Winners for Singapore Blog Awards 2013 announced at Shanghai Dolly

It is a wrap!

After four months of campaigning, the annual Singapore Blog Awards drew to a close a few hours ago at Shanghai Dolly in Clarke Quay.

This is the sixth year omy.sg has been running this event. This also marks my seventh year in omy.sg and the sixth Singapore Blog Awards which I got to be a part of. Click here for a walk down memory lane via all the blog posts I have written about the Singapore Blog Awards since the inaugural event in 2008.

I still remember when we first ran the award six years ago, we have to set-up “internet stations” with laptops for guests to upload images or surf our site. Now, everything can be updated by many people at once on social sharing platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram via 3G or WIFI mobile devices like smartphones and tablets. Amazing.

The blogging community in Singapore has evolved and grew quite a bit from the time we started the first Singapore Blog Awards and the omy Blog Club. There were bloggers who came and go, but there is also a core group who supported us through all these years. Thank you and do continue to support omy.sg.

Program booklets for Singapore Blog Awards 2013

The event this year is special for me because it will be my last at omy.sg. Adieus.

Here is the official press release from omy.sg on the results announcement:  

The winners for the Singapore Blog Awards 2013 were announced today at an awards ceremony held at Shanghai Dolly. Mr. Lawrence Wong, Acting Minister for Culture, Community and Youth and Senior Minister of State, Ministry of Communications and Information, graced the event as the Guest-of-Honour. Over 300 bloggers and guests were present to witness the awards presentation.

Minister Lawrence Wong arriving at Shanghai Dolly

Organised by omy.sg, Singapore Press Holdings’ leading bilingual news and entertainment portal, and presented by Panasonic, the Singapore Blog Awards honours independent content producers who devote their time and energy to create and maintain informative and innovative blogs.

The winning bloggers in the ten main award categories each won a trophy designed by Mr Tan Swie Hian, the most expensive living artist in Singapore, and a trip, inclusive of air tickets and accommodation, to the Northern Territory, Australia, amongst other attractive prizes.

The ten winners for the main award categories together with the VIPs on stage

The theme for this year’s awards ceremony was “60’s Fever”, in line with this year being the sixth year of the Singapore Blog Awards. Many guests showed up for the awards dressed according to the theme, and had fun mingling with the various bloggers from different walks of life.

Group picture with all the winners across the 17 award categories with VIPs, judges and sponsors

In this edition of the Singapore Blog Awards, there was a total of ten main categories, two celebrity categories and seven special categories. Here is the full list of winners:

Main categories:

Panasonic Best Photography Blog:
Travelgraphy / Christina Gao
http://travelgraphy.wordpress.com

Exabytes Best Individual Blog:
Working With Grace / Grace Tan
http://workingwithgrace.wordpress.com

Levi’s Best Fashion Blog:
J U S T J A S L I N | Fashion Blogger / Jaslin Tan
http://www.justjaslin.com

Nanyang Optical Best Lifestyle Blog:
Scissors Paper Stone Blog / Jasmine Koh
http://www.scissorspaperstoneblog.com

Best Family Blog:
Sakura Haruka / Ai Sakura
http://www.sakuraharuka.com

Best Food Blog:
Johor Kaki Food Guide / Tony Johor Kaki
http://johorkaki.blogspot.sg

Best Travel Blog:
蓝天白云数格子 / Sock Peng
http://mylovelybluesky.com

Best What-The-Hell Blog:
俊凭|一个声音部落格 / 俊凭 Willy
http://www.lonelyclass.com

Best V-Log:
ninjagirls.sg / Ninja Girls
http://www.youtube.com/user/ninjagirlsSG

Best Micro-Blog:
Spin or Bin Music / Spin or Bin Music
https://twitter.com/spinorbinmusic

Celebrity categories:

Panasonic Most Popular Overseas Celebrity Blog/ Micro-Blog:
Alien Huang 小鬼
https://www.facebook.com/aes.alien

