Nominations open for BE2Awards 2012, including best AEC collaboration platform

In January 2011 I wrote about the inaugural Be2awards: the world’s first awards for social media in the built environment (of which I am organiser). These are being held again, and remain distinctly social. Nominations for the BeAwards 2012 (which opened yesterday) are being crowd-sourced, and will be voted upon by the same crowd. The intention is to get a wide spread of nominations and then to encourage shortlisted candidates to mobilise their supporters once online voting begins. The 2012 categories include:

• Built environment blogger of the Year
• Best sustainability blog
• Best AEC social media blog
• Best use of Twitter
• Best AEC collaboration platform (in terms of votes, this attracted the keenest interest in 2011 with a shortlist of eight providers, with BIW Technologies – now conject – winning ahead of UK-based rivals 4Projects and Asite.)
• Best AEC community, network or community application
• Best use of Web 2.0 for construction products
• Best location-based AEC application
• Best ‘internet of things’ application
• Best mobile application
• Best virtual or hybrid event
• Be2 media award
• Best use of social media in an AEC PR campaign
• Best use of social media in an AEC marketing campaign
• Best AEC education and learning project
• Best charity, third sector use of social media
• Best AEC use of photo / video

The Awards website was relaunched last week, and the nominations (via an online discussion forum) will be open until early September. Online voting will then take place, before the awards are announced at a Be2camp “unawards” event in London on Wednesday 26 September – a date selected to coincide with London Social Media Week.

Held at the Building Centre, the awards event will also include BE2TALKs, a learning event featuring some thought-provoking industry speakers on the interfaces between construction and technology, social media and business.

Throughout the planning and implementation process, we have been keen to show the power of social media in spreading word of the Be2Awards. There is, of course, a Be2Awards blog (with RSS feed), and you can follow @Be2Awards on Twitter. If you are interested in helping, please let me know. For example, you can help by tweeting or blogging about the awards, by sponsoring an award, or by nominating someone for an award (yourself, your company, a client, a blogger, a Twitter feed you enjoy, an application that you can’t do without, etc). Of course, awards are great for marketing and public relations, and there are also two categories for PR and marketing professionals. If you work in these fields, this is your chance to be highlighted for your successful use of social media as part of an AEC industry campaign.

(This is an edited, slightly expanded version of a blog post published earlier this week on my pwcom.co.uk blog.)