And finally - we'd like to give a big thanks to all of our panelists and our winners for their time and thank you speeches or video messages at the ceremony. You all were great!
2010-06-22
Iranian journalist sentenced to prison and restricted from working for 30 years
Zhila Bani Jaghob, Iranian journalist and winner of The BOBs – Deutsche Welle’s Blog awards – plans to appeal court’s decision
Zhila Bani Jaghob, an Iranian journalist and women’s rights activist, has been sentenced to one year of prison and is being restricted from working as a journalist for 30 years. “One of the reasons they named for handing me this harsh sentence were the articles I wrote on my weblog,” said Bani Jaghob. Her blog “We are Journalists” featured stories about “people's protests against the disputed presidential election in Iran last year.” After the elections in Iran last year, Bani Jaghob was arrested and held for 70 days. She plans to appeal the court’s decision. Her husband, also a journalist, was sentenced to serve more than seven years in prison as well. “Currently, more than 40 journalists and bloggers are imprisoned in Iran,” said Bani Jaghob.
“We are Journalists” was chosen by the jury from The BOBs this past April to receive the Reporters Without Borders prize from Deutsche Welle’s international blog awards. “The prize should honor her outstanding commitment to freedom of speech. She is one of the few critical journalists still working in Iran,” explained the jury. Bani Jaghob will not be able to attend The BOBs awards ceremony taking place at the Deutsche Welle Global Media Forum in Bonn. She did, however, send a personal message.
Awards to be presented during the Deutsche Welle Global Media Forum in Bonn.
2010-06-10
The BOBs at Deutsche Welle's Global Media Forum
BOBs Award Ceremony
The winners selected by our jury at the sixth annual BOB Awards can start packing their bags. They've been invited to our awards ceremony on the evening of June 22, 2010 (5:30 p.m. CEST) at Deutsche Welle's Global Media Forum in Bonn.
International Conference on Climate Change
The international conference "Deutsche Welle Global Media Forum" (June 21-23) will examine the topic: "The Heat is on – Climate Change and the Media". The big question at the conference, of course, is the role of the media in climate issues. How can journalists draw attention to the topic of climate change? To what extent can the coverage of climate change and ecology be shifted? The Global Media Forum features more than 40 events and many international experts that deal with these questions and more. The event first took place in 2008 and is held with a different topic each year in Bonn.
Panel with BOBs Winner
There was a new category at this year's BOBs that dealt with the same theme as the Global Media Forum. Brazilian Bruno Rezende won the "Special Award: Climate Change" for his blog called Coluna Zero. Together with social media expert and researcher Nina Heinze and blogger Georg Hoffmann, he will discuss the role of social media in the sciences. The panel "Reaching out for the People - Climate Change in Social Media" will address the issue of whether the social web can help make scientific information about climate change more transparent to laypeople. The panelists will discuss their own experiences with reaching out to people by way of the Internet and how users can profit from this kind of scientific exchange. The moderator is blogger and social media expert Matthias Spielkamp.
2010-04-15
Congratulations to our winners!
Ushahidi.com wins Best Weblog Award for 2010!
The jury of the sixth annual BOBs has made its final decisions in each of the seventeen categories.
Of the eleven finalists in the Best Weblog category, Ushahidi (English: "Testimony") was named the winner after a heated round of debate among the jurists.
The jury was ultimately won over by Ushahidi's innovative approach to collecting and compiling information from users and the important role it has already played in crisis situations throughout the world.
The site was founded in Kenya in 2008 as a way to help citizens navigate the turmoil that followed the nation's presidential elections. It is now an open source platform available to any websites or users who want to create interactive maps generated by crowdsourcing - the collection of data from users. Ushahidi was used, for instance, in the aftermath of this year's disaster in Haiti to track earthquake victims.
Congratulations also go out to Osama Romoh, whose blog was named Best Weblog by our user voters. The Jordanian blogger writes satirically and ironically about social issues and developments in his country.
Thank you to all who participated in our jury and the voting process - and especially to the bloggers!
2010-04-14
The winners have been selected!
Voting for the sixth annual BOBs has now ended. You can check out the winners on our Winners Page.
The winners selected by our jury will be presented on the evening of April 15 at the Friedrichstadtpalast building in Berlin in conjunction with the re:publica conference.
2010-04-08
The BOBs in Berlin
The BOBs are almost here! Our phones and computers have been running like crazy lately, and, like always, there have been a couple of last minute changes. Unfortunately, Chinese jury member Ai Weiwei cannot come to Berlin. Instead, Isaac Mao has been helping out in a big way with nominations, and Michael Anti has agreed to take part in the jury next week.
Last Call
How is the voting going for your nominees? Everyone is still able to vote until the evening of April 14. So get clicking and support your nominees!
Things are heating up for the jury too. On Tuesday, April 13 and Wednesday, April 14, the international BOBs jury will meet in Berlin to discuss the nominees in each category and select the winners. The second day of jury meetings will take place in the morning at the re:publica conference. Afterwards, any interested bloggers or media representatives will have the chance to learn more about blogs in Brazil, China and Iran. Jury members Rosana Hermann, Michael Anti and Farnaz Seifi will take part in a moderated discussion panel and answer questions.
