Our 12 jury members decided on the winners of the 2012 BOBs! After sifting through 3,200 you had a chance to choose the winners the BOBs’ User Prizes in 17 categories and 11 languages. And after an exciting month of voting, the winners have been decided, so go check them out!

In addition to the User Prizes, the jury of bloggers, media experts and activists also got shut into a conference room for a day to cure the best blogs, and campaigns and media project in the main six multilingual categories.

Blogger and journalist Arash Sigarchi was this year’s big winner, taking the Jury Award for Best Blog with “Window of Anguish,” where he writes about human rights, social and political topics about his homeland. Window of Anguish is widely read inside and outside of Iran for its objective view of current events. Currently in Washington, Sigarchi maintains close connections to many sources in Iran.

This year’s other Jury Awards went to:

Best Social Activism Campaign
Free Syrian Blogger& Activist Razan Ghazzawi

Special Topic Award Education and Culture
Fasokan

Best Use of Technology for Social Good
Harassmap

Best Video Channel
Kuang Kuang Kuang

Reporters Without Borders Award
Abu Sufian’s Blog

Our thanks and congratulations go out to all the Jury Award winners for their amazing and inspiring work. We’re looking forwarding to meeting you at next month’s Deutsche Welle Global Media Forum in Bonn, Germany.

UPDATE: We can’t count on computers

Long into the night there was pointing and there was clicking (and cursing at our computers), but the best result we can establish is that both Jou3an and Window of Anguish earned the same percentage of votes cast in the Best Blog category.

That’s why we are declaring both Jou3an and Window of Anguish User Prize winners in the Best Blog category. Our congratulations go to both of them!

So what was the problem with the website? Here’s what happened: when we threw the switch from the “voting phase” to the “winner phase” our servers published the results before counting the votes cast during the last seconds. After counting those last under-the-gun votes, the result changed. Remember when we said it was a “neck-and-neck” race, we weren’t kidding – we’re talking about 13 votes for Window of Anguish.

But because it was our mistake, we find the fairest solution is to award the User Prizes to both of these truly exceptional bloggers.

Since our website wasn’t setup to handle this kind of eventuality, it’s going to take some time to get the page up-to-date.

Thanks for your patience and sorry for the confusion.

Voting begins today in the Deutsche Welle International Blog Awards – the BOBs. Our international jury of bloggers and media experts waded through the more than 3,200 submissions you made and whittled the list down to just 187 candidates in 17 categories and 11 languages.

Now it’s up to Internet users like you to pore over the candidates and vote for the ones you find best. Your votes will decide the winner of the User Prize in all 17 categories. All the details on how to take part In the poll in our Rules.

We’d like to thank our jury for putting together such an impressive list of candidates and creating a snapshot of the international blogosphere.

In all 11 languages, there are some really great blogs, video channels and inspiring social activism campaigns and educational projects that run the gamut of online political and social responsibility and are certainly worth reading about.

On May 1, jury members will get locked into a conference room in Berlin to decide on the winners of this year’s Jury Awards in the BOBs’ six multilingual categories. Whether it’s the best blog, video channel, social activism campaign, use of technology, educational project or stand for freedom of expression, the sites in six top categories are language-independent, so candidates from all 11 languages vie for a single prize.

Curious about the candidates yet! Go to the Voting page and get the lowdown on all of them and find out what some of the bravest, most creative and inventive bloggers are up to – whether you speak their language or not.

All the winners of the 2012 BOBs will be announced right here at thebobs.com on May 2. Jury winners will also be invited to an award ceremony to pick up their BOB in Bonn, Germany, on June 26 as part of the annual Deutsche Welle Global Media Forum.

Thanks to JosephGilbert.org for the CC photo.

For the last month we’ve been saving all the blogs, podcasts, initiatives and sites you submitted for this year’s BOBs.  All in all, you sent in over 3,200 sites for our 17 categories. Thanks!

Now the hard work begins for our international jury of bloggers, independent journalists and media experts. Jury members are poring over list of submitted sites in their languages to put together a the short list of nominees in each category.

Voting begins in April

The jury is at work now, but your turn is coming up again soon. Online voting in all 17 categories begins on April 2 and User Prizes will be awarded to the site that gets the most votes by May 2.

The jury members will decide on Jury Award winners in the six multilingual categories on May 1.

Thanks to rebnejay for the CC photo!

