The Australian Web Awards were last Friday, and a project I am working on was a finalist in two categories. I am a bit removed from an actual acceptance of an award – that would likely go to my employer; however, I think I would have heard by now if we won. I haven’t heard we won, so I am assuming we didn’t (there is a winners page on the Australian Web Awards site, but it doesn’t appear to have been updated yet).

For a bit of back story, the project that was nominated was UNSWTV. UNSWTV is an amazing project, and there are many people who have worked on it. The project is still underway, and I am not sure how much I can say about it, but I can say that in order to work on it you’d have to know: C, C++, Objective-C, .NET, Makefiles, Coldfusion, Python, Amazon EC2, Amazon S3, Amazon load balancing, web services, both YouTube APIs, iTunesU API, XML, XSLT, Javascript, CSS, Flash, Flex, Windows, Linux, message queues and a scad of other technologies. That’s just the programming side mind you; there is all the architecting, project management, wire-framing, and designing as well. Additionally the project, while still in beta, is barely a year old and it is quite functional (still beta with a few bumps of course).

The reason for the life story on the project is because as you can imagine there was a lot of weekends, holidays, and late nights to get the project to where it is today. A lot of people have worked on the project – some still around, some have moved on. But everyone who has touched the project has worked their hearts out to get the project to where it is today.

Often times in creating software you only hear the bad stuff. You only hear about what’s broken or how horrible something looks. You hear “how easy it should be” and “can’t you just…”. Of course that is to be expected; it’s the nature of the business.

However, every once in a while you get something nice. You get someone that sits back in their chair, cocks their head sideways and says, “Wow, that’s pretty cool”. You’ll get a bit of recognition for all the hard work you’ve put in. All the little extra bits that almost always go unnoticed. Getting nominated for not one, but two awards gave the people that worked on UNSWTV that lift. And that feeling is what doing this insanity day in and day out is all about.

While it is not my place, I would like to personally thank the Australian Web Awards for the opportunity to compete and for the recognition. While everyone likes to win, making it to finalist status was a great honour, and it brought a smile to everyone who work(s|ed) on the on the UNSWTV project.

Update

Kay Smoljak pointed out the news entry with the winners list (towards the bottom). Congratulations to John Curtin College of the Arts for winning the Education category and to Loop11 for winning the Edge of the Web category.