The 2nd Annual Open Web Awards - 2 Questions

So here we have the 2nd Annual Open Web Awards winners. If you don't know about the Open Web Awards, here is the skinny from their site: "Open Web Awards is the only multilingual international online voting competition that covers major innovations in web technology. Through an online nominating and voting process, the Open Web Awards recognizes and honors the top achievements in 26 categories."

Question #1: Geez. How did so many of these slip past my radar? I need to do some serious research.

Question #2: Is is shocking to you or not that a competition that deals with "major innovations in web technology" has really only one site that I could construe as a "learning" site (eHow)? What about Udutu?

Anybody else's app I'm missing? Are we as a community of so little commercial or creative worth that we need to just accept that the learning/training community will forever be locked out of contests like this?

This is not a rhetorical question. I am looking for an answer here. Seriously. How do we view ourselves as a community in relation to some of these other communities represented by these winners?

Comments

[mark oehlert]

Pete,

I hear ya AND I'd love to talk with you about how we could possibly publicize an "Education/Learning/Training" category (might have to look at splits between K-12, Higher Ed & Corporate).

Stephen-leaving aside the good news that there is no nomination fee (yea), I really don't think that the absence of edtech sites/apps here is that easily explained. There must be other factors such as Pete's above and maybe as I suspect - a lack of innovation at this level in our industry.

[Pete Cashmore]

I would say that the lack of educational sites is due to the fact that Mashable rarely covers learning topics, and thus our readers are less likely to nominate those sites. Perhaps an Education category is in order next year, we shall see.

Stephen, there was no fee to be nominated in the Open Web Awards.

[Stephen Downes]

I saw them when they were announced (I subscribe to Mashable and dismissed them when I saw the nomination fee ($500 as I recall). The commercial orientation of the awards explains the absence of an education category.