Europe gets its own Crunchies
From Mike Butcher – editor TechCrunch, Europe.
I’m here to tell you about The Europas, the TechCrunch Europe Awards 2009 which will recognise and celebrate the most compelling technology startups, internet and mobile innovations of the past year in Europe.
But first, some history.
As editor of Techcrunch Europe in the last year I have attended many events across the continent. Last year there were even a few awards ceremonies.
But although there were also plenty of conferences and pitch competitions around Europe, there were no actual awards to honour and recognise all these amazing companies and people we hear about. It seems like they have to go to the U.S. until someone will hand them an award. And let’s face it, although The Crunchies is an awesome event, it only has one category for international startups.
Which is why I felt it was high time TechCrunch Europe stepped into the breach. But we didn’t want to do something which could be a called a “Europe Clone” of the Crunchies. We have to deal enough with the clone accusation as it is! No, we’d called it something different. Thus The Europas was born. [Play the video…]
So what’s it all about?
Well, on July 9, we’ll hold the first Europe-wide awards ceremony for technology innovation. “The Europas” – The TechCrunch Europe Awards 2009 – will honour the best tech companies and startups across the web and mobile scene from across the continent of Europe.
These awards will recognise and celebrate the most compelling technology startups, Internet and mobile innovations of the past year (Summer 08 – Summer 09).
We’ve had a week of public voting on our lists of nominated startups in 15 categories.
We’ve invited the creme de la creme of the European and, indeed, the Silicon Valley scene. (Including all the Travelling Geeks)
And we’ve brought in an advisory board to give us expert guidance as to which entrants should win a Europa award.
We’ve mashed all that together and after the shortlist is announced this week, we’ll be announcing the winners on Thursday.
And finally… there will be a special announcement of the launch of a new innovation from Techcrunch Europe, so stay tuned to our RSS feed and our Twitter feed for more.
And if that’s not enough then you can watch me talk about trends in the European tech scene (and more about The Europas) in a video interview I did with Intruders.tv recently.
