Vloggies, My Judges' Picks

November 5, 2006

VloggiesTonight is the night of The Vloggies in San Francisco. It's for videoblogging what the MTV Music Awards are the the music industry. Anyway, Irina asked me to participate as a judge and I figured it would give me to write this blog post and bitch a little bit about videoblogging at the same time. The list of nominees was long. Really long. It probably stemmed from the fact that people could nominate themselves, so everyone who've had their teeth whitened did.

Irina mentions that us judges had suggestions for the next event. I'm one of the judges who had issues.

  • From the list of winners it looks like not all categories were being presented. I would like to have known ahead of time that some categories would be skipped.
  • 11 judges are too many if you want to send any kind of message with the choices.
  • Us judges weren't supposed to talk among ourselves about what we were picking and why. I think that was not the right decision, I think a forum were choices were debated some kind of consensus were made would have made for strong and less random choices.
  • Apparently there was a Best Vloggervangelist award. No one told me about so. I don't know if it was added last minute or what. I agree with the choice of Michael Verdi, but don't list it as a judges' choice when the judges didn't pick it.

My very subjective list of reasons for automatic elimination included things like:

  • Having hardly any posts. You've got to have more than 4 videos up. There's no One Hit Wonder/Best New Vlog award. Please apply next year.
  • Having no personality. If there's nothing of ‘you’ then I can just turn on Fox News instead.
  • Having more involvement with sponsors than the community.
  • Being all video and no blog. It's called videoblog and not IPTV for a reason. At least pretend that you're a blog by turning on permalinks or are you afraid that people will actually link to you?

Here are the picks I sent to Irina along with the official winners (in the order they were presented on the voting page):

Best vlog

Chris Weagel and the rest of the Human Dog crew has been a consisten force in the vlogosphere for as long as there's been such a thing. Human Dog has produced comedy that's actually funny, satire that has actual bite and documentaries that actually move you. But most importantly Human Dog has succeeded in recreating video for online life. It is video made to live online, not video hosted online because it was too difficult to fill out the submission form at the community tv station.

I must admit I'm puzzled about the choice of Alive in Baghdad for this award (and for the interview one). The refusal to acknowledge issues regarding the accountability and agendas from the people features in the videos is very worrysome to me. They describe themselves as politically-charged and for that you need to take responsibility. Simply turning on the camera is not enough.

Best male vlogger

Best female vlogger

Best group vlog

This was a toss-up between thePAN and evilvlog. In the end I went with thePAN for the fewer instances of the word ‘fuck’ on the front page.

Corporate/Organisation vlog

I couldn't get worked up over this category. Despite their hour-long videos, Channel9 has shown us that real people work at Microsoft.

Comedy videoblog

This was giant category and it should be sufficient to note that by taking acting classes you do not automatically become funny.

Community videoblog

If there's one vlog on the internets which has managed to create a sense of community around it, evilvlog is it.

Instructional/Educational vlogs

Entertainment (fiction)

Entertainment (non-fiction)

Experimental Videoblog

Inspirational/Spiritual

Kids & teen videoblog

Cooking videoblog

Green vlog

News videoblog

Personal diary

Political videoblog

Tech videoblog

This category was dominated with videoblogs who thought videoblogging is exactly the same as a television broadcast. I could not watch many of the nominees because their videos ran to almost 30 minutes in length with people sitting in a tv studio doing a regular talk show. A real shame — is this the best the tech community can offer?

Travel videoblog

Viral video

Funniest video

Vlog collaboration

Documentary video

I wish the series about The Haberek had been on the list of nominees in this category.

Best editing in a video

Experimental video

Interview

Original Music

This category had been flooded with music that wasn't original.

Special Effects

Most controversial video

There are many issues with the Josh Wolf case that are being ignored in the vlogosphere, but none can argue that the video has been controversial.

Vlogging book

  • My pick: Secrets of videoblogging
  • Official winner: Secrets of videoblogging

This was perhaps the hardest category. The entries were all superb and yet had different foci so they were incredibly hard to compare.

Video hosting provider

Online video production tool

The lack of nominees in this category (there were only too) should be seen as a real problem. However, vPIP is a fantastic tool.

Vlog directory

Mefeedia was the first and they're still showing the way forward. Look past the lack of rounded corners and colour gradients and see the ideas they're bringing to the table.

Vlog website design

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