European Podcast Award

One of the most asked questions for the European Podcast Award is “what is with the voting” and “where is my country?”. Ulli Harraß already answered in German the forum of the famous ComputerClub. We did explain it a little bit in our podcast #01 but would like to give a more expanded version in English too.

From our FAQ:

How will the podcasts be evaluated?
All nominated podcasts can be evaluated and rated online on the “Vote and Win” page. Finally a jury of specialists will award the prizes for the podcasts, taking the online ratings into account.

As everybody knows who ever has conducted voting on the internet: People will try to game the system, period. Which is why we have a two tier system in place, making the voting an integral part but not the one and only deciding factor. A jury, consisting of people with native speaker language skills, takes a look at each submission and checks if the submitted podcast is in the right category.

Categories you can submit your podcast in

• Personality
  Private podcasts that are strongly influenced by the personality and the contents of the producer just like a weblog / diary.
• Non Profit
  Podcasts from universities, associations, clubs and non-profit organizations that provide their community or the general public with regular information by means of a podcast.
• Business
  Companies and commercial senders that provide their customers and / or personnel with information by means of a podcast
• Professional
  Podcasts from media enterprises (radio and TV stations / publishing houses).

The jury takes a look at the web site as well as have a listen to the podcast. Which is also the reason why we for the first year do not have all European countries in our award but start with 11 of them – we do not have native speakers from everywhere.

Once the submission time is over, each country’s jury decides who is the winner per country and per category as well as overall per country. Out of these winners, the final European Podcast Award winners will be selected.

Why is there a jury necessary in local language?

Some people noted that this is reminding them of the old days when the Eurovision Song Contest still was the Grand Prix d’Eurovision de la chanson, in local language and with a jury at the end. And yes, it is similar to that.

It may not be obvious at first, but one of the main goals of the European Podcast Award is not to nominate the best podcast everybody understands, which most likely means English. But to showcase the variety of different podcasts and also languages throughout Europe, be a place to explore for different languages as well as cultures.

Given, this makes the process a bit more complicated, but in our opinion totally worth it! Is it perfect? Of course not. It is our first year, the first edition so learning curve will be big. But all the kinks and quirks will help it make it so much better next year. ;)