Indibloggies ~ Indian Weblog Awards

Indibloggies 2006 ~ The Award Categories

There had been tremendous feedback on the categories from Indibloggers and we have revamped the categories this time. It’s time to bid adieu to the award categories “Indiblog with the best tagline” and “IndiBlog lifetime achiever”, the latter certainly sounded too clichéd. And, guess what, we have added five sparkling new categories.

The upcoming 2006 event of the Indibloggies would award outstanding blogs in the following award-categories:

1. IndiBlog of the year
2. Best Humanities IndiBlog (IndiBlogs on Humanities, covering Art/Craft, Literature, Paintings, Poetry/Fiction)
3. Best Entertainment Indiblog (blogs on Music, TV, Movies, theater)
4. Best Sports IndiBlog
5. Best Science/Technology IndiBlog
6. Best IndiBlog directory/service/clique/network
7. Best Topical IndiBlog
8. Best Designed IndiBlog (Blogs with original designs or with major visible customizations to existing themes)
9. Best Food Indiblog
10. Most Humorous Indiblog
11. Best IndiPodcast
12. Best Travel Indiblog
13. Best New Indiblog (IndiBloggers who began blogging on or after July 1, 2006)
14. Best Photo Blog
15. Best Group/Community Blog
16. Best Indic blog (Blogs written using Indic — for example Devanaagri script for Hindi — scripts)

October 21st, 2006 | 17 comments | Permalink  

Indibloggies 2005: The power of collective wisdom

Indibloggies 2005 has been the most grand event so far, sponsors pitched in with prizes worth about Rs.75000/-. With more than 300 nominations made over 10 days and close to 25 Jurors browsing through the myriad flavors of writing and rating them, stage one of the Indibloggies 2005 edition was no mean affair. A record 1278 people registered for the poll but only 892 actually cast their vote. Many have written that the numbers are really really small compared to the fact we have lot many Indian blogs around, but to me the numbers are really unimportant, events like the Indibloggies only renew the faith of the people who have been blogging consistently, or people like me who just hang around for the fun.

Indibloggies used the bookmarking tool del.icio.us for the nomination and Scuttle for the juror-rating phase. We had customized bookmarklets and tag-generators for delicious. The Scuttle interface was also customized for the occasion (compare the actual interface with the customized one). Here is a screen-grab of page showing the final tally. The final results were declared on January 14th, 2005.

Indibloggies 2005 Links:

• The award-categories
• List of Jurors
• List of Nominated Blogs
• The Sponsors
• Final Results

January 30th, 2006 | Add comment | Permalink  

Indibloggies Slogan competition results

Yes, one more result was to be announced and that’s the winner of the Indibloggies T-Shirt Slogan competition. Thanks to all the participants for the interest shown. We received lot many entries, and Sakshi and me were unanimous in selecting the winning entry submitted by Nazim Ur Rahman, “I am a Blogger. Need I say more?” Congratulations Nazim! You won yourself a T-Shirt that you designed Thanks a lot Sakshi for sponsoring the T-shirts and for suggesting this competition.

Congratulations again to the winners at Indibloggies 2005 edition who would be sent the T-Shirt once they let me know their Tee size (the T-shirt shown here varies from the actual gift, which would be a Beige round neck Tee).

Hey, you can get this Tee too.

Yes, if you wish to get this beautiful Indibloggies T-Shirt and proclaim proudly to the world that you blog, you can buy it from us. This superior quality Black Panther Indibloggies Tee is being made available to you, thanks to Sakshi, at a special price as follows.

• Indibloggies Collared Tee (Beige color): Rs.275.00 per piece (courier charges extra at actuals)
• Indibloggies Round-neck Tee (Beige color): Rs.225.00 per piece (courier charges extra at actuals)

To order your T-Shirt send us an email at indibloggies at gmail dot com with a subject “Tee Order” mentioning the size, type, quantity and your complete postal address. Once we get your details we would let you know the total price (inclusive of courier charges for your area, or To-pay charges if applicable) and you may pay either through online money-transfer or a Demand Draft.