Panasonic Most Popular Local Celebrity Blog/ Micro-Blog:
Jeanette Aw 欧萱
http://www.facebook.com/xuantasy

Special categories:

Panasonic Best Beauty Blog:
Pinkbuble In Da House / Elrica
http://pink-buble.blogspot.sg

Ribbons, Rainbows and PixieDust / Elaine
http://www.elaine73.blogspot.sg

Love is Eternal / Karen aka Renzze
http://www.renzze.com

Panasonic Best Cooking Blog:
Celestial Delish / Celes
http://www.celestialdelish.com

Panasonic Best Eco-Challenge Blog:
The Lazy Lizard’s Tales / Ivan Kwan
http://lazy-lizard-tales.blogspot.com

Glossi Best Modelling Blog:
Love is Eternal / Karen aka Renzze
http://www.renzze.com

JBL Best Pop/ Music Blog:
Mint.Music / Mint Leong (1st)
http://mintleong.sg

Spin or Bin Music / Leo (2nd)
http://spinorbinmusic.com

Levi’s Best 501 Interpretation Blog:
Claire’s Flair / Claire
http://www.claires-flair.com

Qoo10 Best Online Shopping Blog:
mitsueki’s blog / mitsueki (1st)
http://www.mitsueki.wordpress.com

Youthinkicarewhatyousay? / ANdyStorm (2nd)
http://www.imandystorm.com

lukeyishandsome(dot)com / Luke Phang (3rd)
http://lukeyishandsome.com

Muses 맨날 속속한 것… / jeez-jia (3rd)
http://www.faithjoyhope.blogspot.com

Shopping Queen’s Haven / Regina Chow (3rd)
http://reginachow.blogspot.com

Minister Lawrence Wong interacting with the winning bloggers

The winners for the Singapore Blog Awards were determined by a combination of online voting (30%) and professional scoring (70%) by a panel of independent judges appointed by omy.sg.

The ten best dressed people for Singapore Blog Awards 2013

The Singapore Blog Awards is part of a series of events branded under Social Media Fiesta, an omy.sg social media initiative.

There will be more post-event coverage of the Singapore Blog Awards 2013 on omy.sg and the official website. Stay tuned to both. 🙂

Finalists for Singapore Blog Awards 2013 Unveiled!

The 190 finalists for the sixth Singapore Blog Awards have been unveiled. Voting has begun in fervour, with bloggers rallying on their own blogs and leveraging on various social media platforms to garner support.

Organised by Singapore’s leading news and entertainment portal, omy.sg, the award is presented by Panasonic this year, the second year the global brand has been fronting this exciting campaign to engage the online community.

The winners in the ten main award categories this year will stand to win a trip to the Northern Territory, Australia as well as a trophy designed by Singapore’s most expensive living artist, Tan Swie Hian.

The list of finalists saw a good mix of old and new faces in the blogging community. Some blog highlights include:

• Best Food Blog finalists: A vegan blogger from England (http://www.hungryangmo.com/) and a dedicated Johor food guide blog from Malaysia (http://johorkaki.blogspot.sg/) 
• Best Family Blog finalists: this category saw the most increase in registrants from last year. Two interesting finalist blogs feature self-drawn web comics on parenting (http://www.gingerbreadmum.com/ and http://www.peipeihaohao.com/) 
• Best V-log finalists: Last year’s winner, the adorable primary school student, Dr Jiajia and his brother (http://www.youtube.com/liangjiasun) faced off against a slew of strong v-loggers new and old, including a YouTube channel dedicated to cosplay (http://www.youtube.com/user/elpheal) and one featuring four adventurous Japanese girls, living and working in Singapore (http://www.youtube.com/user/ninjagirlsSG)

Here’s a fun video by the Ninja Girls:

Winners for the Singapore Blog Awards are determined by a combination of online voting (30%) and professional scoring (70%) by a panel of independent judges appointed by omy.sg. 

