The first part of the awards is the open call and recruitment of entries. Our Awards Consultants are here to help potential entrants understand more about the event and the many benefits they can obtain from participation.

At the same time, we build a team of upwards of 20 judges. Our aim is for 5 judges per panel, because we want the judging to be thorough and to do that judges need to have the time to scrutinize every entry. You may have noticed a tendency among awards to increase the numbers of judges. That’s because of us. Slowly but surely the awards sector is realizing that to do your entry justice takes time and effort. A panel of 5 judges with 20 entries can’t spend enough time on the entries, it’s as simple as that. On average our entries are assessed for at least 6.5 hours and scored 5 different times.
The judges score the written submissions following the announcement of the finalists and before the event date of June 19th.

The awards night is the final big day. The day all our judges and finalists and their guests and supporters have been waiting for. This is the day we hold the awards finals and ceremony. It’s an exhilarating experience. It’s a challenge, it’s fun, it’s active and it’s exciting. The effort which the finalists and judges make in the morning is rewarded by hearing the results during a fun and engaging awards ceremony. During the morning 5 to 10 panels of judges assess the entries in live presentations. Categories of 5 finalists make presentations of 15 minutes to the judges. Back to back presentations are scored by the judges and the scores are entered into the online application, along with feedback and comments.

The scores and comments are entered into our application, Awards Manager. We use Awards Manager Software, it’s a bespoke application developed to ensure a smooth and enjoyable experience for our customers. Awards Manager also provides us with complete transparency at every stage of the entry and judging process. Awards Manager ensures we never lose an entry, never announce the wrong winners and we can always investigate any queries form our customers, with complete confidence. (Did someone say never say never?) It also enables us to send out judges’ feedback and category and individual scores to all our entrants, following the awards.

The awards ceremony takes about 2 hour or so in the evening, about an hour after judging finishes. This is the first time we will know who the winners are and we need to prepare the Awards for the ceremony with the details of the Gold medal winners. During the awards ceremony we host and hear from keynote eminent speakers. We also have a raffle for our charity initiative, where we raise money for the annual Africa support Project. This Project aims to promote the Peace & Friendship initiative between North America (USA & Canada) and the host African country where its implemented.

In this Peace & Friendship initiative project that we implement with our partners, we aim to raise $350,000 for this important cause. A special host who runs the awards ceremony announces the awards presenters, and they announce the winners and it takes an hour or so. It is a full fun event, while you are glued to your seat and your screen. This will be live on the internet so you can invite all your colleagues from work, family and friends to watch. The finalists need to prepare a short acceptance speech and description of what they did, because when they win, they will be asked to join the host for a few minutes. We record the announcement and the acceptance speech and share it with you following the event. After all the category winners are announced the host announces the overall winner.

The overall winner is that entry which has received the highest score of all the entries. Following the awards, we will send the trophies winners logo and finalists logos to the finalists and of course celebrate the event with as much media and publicity as we can. We will feature many of the winners in media promotions, in case studies, in interviews, in webinars and in conferences. We hope to engage and add value to our customers all year round not just at the events.