January 23rd, 2006 | 5 comments | Permalink  

The Word is out

Ladies and Gentlemen, the wait is over. The hectic final voting spell spread over a week that also saw a repoll for the Best Designed Indiblog category — an unprecedented event in the history of the Indibloggies — is finally over and we are all set to declare the results. The public poll, thanks to the sophisticated poll script that we used this year, demanded that you unearthed all those email IDs that you created but never used, including those "2 minute" mailinator ones. And those who only had that lone yahoo ID since years were also delighted to get the additional Yahoo ID. It was, all in all, a peaceful poll with no untoward incidents. A record 1278 people registered for the poll but only 892 actually cast their vote, by virtue of those "a@b.com" email ID that were used to register and those cookies resting on your machine, I am happy that they could verify that the system was quite hard-wearing, the polls couldn’t be sturdier than this, IMHO.

And since I don’t want to irk you with anecdotes of innocent emails that ranged from "I just got the voting link. How do I nominate the sites?" to "Hey the link is not working" to "I never voted but got a mail saying thanks for voting" to "I won’t vote", here are the results:

IndiBlog of the year  [Tally]

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India Uncut is the Best Indiblog at the Indibloggies 2005. Amit Varma, author of India Uncut and a Mumbai based journalist is a maverick of quick posts and anything that starts with a "C", cows and cricket for instance. He not only bagged 25% of the votes cast for the category but also has the distinction to bag 225 votes, the highest number of votes bagged by any blog/site in this competition (yes, we know that voting for this category was mandatory but we are talking statistics here) and emerged a clear winner. Such fun! Amit wins

• One copy of BlogJet weblog client worth $39.95 from DiFolders Software
• Cory Doctorow’s book Someone Comes to Town, Someone leaves Town
• A copy of The Big Moo : Stop Trying to Be Perfect and Start Being Remarkable by Seth Godin and 32 other renowned authors.
• One Indibloggies T-shirt sponsored by Sakshi Juneja

Best Topical IndiBlog  [Tally]

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Mumbai based ace journalist, Sonia Faleiro (wow, the journos seem to have hijacked these awards ) is the winner of this category and wins:

• A copy of the book “At Home in the World : Collected Writings from The Wall Street Journal” by Daniel Pearl and gifted by Dilip D’Souza.
• One Indibloggies T-Shirt sponsored by Sakshi Juneja.
• A copy of The Big Moo : Stop Trying to Be Perfect and Start Being Remarkable by Seth Godin and 32 other renowned authors.

Best Humanities IndiBlog  [Tally]

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Jabberwock, the witty, no-nonsensical (ya, forget whatever Lewis Carroll said) blog of Jai Arjun, a Delhi based journalist. Jai wins:

• Cory Doctorow’s book Someone Comes to Town, Someone leaves Town
• One Indibloggies T-Shirt sponsored by Sakshi Juneja.

Best Science/Technology IndiBlog  [Tally]

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The winning blog is The Scientific Indian by that “hominid born out of star dust that coalesced some 5 billion years ago” — Selvakumar bagged 30% of the votes in this category. Selvakumar wins

• A Windows Mobile based smartphone worth Rs.19000/- sponsored by Microsoft India
• One Exam simulator of his choice presented by Whizlabs
• One Indibloggies T-Shirt sponsored by Sakshi Juneja.

The first runner up blog in this category Digital Inspiration wins a copy of Visual Studio 2005 Standard Edition worth $299 sponsored by Microsoft India. This and the second runner up blog Michael Parekh on IT also win one Exam Simulator each, of their choice, sponsored by Whizlabs.

Best IndiBlog directory/service/clique  [Tally]

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DesiPundit is the winner here. The hot one-stop news channel of Indi blogdom is a clear favorite among readers and bagged 46% of the votes cast for the category. The blog representative wins one Indibloggies T-shirt sponsored by Sakshi Juneja.