The theme for the event is “60s Fever”, in line with this year being the sixth year of the Singapore Blog Awards. The award ceremony will be held at the chic Shanghai Dolly club in July.

Official hashtag on Twitter and Instagram is #omysba2013. 

Voting is now open till 23 June 2013. Visit http://sgblogawards.omy.sg for more information. Voters stand to win attractive prizes like speakers from JBL.

The Singapore Blog Awards is part of a series of events branded under Social Media Fiesta (http://project.omy.sg/social-media-fiesta), an omy.sg social media initiative.

Why am I plugging this?

If you really don’t know, I am part of the organising team behind the Singapore Blog Awards since the inaugural award six years ago. 🙂

Singapore Blog Awards 2013 – Blog Your Way to a free trip to the Northern Territory, Australia!

Last Friday (5 April), the annual Singapore Blog Awards returned for the sixth year with more exciting events and prizes. Bloggers stand to win a trip, inclusive of air tickets and accommodation, to the Northern Territory, Australia, among other attractive prizes worth a grand total of over S$35,000. 

Organised by omy.sg (www.omy.sg), Singapore Press Holdings’ leading bilingual news and entertainment portal, and presented by Panasonic, the Singapore Blog Awards honours independent content producers who devote their time and energy to create and maintain informative and innovative blogs. 

There is a total of ten main categories, two celebrity categories and seven special categories. A complete list of award categories can be found on the official website.

This year, omy.sg introduces the “Best Microblog” award, a brand new addition to the ten main categories of Singapore Blog Awards, created to acknowledge the increasing popularity of short format blogging platforms like Twitter and Weibo.

The two celebrity categories, “Panasonic Most Popular Local Celebrity Blog/Microblog” and “Panasonic Most Popular Overseas Celebrity Blog/Microblog”, will be determined entirely by public voting.

The seven special categories are organised together with different sponsors, challenging bloggers to participate in specific blogging assignments to make the Singapore Blog Awardmore fun and engaging for everyone.

For instance, finalists in the “Panasonic Best Cooking Blog will be required to showcase their culinary flairs and those in the “Glossi Best Modelling Blog” will be required to best model and showcase Glossi eye wears. 

Other special categories include “Panasonic Best Eco-Challenge Blog”; “Panasonic Best Beauty Blog”; “Qoo10 Best Online Shopping Blog”; “Levi’s Best 501 Interpretation Blog”; and “JBL Best Pop/Music Blog”. 

Lee Kuan Fung, Head, Chinese Newspapers Division Digital Strategy, Singapore Press Holdings, said: “Blog content is diverse in nature, fusing written text, still images, as well as videos to bring about a dynamic reading experience. Leveraging on the advent of social media, bloggers are now able to propagate their content to wider and more diverse audiences. As the Singapore Blog Awards enters into the sixth year, omy.sg‘s commitment to reward and develop outstanding independent content producers remains and is more resolute than ever.”

Nomination and registration is now open till 10 May, followed by a voting and judging phase which will end in June. This year’s Singapore Blog Awards will see a series of exciting events in the months leading to the finale event in July. These include three bloggers’ workshops hosted by Panasonic, various movie previews with Shaw as well as a slew of other engaging events organised with sponsors.

The theme for this year is “60s Fever”, in line with this year being the sixth year of theSingapore Blog Awards. The award ceremony will be held at the chic Shanghai Dolly club in July.

Members of the public can log on to the official site (http://sgblogawards.omy.sg) to nominate their favourite blogs. Bloggers can also participate directly by registering themselves for the Awards.

The Singapore Blog Awards is part of a series of events branded under Social Media Fiesta (http://project.omy.sg/social-media-fiesta), an omy.sg social media initiative.

