Congratulations from The Bobs jury

The moment you’ve been waiting for has finally arrived – here are the winners of The Bobs 2013.

The 15-member jury of bloggers and online activists engaged in two days of passionate discussions to name the winners of The Bobs’ six Jury Awards in the multilingual categories.

But jury members are not the only ones with accolades to hand out. Our thanks go out to all of you engaged Internet users who voted in our online poll. You cast over 94,000 ballots to decide the winners of the Users’ Choice awards in all 34 categories.

Best Blog

This year’s top honors in the Best Blog category went to Chinese columnist, author, blogger and microblogger Li Chengpeng for his blog 李承鹏博客.  Extremely popular among young people, as seen by the more than 7 million people who follow him in Sina Weibo, Li Chengpeng has become a symbol of China’s anti-censorship movement. While on a book tour, authorities feared his massive fan base would turn book signings into political protests and forbid Li Chengpeng from speaking to fans. Instead he unveiled a t-shirt that read “I love you all” as a way of expressing his thanks and wore a surgical mask – both of which became symbols of protest for millions of people in China.

“He is an example for the younger generation and encourages them to get involved and stand up against censorship,” Chinese jury member and blogger Hu Yong said.

Best Social Activism

The Moroccan initiative 475 won jury honors in the Best Social Activism category. The project is named after a part of Moroccan law that allows rapists to avoid punishment by marrying their victims. The campaign started after 16-year-old Amina committed suicide after being forcibly married to the man who raped her. “The award went to the Moroccan initiative but beyond that I think the problem of violence against women and rape is everywhere – in India, we’ve heard about it, in Bangladesh in Southeast Asia, in South America,” French jury member Claire Ulrich said. “Here we see that in the attempt to deal justice it’s the women – usually teenage girls who end up paying the price for someone else’s crimes.”

Best Innovation

FreeWeibo.com, the winner in the Best Innovation category, exposes what the Chinese government censors on Sina Weibo. FreeWeibo gives users unfettered access to the country’s popular social network while saving and showing the posts deleted by government censors. “Systematic censorship is one of the biggest problems in modern China,” Hu said. “Only by making it visible can people also do something against it.”

Reporters Without Borders Award

The Bobs’ partnership with the rights group Reporters Without Borders continued with a special award for blogs and online projects that take promote freedom of expression.  This year’s award went to Fabbi Kouassi, a blogger and activist in Togo. She uses her blog to report on police violence against journalists in the country, which tends to get very little coverage in international media. “Fabbi defends freedom of expression in an impressive way and draws attention to the precarious situation journalists face in Togo,” said Christian Mihr, the head of Reporters Without Borders in Germany.

Global Media Forum Award

The challenges of the global economy will be the focus of this year’s Deutsche Welle Global Media Forum from June 17-19 in Bonn. This year The Bobs’ special category for the conference looked at the ways bloggers address the economy. The Bangladeshi project Infolady won the jury members’ award. The project equips women with a bike and a mobile phone capable of connecting to the Internet, they ride to rural areas to answer peoples’ questions regarding health, agriculture and development. As few doctors ever travel to the regions infoladies regularly visit, the women are often the only form of medical advice available and when they get stuck on a case they can call a team of experts ready to assist them wherever they may be. “It’s a revolutionary project that helps get life-saving information to the poorest people in Bangladesh,” Bengali jury member Shahidul Alam said.

Most Creative & Original

What little bits of information do you leave behind when you go online? That’s the question the project Me and My Shadow looks to answer. The site takes an entertaining approach to informing people on the traces they’re leaving behind when they shop, surf and post on the Internet. It also offers tips on how to change privacy settings to let out less information. “Me and My Shadow presents in very playful and visually compelling way a means of allowing online users to see the digital traces that they leave through their online activities – and offers easy solutions to fixing them,” said English jury member Georgia Popplewell.

Congratulations to all of the winners!

The six winners of The Bobs’ 2013 Jury Awards will be invited to an award ceremony on June 18, 2013, in Bonn, Germany, as part of the Deutsche Welle Global Media Forum in Bonn.

Thanks for reading the whole post. Now go check out all the winners!

They are all among the 364 nominees for top awards this year in The Bobs.

The Bobs’ expert jury members needed three weeks, but they managed to whittle down the more than 4,200 submissions to the contest to handful of nominees in each of the competition’s 34 categories and 14 languages.

