Denver Westword decided to start an annual web awards party where a panel of judges (including myself) picked winners out of 50 categories.  I feel that Westword starting this is one step closer to bringing the tech scene out more in Denver.  When I travel to California and visit Silicon Valley it’s like home there with all the friendly digital peeps.  The funny thing about all the stuff I do, I’m never really involved much in Denver because there is not much digital / tech / social media people out here in a big group like the Valley.  Being part of this I think starts closing the gap for Denver to expand.  I still need to visit Boulder more because I heard nothing but great things about the exploding tech scene out there.

Special thanks to Nick Lucchesi (a Westword editor and host of the Web Awards) to include a link for my creation of a list of all the nominees.

One of the most interesting conversations I had was with Merton.  For those that don’t know who that is, he made a video with Chat Roulette (which randomly selects you with someone on your webcam…but be careful it has been known there are a lot of perverts on there), he decided to be creative and play a piano and make up songs according to the person he sees.  This creative idea blew up and got him over 7 million views on YouTube. It was just real interesting to hear from him, how small a simple idea can go from making your buddies laugh to a viral video seen internationally. He mentioned a few times “you don’t know how unfamous I was 8 months ago and this is just a big change.” Congratulations to Merton for all the success and he has gotten….he also won the Lifetime Achievement Award which I thought fit his success really well.

Check out all 50 winners of the 2010 Web Awards presented by Denver Westword.

I REALLY enjoy being part of stuff like this and look forward getting more involved into future panels.  Contact me for any upcoming events!