Yesterday, I came across this site, "Elect the Jury" for the International Andy Awards, done by Michael Lebowitz, and thought it was pretty cool. The site addresses digital marketing industry - "You've Done the Work, Now Decide the Jury" - which is pretty transparent way of electing people to distribute the awards. Awards juries are usually filled with the usual suspects (not to say that it's not still the case, even here), but the twist is at least interesting - first, we vote on jury, and then, the jury votes on us.
The list of nominees is impressive (as of now), and while the gaming of the system is always an option (the agencies with the biggest number of employees can fare well in this situation), I believe actually that people would vote for those individuals whose work they respect the most. At least, the site design lets them do so - everyone is allowed to pick 5 nominees.
A nice step towards democratization of the awards process.
P.s. I just hope the situation does not end like this. Eh, "we couldn't agree on the list"! ;)
