A couple of weeks ago I was taken to New York for the 10th annual Webby Awards. Miniclip, the company I work for, had won the peoples voice award for gaming and the boss was kind enough to invite me (and a couple of others) along to the ceremony (thanks a lot Rob).
We flew over on the Saturday, spent the Sunday lazing around in New York (lots of time in Central Park), did a bit of businessy stuff Monday morning, then had the show Monday evening.
Lots of photos were taken on the trip, unfortunately most of mine were a bit rubbish, but I have included some of the nicer ones below. Thanks to Nic for the picture that includes me (do you like the beard? it's new 
)
The photos
Alex, Rob, and myself at the ceremony (I'm on the right)
The Speech
Come and play with us!
Short and to the point, yet conveying fun - perfect.
For those who don't know the Webby's have a slightly unusual rule about speeches in that they can only be 5 words long. This introduces some very creative, and a few rather daft, speeches and avoids the gushing ridiculousness the Oscars and other shows are known for.
My favourites (apart from ours obviously) include...
- Best Navigation/Structure - Flickr - "Sorry about the tag clouds"
- Radio - AccuRadio - "Assuming hyphenateds are allowed.. Woo-hoo!"
- School/University - School of Visual Arts Web site - "Ten grand? Two shitty tables!"
- Community - BBC Cumbria website/Digital Lives - "England team, bring back trophy"
You can see the full list of winners, and their speeches on the Webbys site. By the way - our speech is misquoted on the Webbys site, you'd think it would be difficult to miss 1 word out of a 5 word speech but somehow they managed it.
Anything else?
We saw Prince play live (he won a lifetime achievement award - I wasn't aware he had a website...). All the Americans seemed to love him and at the end he threw the guitar over his head and walked off the stage (never to be seen again). The Brits (at least the ones on our table) seemed totally indifferent and couldn't work out why he was being so careless with a perfectly good musical instrument.
I also saw a grown man hug the head of Google Maps because of... well... Google Maps.
I didn't get a Google flashing badge, although other members of our group managed to.
I drank a lot of free drink and ate some slightly iffy food, although the deserts were rather good.
I went to bed at 3 in the morning and got up at 5:30 to get to the airport in time for my flight home.
David Hasselhoff didn't turn up. He didn't win anything but, you know, it would have been nice.
That's awesome! Congratulations to Miniclip for winning a Webby.
June 21, 2006
Very cool that you work for Miniclip and that they invited you! But i laughed the most at the following;
"David Hasselhoff didn’t turn up. He didn’t win anything but, you know, it would have been nice."
June 22, 2006
Hey Congrats! I've been on Miniclip for 4 years now. So many games, my favorite is Fowl Words. The sequel wasn't as good as the first. I play Puzzle Pirates now.
Hmm I see there's a field for me to leave my website. I'll leave you a link to a site I made instead... http://www.toddhannigan.com
June 23, 2006
Congrats! Love the pictures.
June 23, 2006
Thanks everyone. At Miniclip we're really happy to have won the award, it makes us feel good inside
June 23, 2006
(by the way, I see the England logo in the lower righthand corner. in terms of the World Cup.. Sweden! all the way! hurrah!)
June 24, 2006
I visit Miniclip alot, and their games are great. What is up with the free games for your website section? There are no new games. And the gameroom that you can cut and paste should not include the bottom footer that says "add this on your site for free" it should say "POWERED BY MINICLIP" or something not so cheap. What games have you made?
July 4, 2006
Jen - I work with two Swedish people ... but I'm English
Schuebel - wow, lots of questions. This isn't really the right place to ask these things, and I'm not responsible for most of what you mention but I'll try my best to answer.
Free games for my site - we have many games available. Unfortunately a lot of our more recent games just aren't suitable for the webmaster section any more. New games do get added occasionally though.
Games Room - we want people to use it. Saying "powered by Miniclip" isn't clear. Not sure what about it is "cheap"
What games have I made? Well I'm a web designer so don't make many games but you can see some of the games I have worked on here on this post - what I do at work
July 4, 2006
Congrats all!
I love your games so much! I cannot believe they're free (aprt form th eodd adverts - which are very discreet, and sometimes encouraging) :¬)
Any, I quite like some of the retro/electronic music on some of your titles. Yet, there is no information or hardly any credits of the artists and programmers!!
I'd love to buy some of your game tunes, but there are no ways of finding out who does what... that is unless one has to beg on your forum!
Anyway, keep up the great work you lot!!!
November 11, 2006
Toby - I'm afraid most of the music we use is made for the games and not available for purchase. Sorry.
May 16, 2007
Miniclip is one of my favourite gaming site congrats for all you made for us
March 25, 2009