And the Winner is…
On the evening of April 15, the event "The BOBs - The truth about the international blogosphere" will be held in Berlin's Friedrichstadtpalast. The event will feature unique aspects of various blogospheres as well as a keynote by Dr. Jan-Hinrich Schmidt. Of course, a high point of the evening will also be the presentation of the winning bloggers, as selected by the jury.
For those who cannot join us in Berlin, the event will be broadcast live via the re:publica stream. You can play the stream directly from the BOBs homepage.
Twittering with #thebobs
You're welcome to stay in touch with us on Twitter, where you can learn about the latest BOBs news from our account @dw_thebobs. We also have a Twitter widget on the right-hand menu of the site. Everyone who uses the #thebobs hashtag can see their comments appear there.
2010-03-15
Online voting starts
Deutsche Welle has entered the final stage of its sixth annual international weblog awards – The BOBs. Our jury has named the finalists and now it’s your turn to decide the people’s choice winners.
This year, we received 8,408 nominated blogs. This includes the blogs, podcasts and videoblogs nominated in 17 different categories. We didn’t and have never counted a nominated blog twice – once is good enough for us. Each blog – whether it was nominated once or 100 times – has an equal chance with our jury. The total number of nominations from users this year was 58,837.
The next steps
We have created a short description in 11 different languages for all the finalists in each category. This way, users from around the world can get an idea about what the blog is about – regardless of language. We also have short descriptions in English for the finalists from each language category. When you consider that there are 187 finalists, that ends up being quite a bit of work.
Online voting will continue for the next four weeks, ending on April 14, 2010. The jury will meet in the middle of April in Berlin to decide their group of winners, which will then be announced on April 15 at an even in the Friedrichstadtpalast during the re:publica conference.
Winners will receive their awards at a ceremony during the Deutsche Welle Global Media Forum in June 2010 in Bonn.
2010-02-15
Nominations have now closed
Over to the jury...
Thanks for all your nominations. Great to see so many exciting blogs, podcasts and videoblogs in there.
As soon as we've processed the last entries we'll be handing over to the BOBs jury. Each jury member will make a shortlist of the best contenders in his or her language. Shortlists consist of eleven entries per category.
How many categories was that again?
A lot! Thee's one category per language – so that's eleven to start with. Then there are the others: Best Weblog, Best Videoblog, Best Podcast, Reporters Without Borders Award, Blogwurst Award and Special Topic Award: Climate Change.
When does the online voting start?
As from March 15th you'll be able to check out all 187 shortlisted entries. That's also when the online voting starts. The online voting runs parallel to the work of the jury. At the end of the competition, we'll announce two winners per category: the winner of the jury prize and the winner of the online vote. Voting closes on April 14th 2010.
Announcing the winners
The jury will hold thier final meeting on April 13th and 14th in Berlin. The winners will be announced on April 15th at the re:publica10 conference in Berlin. We hope to see you there!
2010-02-05
Hurry up, the clock is ticking!
The nomination phase for the 6th BOBs Awards finishes on February 14th.
That's the final deadline for suggesting your blog, podcast or videoblog for the competition. Don't forget you can also nominate your favourite blogs from our Blogopedia by simply going to the blog's 'details' page and clicking on the relevant category.
New for 2010: the BOBs are now accepting nominations in Bengali. There's also a new 'Special Topic: Climate Change' award. Blogs AND podcasts are eligible for this one, so keep your eyes peeled for anything that fits the bill.
The jury kicks into action on February 15th. For each of the 17 categories, the jury members will make a shortlist of 11 entries. The BOBs winners will be announced at the re:publica internet conference on April 15th 2010.
Just a few more days to go: keep those nominations coming!
Welcome to the BOBs, the world’s largest international awards for Weblogs, podcasts and videoblogs. Begun in 2004, the BOBs have grown to include 11 languages. The winners of each year’s awards are decided by both an international jury of bloggers and through online voting. Got a favorite blog? Nominate it for the BOBs 2010.
About the Blogopedia
The Blogopedia is our international online catalogue of Weblogs, podcast and videoblogs. Each blog is entered into the database according to a variety of criteria from topic to country of origin to language. Looking for music podcasts in Brazil or food blogs in China? No problem! Just type your keywords into the search feature or browse through the categories and Tagcloud. Then join the thousands of other Bloggers who have submitted their blogs, podcast and videoblogs into the Blogopedia.
Survey of eight blogospheres
Bloggers from eight different language regions explain the characteristics and peculiarities of the blogospheres where they're most at home.
The Blogmap, Reborn...
Check out its new features and discover a new way to browse the world of blogs.
The BOBs are almost here! Our phones and computers have been running like crazy lately, and, like always, there have been a couple of last minute changes. Unfortunately, Chinese jury member Ai Weiwei cannot come to Berlin. Instead, 