Blogging for Leisure vs Blogging for Profit – Insights from Singapore Bloggers

We have all read horror stories of diva bloggers misbehaving, demanding fees from restaurants for positive paid reviews, bringing along many friends to eat for free at food tasting, among many other complaints. Likewise, there are positive stories of bloggers who spend considerable efforts maintaining and crafting quality entries on their blogs out of interest rather than for commercial gains.

With the advent of social media and digital media, more and more brands are looking to working with and engaging bloggers for their campaigns and publicity.

Where do bloggers strike the balance? How should brands leverage on this trend? Why not hear it from the bloggers themselves?

Me moderating a panel of bloggers at SPH News Centre (picture via omy.sg) 

As a prelude to the launch of the 6th Singapore Blog Awards this year in April, the team at omy.sg organised a causal sharing and networking session with a panel of prominent bloggers in Singapore. I was the moderator for the panel discussion.

Joining me in the discussion were bloggers, Daniel Ang, Peter Breitkreutz, Grace Tan and Christine Ng. 

Check out the full video recording below if you missed the event:

Personally, I think the panelist did a great job and were candid with their replies. If there were more time, we could have gone deeper into the topic and stir up more controversy.

The conclusion I draw is regardless of your motive for blogging, a common arduous task is how to grow your readers base or get yourself noticed by organisations and people that matters.

One shortcut is of course to join a blog awards (shamelessly plugging for the Singapore Blog Awards).

To find out more about the 6th Singapore Blog Awards this year, bookmark this link to the official website. Coming soon in a few days time. 🙂 

Tan Swie Hian – The Most Expensive Living Artist in Singapore

Singapore’s top living artist, Tan Swie Hian with Singapore Blog Awards winner, Eunice Khong (picture via Travelerfolio.com)

Do you know who Tan Swie Hian (陈瑞献) is?

He has become the most expensive living artist in Singapore last night after a frenzied five-way bid at the Poly Autumn Auction’s Modern And Contemporary Chinese Art Evening Sale in Beijing where his oil and acrylic painting, When the Moon is Orbed 《月圆时候》(140cm x 206cm), was sold for 18.975 million yuan (S$3.7 million).

The Cultural Medallion recipient and multidisciplinary aritst painted the record-breaking work in Beijing earlier this year.

I have the honour of meeting and speaking with Tan Swie Hian on a few occasions because of the Singapore Blog Awards, organised by omy.sg.

Do you know that the Singapore Blog Awards trophies that omy.sg have been giving out the past five years are designed by Tan Swie Hian?

Singapore Blog Awards trophies designed by Tan Swie Hian

Like a wise sage, Tan Swie Hian shared with us some of his thoughts on organising a new media award like this and how we needed to have far-reaching visions in order to succeed. The team at omy.sg is thankful for his valuable contributions and advice.

Some had asked us about the unique shape of the trophy, mistaking it for an urn. Much thought went into the conceptualisation and design of the trophy. You can read more about it HERE.

This is how Tan Swie Hian describe the trophy design in his own words:

“鼎是权威的象征，我采用鼎的形式来设计部落格奖座，新言论权威既是通过新的意念新传播方式建立，便形成新的游戏规则，所以我用立体的圆方三角这几个基本造型，组成象征这种新规则的鼎足，也即是权威的支柱。”

“这是一个全新的鼎。得奖人同时可以从这个新鼎看到传统形制的保留，比如鼎身虽然减去二耳又接近警鸣器的罄，但还保留原有的烹器容器的圆体，不是直立而是外倾的鼎足还是保留传统的三柱足。这是说不论网上言路有多新式、全面及自由，一些传统的价值还是得遵守，如诚实公正客观，言论自由并不等于可以不负责任。”

For the past years Singapore Blog Awards winners, there are currently 47 trophies designed by Tan Swie Hian and given out by omy.sg in circulation globally. Don’t you feel honoured to be among one of the few individuals in the world holding on to such an exqusite piece of art? 🙂