Richard Willis

The shortlist for the ‘Digital Media Awards‘ - or ‘DIMAs’, formerly the ‘Brighton Web Awards’ - has just been announced and FlashBrighton members feature throughout. Matt Pearson for his excellent zenbullets blog in the ‘Best Blog’ catagory, Iestyn Lloyd (of LittleLoud) for ‘Best Use of Animation’ & ‘Outstanding Digital Design’, Alistair Macdonald (of Kerb) for ‘Best Use of Animation’ & ‘Digital Marketing’, Sarah Bird for ‘Farm Freelancer of the Year’, and FlashBrighton itself for ‘Strongest Community’. Judging by the sheer amount of FlashBrightonians listed, we must be a shoe-in for the latter award. Is that tempting fate, should I keep quiet? Nonsense, fate be damned; we’re on the list through merit alone! Or, should I say, we’re on the list because of all the awesome copywriting I’ve done for us this past year!

It’s unseemly to pimp yourself, right; very un-British? The truth is that I don’t care; I think I do a damn good job with the copy and obviously the judges think so too. But… ok, sure, I guess I have to admit that there are other things that make FlashBrighton great too:

1. That we manage to put on a presentation every single week;
2. That our membership are committed and interested enough to actually make a presentation every 7 days a viable option;
3. That as well as literally hundreds of enthusiasts, professionals and students, our membership also includes such luminaries as Niqui Merret, Tom Kennett & Chris Sperry, Iestyn Lloyd, Aral Balkan and of course Seb Lee-Delisle himself;
4. That we get the best speakers to talk: Richard Lord, Nick Weldin, Bob Swain, Kyle Jennings, Peter Passaro, Serge Jespers, Nick Tandavanitj, plus loads & loads more;
5. That, to paraphrase FB member Neil Manuell, we go from ‘the esoteric to the nerdy‘ with enviable ease;
6. That we put on awesome large events like our ‘Film Carnivals O Fun‘ and the ‘Big Day Out‘;
7. That we give away acres and acres of great blag, such as the free boxed copy of ‘FlexBuilder2′ every attendee at the ‘Big Day Out’ picked up;
8. And that we do it ALL for free, just because we want to;

When you look at it like that, maybe it’s no wonder that we made the shortlist. Here’s wishing LittleLoud, Kerb, Matt Pearson, Sarah Bird and FlashBrighton the best of luck on the 27th of November. I’m also backing the other clients I’ve worked with over the past few years too: my friends Matt, Ju & Nick at Blast Theory and my old employer DigitalBrain, who’s ‘DB Primary‘ portal is nominated in the ‘Best in E-Learning’ category.

I’ll be there on the 27th backing all these guys. And yes, I know its hardly the Oscars… but I don’t care, it’s a bit of fun!

Good luck one-and-all!

Tags: DIMAs, DiMAs2008, FlashBrighton

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 13th, 2008 at 5:37 pm and is filed under Events, FlashBrighton, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.