to go’, ‘community issues’ are examples of the topics. An example of a local blog would be: http://www.tameside-eye.blogspot.com/
Best advice blog: Blogs competing in this category are basically blogs that help other people. Could be something to do with money saving tips or to do with helpful hints around the home in the kitchen or with children and families etc. An example of this kind of blog is: http://blog.moneysavingexpert.com/
Judging criteria
Both blogs and micro-blogs (such as Twitter) can enter in the competition. They are both going to be judged by the panel of judges under the same criteria: originality, wit and value added to the community. There will be only one winner for each category and the judges will nominate the overall winner of the Awards (Best of All Categories) who will be the only one to be rewarded.
Nomination
The five potential winners shortlist for each category will be posted in the Community Blog Awards website (date to be confirmed). The winners of each category and the Best of All Categories winner will be announced in the Residents Conference in September (date and venue to be confirmed). The judges will decide the winners and will have the final decision.
Prizes
Only the Best of All Categories winner will be rewarded with a netbook and also a free consultancy with AND Digital specialists to make the winning blog to look even better..
For more information, have a look in our TERMS & CONDITIONS page (link) or alternatively contact Samuel Cooper at sam.cooper@contourhousing.co.uk.
