The multimedia competition season has started

Presently I am working on the organisation of the Dutch language multimedia content competition Europrix.nl. I am not doing it all by myself, but I work with Wim, a multimedia veteran entrepreneur. We will have to get the site up again and have the entry form in shape. We had in fact already one candidate who wanted to enter an internet service. And I had the promise from a college that they would enter a 3D product.

That sounds already exciting. But as we had to call off the competition last years as due to a lack of entries, I am cautious about this year. Last year we thought that it was the aftermath of the economic crisis which led to a slow down. But as things are buoyant again in economic terms, we hope that we can get a fully fledged competition again this year.

The Europrix.nl exists since 2003, when it was set up as a national fledgling of the Europrix.org. The Europrix.nl would limit itself to the Dutch language products and services. Since 2003 we have held the competition every year, but had to call it off last year due to a lack of entries. And we had some fine award winners, which went on to international fame. Most noticeably is Fabchannel, the thematic music channel on internet, which won several awards after the Europrix.nl 2005.

This year will be interesting as Europrix.nl will be linked to two international competitions: the World Summit Awards 2007 and the Europrix Top Talent Awards 2007 for Young Professionals. The company nominations of the Europrix.nl will go on to the national pre-selection for entry into the global competition of the World Summit Award 2007. The nominations of the Young Professional category will be entered into the European competition of the Europrix Top Talent Awards 2007 for Young Professionals.

We will have two months for registering the entries. There is a discussion whether this period should be longer or shorter. Fact is that 60 percent of the entries arrive in the last two weeks. We have that experience and it was confirmed again this week when in The Netherlands the registering closed for the Spin Awards, a competition for interactive marketing products and services.

This year with the help of the HRO/RIVIO department there will be also a public judging day. This is held especially for students, so that they can hear the analysis of the nominated products and services. On the public jury day there will also be a kind of fair for the participants of the competition, where they can show their company products and tell more about their entry. So far we had the Award Ceremony following the public jury day. It looks like we will fit it into a big manifestation in Rotterdam. I am excited about this prospect.

Sometimes people ask why we spent all this effort on competitions. Wim and I are convinced that competitions have a function. Competitions recognise and honour outstanding products and services and their producers. But competitions also set a standard for the multimedia world. In fact in some cases they are even precursors of successful products and attract investors. And last but not least, they become part of a digital library, in which you can look back, but also research. Together with the European Academy of Digital Media we had entered a proposal in the EU e-content programme to set up such a digital library, called Channel Gold. The proposal was to record all nominated content products and services of European competitions, make them accessible with many metadata and fill an internet channel with themes and movies of the making of. It is a pity that the proposal has not been accepted.

Yet we look forward to a fine competition of the Europrix.nl for Dutch language products and services. In fact we hope to pick up entries from Flanders, South Africa, Indonesia, the Caribbean and Surinam; all areas where still Dutch is spoken.

Blog Posting Number 672

Tags: multimedia, competition, Europrix, WSA