Indiblog with the best Tagline  [Tally]

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Mall Road is the winner. Shivam Vij, the guy with vicious plans, such as, toppling a few governments, wins:

• A 25 MB hosting package worth Rs.1000/- from Web1 Solutions
• One Indibloggies T-Shirt sponsored by Sakshi Juneja

The public opinion seemed quite divided on this category, with all the blogs in the fray finishing very close. This was one category that cheesed off a lot of people and this is probably the last time it appears at the Indibloggies.

Best Designed IndiBlog  [Tally]

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A walk in the clouds.. by Megha wins with 37% votes and strengthened my belief in the power of "collective wisdom". Yeh public hai, sab janti hai. This category witnessed some heated arguments on the scope of the award. The Jury was of a divided opinion, nominees rejected were unhappy and it was time we left the decision to the junta. This is the only category at the Indibloggies that had "all" the publicly nominated blogs competing for the award. The opinion that has clearly emerged out of the debate that followed it is that people do want that to come up to its name the category should only recognize original designs in future. Megha wins:

• An award Rs.500/- from Ganesh of Rupya.com.
• One Indibloggies T-Shirt sponsored by Sakshi Juneja.

Best New Indiblog  [Tally]

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The best new Indiblog is Meenakshi Agarwal’s spicy food blog Hooked on Heat. Meenakshi wins:

• An award of Rs 500/- from Amit Agarwal, author of Digital Inspiration
• One Indibloggies T-Shirt sponsored by Sakshi Juneja.

Best Photo Blog  [Tally]

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Je walla award ja rya si Nilesh Chaudhary’s ShutterBug nu. The “wizard of Canon” Nilesh wins :

• A copy of BlogJet weblog client worth $39.95 from DiFolders Software
• One Indibloggies T-Shirt sponsored by Sakshi Juneja.

Best Sports IndiBlog  [Tally]

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Sight Screen a group blog with authors such as Arjun Swarup and Prem Panicker. The blog representative wins a 25MB hosting package worth Rs.1000/- from Web1 Solutions and one Indibloggies T-shirt sponsored by Sakshi Juneja.

IndiBloggies 2005 lifetime achiever  [Tally]

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Guru Subramaniam aka Lazy Geek is the winner with 44% votes. Guru wins:

• One copy of BlogJet weblog client worth $39.95 from DiFolders Software
• A copy of the book “Naked Conversations : How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers” by Robert Scoble & Shel Isreal gifted by Venky Krishnamoorthy (Indibloggies recommends you to remain dressed while reading the book, the following award may come handy)
• One Indibloggies T-Shirt sponsored by Sakshi Juneja.

Best Group Blog  [Tally]

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DesiPundit is the winner here with a massive 45% votes in its kitty. The blog representative wins a copy of The Big Moo: Stop Trying to Be Perfect and Start Being Remarkable by Seth Godin and 32 other renowned authors.

Best Indic blog [Hindi]   [Tally]

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Mumbai Blog won in this category with 44% votes. Shashi Singh, the author, wins:

• Copies of three books, Shakuntala: Smriti Jaal by Namita Gokhale, Jannat aur Anya Kahaniyan by Khushwant Singh and Hamara Hissa, a collection of stories edited by Arun Prakash presented by Shail.
• One year registration for a new .IN domain (worth Rs.750) from Amit Gupta.
• Navneet Bakshi’s book “Mein bhi bana Minister”
• Sushma Jagmohan’s Hindi novel “Zindagi Email”.

The runner up blog, Anup Shukla’s Fursatiya wins:

• Sushma Jagmohan’s Hindi novel “Zindagi Email”.
• Navneet Bakshi’s book “Mein bhi bana Minister”

Best Indic blog [Kannada]  [Tally]

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Kanndave Nitya

Best Indic blog [Malayalam]  [Tally]

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Kalesh’s World

Best Indic blog [Marathi]  [Tally]

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The winner blog is Marathi Sahitya and wins one copy each of P.L.Desphpande’s Marathi books Poorvarang and Apoorvaaii from Marathi Blog Vishwa.

The runner up blog is Disamaji Kahitari… wins P.L.Deshpande Marathi book Jaave Tyanchyaa Deshaa presented by Marathi Blog Vishwa.

