2AWA: Best Dub Dub Dubber

Here are the nom­i­nees for the Best Dub Dub Dub­ber cat­e­go­ry for the 2nd Annu­al Welling­ton­ista Awards (2AWA).

Web-Writ­ing-Welling­to­ni­ans:

We love Welling­ton. And we love the Inter­webs. So what could we love more than some­one writ­ing from Welling­ton on the Inter­web? Exact­ly. Our nom­i­nees are a diverse bunch to reflect the tremen­dous amount of tal­ent that goes on in our city, and to rep­re­sent all kinds of dif­fer­ent things..

(nom­i­nees after the jump)

WINNER!!!
A. “Cracker” — Damian Christie

It’s true that the vexed sub­ject of Dami­an Christie is a polar­is­ing one around the Welling­ton­ista water cool­er. If you like him, you’ll vote for him. If you don’t like him, well then you’ll still vote for him, secure in the knowl­edge that his receiv­ing an award as a pro­fes­sion­al Welling­ton­ian might just be hor­ror enough for the poor lad, final­ly tip­ping him over the edge and back to Auck­land where he’ll feel a lot bet­ter. That said, Crack­er some­times makes us laugh, and fre­quent­ly gives us some­thing to talk about, and he’s the only nom­i­nee in this cat­e­go­ry to have his move­ments tracked in the Welling­ton­ista Celeb Vista, and that has to count for some­thing, right?

B. “The Dropkicks” — the Dropkicks

Even though the Welling­ton­ista ∩ The Drop­kicks = 3 we’re not afraid to nom­i­nate our own when it comes to writ­ing and pod­cast­ing informed and humor­ous sports com­men­tary. Espe­cial­ly when it gets mad props around the world (they were men­tioned in both Le Post and Le Monde), and cov­ers impor­tant issues like who has the hottest uni­forms. The Drop­kicks are a com­bi­na­tion of “a bunch of guys who know some stuff about sports but have strong opin­ions” and “non-muntery” that appeals to both fans and non-fans of sport.

C. “Coffee Geek” — Brenda Wallace

Cof­fee Geek AKA Bren­da Wal­lace AKA Tani­whaiti on flickr is the super­hero of open source in Welling­ton. She’s spear­head­ed the suc­cess­ful and very pop­u­lar Super­Hap­py­De­v­House­Aotearoa — a month­ly hackathon where coders from across Welling­ton hang in one place and get their code on. Why this rocks is because SHDH is not about peo­ple from dif­fer­ent com­pa­nies com­pet­ing or poach­ing staff, but about bring­ing togeth­er like-mind­ed geeks to share knowl­edge, and that is just a lit­tle bit awe­some. Plus she has the largest col­lec­tion of gad­gets in the whole of Welling­ton, takes fan­tas­tic pho­tos of our city, and how could we not include some­one who is so pas­sion­ate about cof­fee that they have it in their URL?

D. “Read/Write Web” — Richard MacManus

Richard Mac­Manus is prob­a­bly the most wide­ly-read Welling­ton­ian you’ve nev­er heard of. His blog, Read/Write Web, is immense­ly pop­u­lar and influ­en­tial world wide and is, accord­ing to blog track­er Tech­no­rati, the 19th most linked-to in the world (by com­par­i­son, Pub­lic Address and Kiwiblog, per­haps the two biggest NZ focussed blogs, are 21,189 and 21,620 on the same list). Its mix of web tech­nol­o­gy and web indus­try news may not appeal to every­one… but the whole point of the web is that even a narrow(ish) niche is now filled with an audi­ence of mil­lions. Kudos is due to Mac­Manus for suc­cess­ful­ly steer­ing his blog through his cho­sen niche and into the glob­al A‑List.

E. “Lively” — NZLive

Many of the Welling­ton­ista are pub­lic ser­vants, and it’s entire­ly pos­si­ble that a large part of at least one of our day jobs may revolve around the issue of blog­ging in the pub­lic sec­tor. That’s why Live­ly is inspir­ing — it’s for the Min­istry of Cul­tur­al Her­itage, and it’s inter­est­ing. Through a mix of guest blog­gers and a range of top­ics, Live­ly escapes the drab image that some­thing paid for by the gov­ern­ment might have. We’d like to see it updat­ed more often, but it’s a fine start.

Fol­low the links in the images above to check out these fel­low Welling­to­ni­ans and their fan­tas­tic web­sites before vot­ing opens on Novem­ber 19.