Sapo Online Advertising Prizes 2010

Yesterday we (we as most of the good people of Waynext) went to LX Factory for the SAPO Online Advertising prizes 2010 event. These are THE prizes for the portuguese web industry. Personally for me is always a really good time, with free drinks and meeting other friends and people of the web business.

The venue was ok, not one of the best neither a bad one. As usual in the beginning of the ceremony almost impossible to get some drinks (kudos Diana for getting the drinks).  Fernando Alvim was the host of the event and with the help of some F1 girls did a pretty decent job (more about this later in the post).

For me is always strange, as the prizes are being announced and delivered there is so little cheering and clapping, its awkward, it seems that everybody is chatting with everybody else and could not care less for the prizes. Anyway, Fullsix won the agency of the year prize, next year will be other and then Fullsix again (some kind of universal law). I really disagree with Financial category where Waynext won silver with “CGD Ciclo da Poupança” and the gold prize was delivered to “BES Vou filmar com o Ronaldo” a common site with some videos with C. Ronaldo doing tricks with the ball. Maybe is the superstar effect “look what a mediocre site, hey but they have Ronaldo :)”, truth to be told we also benefit a couple of years ago of this “superstar effect” in a PT site, really common but with Gato Fedorento.

Also, about the jury selections, i really dislike the overuse of double prizes, they delivered two golds or two bronze for different agencies in the same category too many times. Fuck, a jury is supposed to decide not to stall. Maybe in some very particular situation is really too much difficult, so an ex aequo decision is fine, but the key word is “very particular situation”. They overused a lot, and for the host and agencies was strange:

Alvim – “The gold prize in X category goes to agency X. Humm. Ando also to agency Y.” ??? And there was people from both agencies in the stage, and it doesn’t really feels like a victory…. because of all that mess, as we were co-winners of Best Rich Media with View-Isobar, and were waiting for the stage to clear up of the good people of View, Alvim forgot that there was two winners and proceed to next category without the actual delivery of the trophy (we collected it later at the finish).

Other thing about the jury choices, was the no blog prize delivery, i think they simply forget to vote on it, because i can’t believe that there was not in the competition worth of the prize. Also, the “Advertiser of the Year” award presented to LG??? Ahhh, a member of the jury was the portuguese LG CEO, did the other guys get big LCD TVs or did he just sold the other votes?

Besides, some jury non-sense, a great time there, in the last half hour made a personal commitment about running and other that involves model rocketry

Mental note: Must drink less or keep mouth shut when in alcohol danger zone

I also took home some pictures, and happily re-touched them:

Codebits 2010

Just arrived from Codebits 2010. By far the best technology event/contest/conference/meeting/etc in Portugal.

This year i submited no project, due to a logistic problem regarding (lack of) rocket propellant. Anyway, this is a project to be pursued outside Codebits, as it is just plain fun.

I attended several talks (unfortunately is impossible to attend all), but i must highlight Spacebits by Celso Martinho – 100% pure fun, Inovation u r doin it wrong by Mario Valente – food for tougth, and Everything OAuth by Bruno Pedro – made this subject clear as water. Also, attended the soldering workshop by the Lisbon AltLab folks, made a pair of reciprocate blinking leds, with some really lame soldering (come on, no soldering experience at all). Got me a tv pong kit to try to assemble next weeks and improve my soldering skills.

For sure i couldn’t miss the Quizz Show, its too much fun. This year it was the old guys (João Pedro Gonçalves and Celso) who kicked all the competition, and showed off their geek culture.

The final stage of Codebits was also really interesting, the teams project presentation, the overall projects quality was really good, as allways some guys/apps freeze while up on stage (been there, done that) which is cruel regarding the hard work, but is always funny for the audience. Overall must agree with the selected winners, maybe except the guys that presented a earthquake data collection project, only because i didn’t actually see any prototype working just an idea presentation (a very good ideia by the way).

Thinkered a lot with node.js and socket.io (Javascript continues to build up) and eated lots off pizza, m&ms and burguers… i also took home some books, photos and videos:

For me, the only (minor) glitch in Codebits, was the very low light environment, that sometimes made difficult to work on the laptop, maybe they were just promoting Apple backlit keyboards…

Note to myself: next laptop must have a backlit keyboard

Anyway, its just plain amazing how you can compress in 3 days so much learning and fun at the same time. Ear (and sometimes talk back to)  so much talented and diversified people (from CEOs to students) . Still can’t understand how some friends and colleagues couldn’t care less about Codebits.

And the cherry in top, is that its all free. Thank you SAPO, see you next year.

ps – also lost somewhere between home and Codebits, my Saturn v 10$ model that bought at KSC, really not a big deal but had some sentimental value