Best Indic blog [Tamil]  [Tally]

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Mugamoodi

Best Indic blog [Telugu] [Tally]

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Amazing Telugus wins an award of Rs.1000/- from Kiran Kumar Chava

Hearty congratulations to all the Winners! Thanks also to all the sponsors for being associated with and adding glory to Indiblogging. My heartfelt thanks to all the Jurors for your time and efforts. I also convey thanks to Jitendra Chaudhary to bear the postage costs for the gifts being sent by the Indibloggies. The money donated by Dr.Vivek Kochikar would be kept in buffer and utilized in paying the hosting costs next year on.

January 14th, 2006 | 32 comments | Permalink  

A repoll for the design category

Indibloggies is a site for celebrating Indian blogs and there is no place for any dispute or controversy here. After the polls began, questions were raised on the choice of blogs for the “Best Designed Indiblog” category. For the juror it was a point of confusion, should you judge a blog as a reader or as a designer, which probably resulted in great amount of debate among the jurors and we thought we should give preference to blogs with original designs or those with customized templates. There has been a major folly on my part to have retracted few blogs from the list and declare new nominees for the category.

There is no need for me to say here that no malice was involved. IMHO the only criteria for a good site design would be that on visiting the blog/site I should like it. My own conviction about this category was not to really care who designed it; the site-owner might have got it done from a professional designer, s/he might be a designer himself or s/he simply uses a template designed by others with or without customization. In all of these cases the choice is a reflection on the blogger’s taste. When I honour any of these blogs I actually honour the guy who has put-in efforts designing it. Simple thought!

To make it a leveler I have decided to hold a repoll for the Best Designed Indiblog category with all the nominated blogs in the fray, no juror verdict applied. This would be conducted as soon as the main poll concludes. This poll would be open to all the people who votes in the main poll and all of them would receive an email invitation to vote.

This repoll is meant for you people to decide the winner blog, without applying any filter of our opinion. Original, customized, template-based; simple, complicated, usability-friendly, apply whatever criteria you deem right. You are the juror, you are the judge too.

Update [11 Jan, 2005, 0045 HRS IST]: Those who had cast their vote in the final polls are eligible to vote in this repoll. All of you who registered for the main poll are being have been sent email invitations to participate in the repoll. Please check your mail.

Update [12 Jan, 2005 23:30HRS IST] : The Poll is now closed.

January 10th, 2006 | 17 comments | Permalink  

Final Polls begin

Ladies and Gentlemen, the moment of truth has arrived. We embark on the final stage of the Indibloggies 2005 edition, the final Public poll begins today and we will accept your votes till January 10, 2006 (IST). This is the stage where the junta speaks its mind. Yes, you can decide the fate of about 110 blogs that are in the fray in 18 different award-categories, handpicked from over 300 blogs by a distinguished team of Jurors.

Click on the link below to reach the Voting area, you would need a valid Email address to be able to cast your vote. To let the best and deserving blogs win, we request your cooperation.

Update [10 Jan 2006, 9 PM IST]: The Polls are closed now. Thanks for voting.

Update: Based on several suggestions, only the Best Indiblog category is now made a compulsory voting category. You may choose not to cast vote for any other category/catagories. Sorry for the mishap about the last date!

And for the Indibloggies 2005 nominees, shown alongside is a button that they can sport at their blogs/sites to reap more votes. I urge you not to link to the image directly, save it on your server or a free image hosting site like Flickr, if possible.

January 6th, 2006 | 16 comments | Permalink  

Closer to the Polls :: Meet the Indibloggies 2005 nominees

With more than 300 nominations made over 10 days and close to 25 Jurors browsing through the myriad flavors of writing and rating them, Stage one of the Indibloggies 2005 edition has come to an end. I do not have enough words of appreciation for the members of the Jury; many of them went out of the way to help me during the process. For the first time in the Indibloggies, and perhaps in the history of the internet, a social bookmarking tool was used in an award event.

