Shortlists and big hopes

As voting gets underway, the judges reflect on the difficulty of picking the final shortlist, writes Sara Yirrell

The entrants to make the CRN Channel Awards shortlists will be celebrating

One thing is always certain with the CRN Channel Awards ­ that the standard of entry improves year on year, as does the number of entries. This year, with 253 entries, up from 226 in 2007, the judging panel found the process tougher than ever, and often a final decision came down to a show of hands.

Keith Humphreys, managing consultant at EuroLAN, has been an awards judge for several years.
“I thought the standard of entry was good this year,” he said. “The distribution categories in particular were very well represented. In all, it presented the judges with an enormous amount of work to do.”

Keith Warburton, chief executive of the PC Association, said judging was as difficult as ever. “The standard was by and large very high, which didn’t make the judges’ job any easier, but does make it exciting,” he said.

Nitin Joshi, founder of ChannelMoney, agreed. “The industry has surpassed itself this year. The entries were wide ranging and of a very high standard. There has been massive interest. The Channel Awards has now positioned itself unassailably as the number one event in the channel.”

Bob Tarzey, service director at Quocirca, agreed. “There were a lot of good entries so the judges were left with a wide range of choices with some difficult decisions to make.”

The industry now has just less than one month to vote for their favourites.

Andrew Hall, marketing manager of headline sponsor Oki, said: “I hope people get behind the shortlisted companies and vote for them. Being nominated for a Channel Award is recognition of success.”

Every vote counts. Block voting will not be accepted, neither will votes from a Hotmail, Yahoo or other personal email address. Multiple people from one company can vote, but it is just one vote per person and nobody can vote for their own company. The deadline for voting is 17 October.

To vote visit: www.channelawards.net/shortlist