Your turn has come

Now that the candidates have been decided, it’s up to you to give them a look over and vote for the ones you think are best. Remember, you can vote once per category per 24 hours. The blogs that get the most votes will win The Bobs Users’ Choice prize and knowing that people across the Internet love them. Polls open today and will close on May 7 when all the winners are announced at re:publica in Berlin.

Our jury gets to take a little break but shouldn’t get too comfortable. They will be traveling to Berlin at the beginning of May when we’ll be putting them in a comfy conference room (with plenty of coffee) to discuss and decide on the winners of the Jury Awards in the six main multilingual categories.

Winners of the Jury Awards will be invited to pick up their prizes at the Deutsche Welle Global Media Forum in Bonn, Germany, on June 17-19.

Now go have a look at this year’s nominees, cast a vote and let your voice be heard!

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 34 categories begins on April 3 and Users’ Choice Awards will be awarded to the site that gets the most votes by May 7.

The jury members will decide on Jury Award winners in the six multilingual categories on May 4-5. All the winners will be announced here on May 7 – but you’ll be hearing from us before then!

What’s new?

This year we’re expanding to include more languages and categories than ever. Starting now, The Bobs accepts submissions in three more languages: Hindi, Turkish and Ukrainian. That brings to the total up to 14: Arabic, Bengali, Chinese, English, French, German, Hindi, Indonesian, Persian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Turkish and Ukrainian. Other than being in one of those 14 languages, websites and projects submitted to The Bobs have to be accessible to the public — that means no password restrictions or registration requirements.

We’ve also increased the number of categories this year. For the first time, we’ll also be looking to honor microbloggers in each individual language. These categories are open to people using Twitter, Weibos or any other microblog platform to share their views. You can find out more about the categories here.

An international award

This year we have an excellent international jury panel to put together list of finalists in all 34 categories. The jury members are also the people who will meet in May in Berlin for two days worth of discussions decide on the winners of the Jury Awards in the six main, multilingual categories. With a representative from each of The Bobs’ languages, the nominees that set themselves apart in these six categories can truly call themselves international award winners.

The other categories in The Bobs — Best Blog and Best Person to Follow in each language — will be decided by an online vote. We will be calling on Internet users around the world to vote for the sites and projects they find most impressive — both in the language-specific categories as well as to hand out the Users’ Choice Prizes in the multilingual categories as well.

Save the dates

• February 6 – March 6: Submit candidates in 14 languages and 34 categories
• March 6 – April 3: Give the jury some time to evaluate submissions and create the list of finalists.
• April 4 – May 7: Vote online to decide the winners of the Users’ Choice Prizes in all 34 categories
• May 4 – May 5: The jury panel meets in Berlin to decide the winners of the Jury Award in the six main, multilingual categories.
• May 7: Turn in right here to find out all the winners of The Bobs 2013
• June 18: Jury Award winners will be in Bonn to pick up their prizes at an award ceremony as part of the Deutsche Welle Global Media Forum.

We’re adding three more languages to the award – Hindi, Turkish and Ukrainian – opening the contest’s categories to a total of 14 languages. What exactly does that mean? Read through the site in your choice of Arabic, Bengali, Chinese, English, French, German, Hindi, Indonesian, Persian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Turkish, or Ukrainian.

This year we also want to know about what microblogs keep you most informed and entertained. That’s why we’ve decided to add a category for Best Person to Follow in each of The Bobs’ languages. Including the new microblog categories, there are not 34 categories for international excellence to be recognized.

The 2013 Jury

The jury speaks here at The Bobs. It’s up to jury members to choose the nominees and all 14 jury panel members (one per language) meet in Berlin to discuss, debate and decide on The Bobs Jury Award winners in the six big, multilingual categories.

This year’s three new languages, of course, will have jury members as well. Dr. Özgür Uçkan teaches communications at Bilgi University in Istanbul. He is a well-known blogger in Turkey and has written several book on net-related topics. Mustafa Nayyem will keep his eye on the Ukranian internet scene for The Bobs. Born in Afghanistan, the  journalist, blogger and TV moderator has become one of the most important political voices in the Ukrainian internet. We’re also happy to welcome popular blogger and moderator Ravish Kumar as The Bobs’ Hindi jury member.

Starting February 6, you can read about all The Bobs 2013 jury members.

Save the date: February 6

In addition to finding about the jury members, February 6 (at high noon, German time) is also the day when the window on suggestions to the 2013 The Bobs will open. We’re all looking forward to seeing your suggestions.