For the interested, here is some trivia to savor:

• Indibloggies used the bookmarking tool del.icio.us for the nomination and Scuttle for the juror-rating phase . We had customized bookmarklets and tag-generators for delicious. The Scuttle interface was also customized for the occasion (compare the actual interface with the customized one). Here is a screen-grab of page showing the final tally.
• This was the first time I power-used Scuttle, some of my code such as the “Users list” and suggestions might actually make it to the next version of the tool. An interesting side effect of my using “Scuttle” was the Hindi localisation of Scuttle, that happened thanks to my Hindi blogger friends. The Hindi gettext file is available here.
• Jurors rated blogs in several award-categories on a scale of -1 to 5. A weighted score was calculated based on all Juror ratings for a blog in a particular category and a merit list prepared. The final list, in almost all categories, that makes it to second and the final stage comprises of blogs that were 40 percentile or above in the merit list.
• Juror Srijith prepared a flash video, a “how-to” guide for the Jurors while Saket and Pawan compiled exhaustive step-by-step guides for the nomination process.
• Many people complained about the nomination process being too geeky (though the 5-step guide, that came up of Arnab’s suggestion, evoked a good response) and I had to put a conventional email-form but that resulted more-or-less in what we all know email forms result in, spamming and multiple nominations. One of the blogs almost suffocated my Inbox, so much so that I had to ask the blog-owner to stop his people from flooding my mail-box.
• 63% of the nominated blogs were Blogger.com blogs. If few other blog-hosting services like live-journal may be ignored, Wordpress blogs must have been a close second.
• In all 193 blogs were rated by the jurors with about 15 blogs ending up with a negative or zero final score.
• Like last year, a private mailing list had all the Jurors deliberating and discussing over issues before and during the rating process.
• The whole rating process was also audited throughout, by three of the jurors to ensure a smooth completion.
• Juror Saket nominated the highest number of blogs, a whopping 115 blogs.

And now, without any further ado, we present the list of Stage-1 winner blogs that have qualified to participate in the final voting. To me this is the notable outcome of this event, if this list contains even one blog that you have never read before, my mission is accomplished. For your ease, we have a category wise OPML list available for you to subscribe (most of the newsreaders provide for importing an OPML list). Listing in each category is alphabetical.
(more…)

January 4th, 2006 | 28 comments | Permalink  

5 Steps to nominate your blog

So you think the whole nomination process for Indibloggies 2005 is too geeky for the technically challenged. We sure can prove you wrong! Just follow the easy 5-Step no non-sense guide below and if you still find it tough, feel free to “email us your nomination” and we will do it for you, no questions asked.

December 22nd, 2005 | 7 comments | Permalink  

Some updates!

• >> Facing problems? Email us your nomination:If you do not know how to bookmark your site at del.icio.us, you may send us a request to do it for you. Please use this feature only if you are unable to comprehend the delicious nomination methodology.
• >> RULE AMENDED: Many bloggers have protested the one blog for “one award category rule” in this event. In view of the same, we have made changes to the “rating tool” we are using and have amended the rule. This means that now a blog can be nominated for multiple award-categories.
• >> Correct nominations: We are noticing that many nomination bookmarks do no bear the “Site Title”. We request everyone to ensure that the Blog/Site “Title” and “URL” or “Site address” are correct before they add the bookmark to delicious. If the Site is in an Indic language, the Site title should be entered in Roman to enable us to comprehend the text. We may summarily reject nominations that contain incorrect or incomprehensible Site Title/URL.

