The BOBs -- The Best of the Blogs -- is run in three phases.

Between 07.12.2009 and 14.02.2010 you can submit your favorite Weblogs from around the world. That's phase one.

Phase two is when our international jury of bloggers, journalists and media experts narrow the suggestions down to 11 nominees per category.

Voting for the User Prize will be open between 15.03.2010 and 14.02.2010.

The BOBs international jury will meet in Berlin in mid-April.

The winners of the Deutsche Welle BOBs Awards will be announced on 15.04.2010 at the re:publica social media conference in Berlin.

The prize ceremony will take place on 22.06.2010 at the Deutsche Welle Global Media Forum in Bonn.


That's the contest in a nutshell, here are the particulars:

SUGGESTION AND NOMINATION PHASES
07.12.2009 - 14.03.2010

Entry submission
07.12.2009 - 14.02.2010

The BOBs - Best Of The Blogs - competition will begin on 07.12.2009. After the floodgates have been opened, entries in all 17 categories can be submitted using our submission form. Sites can be submitted up to 14.02.2010.

Anyone can participate

Essentially anyone who can type is permitted to submit as many Weblogs as they would like for consideration in the competition. The only exceptions are Weblogs, podcasts and videocasts from employees of Deutsche Welle and members of the jury.

Multiple entries are okay

Don't worry if somebody was faster at submitting the blog you love. Multiple entries of the same Weblog are possible. Everyone will be able to see how many times a site has been submitted, and this can serve as part of the what jury members take into consideration when they select nominees (though it would probably only play a minor role).

Eleven competition languages

The official competition languages are Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, English, French, German, Indonesian, Persian, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish.

Submissions in any one of or any combination of contest languages are valid in the categories "Best Weblog," "Best Video Blog," "Best Podcast," the "Reporters Without Borders Award", the "Special Topic Award" and the "Blogwurst Award."

But we're splitting it up in the "Best Weblog/(Insert Language Here)," categories. These are only open to submissions in the given language.

Getting suggestions approved

Before they are posted, your BOBs editors are required to make sure none of the suggested blogs contain material deemed illegal under German law. We'll also be checking to make sure they meet the contest's fine print. While we reserve the right not to publish suggestions or remove them after they've been listed, we probably won't unless they contain xenophobic, racist, sexist, discriminatory or obscene material. That also goes for Web sites that post or link to such material after they have been suggested or nominated in the BOBs.

Editorial rights

The jury and organizers reserve the right to make editorial changes to the texts submitted with site suggestions (the site description, for example) and to change the category for which a suggestion is listed. Once sites have been cleared and posted online, they can be sorted and viewed by category.

How to retract a suggestion

If you run a blog that has been suggested to the BOBs, you can have your site removed by using our contact form.

However, if the person who runs a Weblog that has been suggested for the BOBs has not requested it to be removed by the end of the suggestion phase, we can retain the right to document the blog, to archive the entry and to present it to an interested public.


Deciding on the Nominees
15.02.2010 - 14.03.2010

Between 15.02.2010 and 14.03.2010, our jury of bloggers, journalists and media experts will nominate the 10 best submissions in each category.


DECISION PHASE
15.03.2010 - 14.04.2010

When all the nominees have been determined, aspiring award winners will be sorted by category and presented on the BOBs Web site with screenshots, links and short descriptions for your surfing enjoyment.

While the jury is poring over them looking for its Jury Award winners, you'll be able to decide in a democratic fashion which nominees get the international bragging rights that come with the User Prize.

User Prizes and Voting

Anyone and everyone has from 15.03.2010 - 14.04.2010, to look over the nominees and vote for their favorites. While there's no way to eliminate fraud from Internet voting, we're trying to avoid it by making voters -- the real human ones -- enter text from a randomly generated image to confirm their votes.

The Jury Award

The BOBs international jury awards prizes in each Jury Prize category. The jury will meet in Berlin in mid-April.

15.04.2010:
Announcing the winners, presenting the awards/b

The winners if the BOBs Awards will be announced on 15.04.2010 in Berlin.

The awards ceremony will take place on 22.06.2010 at the Deutsche Welle Global Media Forum in Bonn.

The winners

The winners of the BOBs Jury Awards will be invited to collect their prizes at the Deutsche Welle Global Media Forum in Bonn.

User-vote winners will receive online-accolades and international bragging rights!