In just a little over a week, you’ve sent in over 1,000 suggestions for the best blogs, online initiatives and sites to our contest. Thanks!

We’re ready for even more submissions. Can’t decide which category fits the blog you love? Go ahead and submit it in all the categories where you think it belongs.

Thanks to Karsten Kneese for the CC photo.

Starting today, we’re ready for your submissions to the Deutsche Welle Blog Awards.

You can login via Facebook, Twitter, OpenID, and VKontakte, and we’re working on getting things going with Sina Weibo.

So get to it and inundate us with the sites that have impressed you in all the contest’s categories.

Ever get the feeling that social networks can sometimes be so, well, anti-social?

We’re having some technical teething problems with the suggestion app you see above.

But don’t worry, we’re working on it!

That time of year has come around again. Starting on February 13, we’ll be looking for your suggestions for the eighth annual Deutsche Welle International Blog Awards – better known as the BOBs.

Like last year, we’re getting ready to accept your favorite sites in 11 languages. We understand: Arabic, Bengali, Chinese, English, French, German, Indonesia, Persian, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish.

This year we’re also happy to announce that the BOBs site is back at full strength and available in all 11 of the competition’s languages — in fact, we’re putting the finishing touches on the site right now!

While there are some changes in store for 2012, including a couple of new faces on the jury panel (more about them soon), the BOBs will still feature a Jury Awards as well as User Prizes. The combination of online voting and jury-selected winners makes sure the BOBs continues to honor the best blogs, websites and campaigns on the Internet without turning into a popularity contest.

This year our jury of media experts, activists and bloggers will meet up in Berlin in May to debate and decide who takes home top honors in the BOBs. Patricia Cammarata, better known as das Nuf, joins the panel for German and Steve Vosloo comes on-board for the English-speaking world. We’ll be giving you a more intimate introduction to Patricia and Steve, as well as the rest of the jury members, in just a few days time.

Highly cultured and well educated

For the most part, the 17 categories in the contest this time around are the same as they always have been. Six categories are multilingual and feature blogs from each of the contest’s 11 languages mixing it up together for the right to call themselves a BOBs winner. Each of the remaining 11 categories is dedicated to a single language and a winner will be chosen among the finalists by online vote alone.

This year our “Special Topic Award” puts the spotlight on culture and education. This is also the focus of the 2012 Deutsche Welle Global Media Forum in Bonn. While we will certainly continue to commend the bloggers taking a stand for freedom of expression, we’ll also be playing special attention to projects and initiatives that look at the right to education and promote intercultural dialogue.

Get your suggestions in!

We want to hear from you – but you’ll have to get you message to us between February 13 and March 13. That’s when the window is open for suggestions to the BOBs 2012.

You’ll be able to suggest candidates in all 17 categories after registering using Facebook, Twitter, VKontakte or Sina Weibo or using your OpenID. We’re hoping this helps open the BOBs up to countries where the usual social network suspects aren’t necessarily the most popular services.

And just as a quick reminder: It doesn’t matter how many times a blog is suggested to the BOBs – once it’s in, it’s in. Unlike other awards, the number of times a site is suggested does not play a role in whether it advances to the next round.

Timeline takeaways

February 13 to March 13: Suggest the blogs, websites and projects that impress you.

April 2 to May 2: Look over the nominees and in each category and vote for the ones you think represent the best of the best.

May 2: Sit back and find out who won as we announce the winners.

June 26: Come to Bonn, Germany, and meet the Jury Award winners at the Deutsche Welle Global Media Forum.

CC photoby Jakeandlindsay

Yoani Sanchez, theBOBs winner in 2008 for her blog, has won BlogHer‘s International BlogHer Activist Award. Now there’s a blogging campaign underway to convince Cuban authorities that Yoani should be allowed to leave the country to take part in the BlogHer conference next month in San Diego.

When Yoani won theBOBs three years ago, we also would have loved to have been able to host her. Instead we got this video message:

Yoani continues to be an inspiration to everyone at theBOB, so we hope you’ll take part and – at the very least – let Yoani know you support her. We certainly think she should be able to travel to the conference – and anywhere else she wants to go, anytime she wants to go there.

Find out more and take part: Let’s blog Yoani to BlogHer

Six winners of the 2011 come to Bonn, Germany, on Monday to accept their awards at a ceremony, which was part of the Deutsche Welle Global Media Forum. Get a look at the Jury Award winners in the BOBs’ six multilingual categories below.

What are the BOBs about?