December 19th, 2005 | | Permalink  

Indibloggies 2005 ~ Nominations Start

Ok People! The moment has arrived and we are pleased to announce the start of the nomination process for the Indibloggies 2005 Edition. To make the process more open and to allow a wider participation this time the nominations have to be done using the popular social bookmarking tool Delicious. Here are some things to note:

1. Nominations would remain open from Sunday, Dec 18 to Wednesday, Dec 28 (IST). We will ignore nominations made before and after this duration. Jurors would “rate” the nominated blogs and final list would be compiled for each category (tentatively in the first week of January 2006) that would participate in the Polls.
2. To nominate a blog/site you should bookmark the blog/site at Delicious (needs registration) using the “tags” mentioned below. These Tags would let you nominate a blog to a particular award-category. We recommend using the Indibloggies Nomination bookmarklet to ease the process. The bookmarklet will generate the Tags automatically for you. Even if you are not using the bookmarklet and bookmarking the site directly, it is recommended to use the Tag generator so that nomination doe not fail. There is no way for us to track a blog at Delicious that’s not nominated using the Tags prescribed below.
3. A blog or site can be nominated only for one award-category. If a blog/site is nominated and/or rated for multiple categories, the Indibloggies reserves the right to decide the best suitable category for the blog/site.
   Update [21 Dec]: This rule now stands amended. A blog can be nominated form multiple award-categories.
4. You may nominate your own blog/site as well as other’s. In the latter case make sure the respective site owner has no objection to his/her blog/site being nominated to this award.
5. Multiple nominations from one person are acceptable. However, repeated/quick submissions of a site may be considered as spamming and may lead to disqualification. It is advised therefore to nominate only your own blog/site. If you like any other blog/site to be nominated, we recommend you to get in touch with it’s author/moderator and urge them to nominate their blog/site directly. Please note that we are only recommending nominating your own blog/site and taking prior permission from author of other nominated blogs, this is not a rule.
6. Sites with filthy and objectionable content would not be accepted under any circumstance.
7. Jurors can also nominate their own blog/site but they are not allowed to “rate” it.

How do I Nominate a blog/site?

Simple, just bookmark it at Delicious. If the site is in an Indian language other than English remember to specify the site title in “Roman”.

There are two ways to do it; the first (and the recommended) way is to use the Indibloggies 2005 Nomination bookmarklet. To get the bookmarklet, click here.

The second way is to bookmark the blog/site the usual way (If you have never used Delicious, here is some help). The important thing to remember is that you should atleast use the following Tags (note that the text in red is the actual “Tag”, rest of the text is to explain the tag):

1. for:Indibloggies (this Tag is compulsory and your nomination would not be treated as a Nomination unless this Tag is used). Details on the "for" tag are here.
2. Use any one of the following Tags to indicate the award-category you are nominating the blog for (text in bracket indicate the category). This Tag is also compulsory, no nomination would be accepted without a category.
• ib05BestIndiblog (IndiBlog of the year)
• ib05Humanities (Best Humanities IndiBlog)
• ib05Sports (Best Sports IndiBlog)
• ib05SciTech (Best Science/technology IndiBlog)
• ib05Dir (Best IndiBlog directory/service)
• ib05Tagline (Indiblog with the best tagline)
• ib05Topical (Best Topical IndiBlog)
• ib05Design (Best Designed IndiBlog)
• ib05New (Best New Indiblog)
• ib05Photo (Best Photo Blog)
• ib05Lifetime (IndiBlog Lifetime achiever)
• ib05Group (Best Group Blog)
• ib05Indic (Best Indic blog. If you use this Tag you must also use the language Tag as discussed in Step(3) below)
3. If you selected the Best Indic Blog category in Step (2) then you must additionally specify the language of the Blog using one of the following Tags:
   • ib05Hindi (Hindi)
   • ib05Bengali (Bengali)
   • ib05Gujarati (Gujarati)
   • ib05Marathi (Marathi)
   • ib05Tamil (Tamil)
   • ib05Telugu (Telugu)
   • ib05Malayalam (Malayalam)
   • ib05Kannada (Kannada)

   If this sounds too complex, for your rescue there is this Tag generator.

Examples:

• A blog nominated for best Sports blog category will have the following tags:
  for:indibloggies ib05Sports
• A blog nominated for best Indic blog (Tamil) category will have the following tags:
  for:indibloggies ib05Indic ib05Tamil

Update: For all the newbies and for those who did not get the Nomination process, Saket has prepared a nice step-by-step guide. If you still don’t get it, send us a request and we would do it for you.

Disclaimer:

December 18th, 2005 | 18 comments | Permalink