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.