Conn, alas no. I’d love to go and in another year would have made it so the annual trip home coincided with it, but I’m moving back to Ireland a bit later in the year and a transatlantic trip before the transatlantic trip, is just too much for me. Shame, as aside from wanting to meet up with a lot of bloggers I enjoy, the networking might not have hurt my search for employment.

Thanks for the thumbs up!

I think your design is very bold and original. ‘Tis always nice to see someone offer something strikingly different and distinctive, as the vast majority of blogs are (thanks to templates) very samey.

The downside of trying something different is that there’ll always be people who don’t like it. But sure, isn’t that true of everything?

The last week really has been a blast, so no great pity or shame at not getting in there.

I can easily see people not liking this design. Being a three-column affair with images in the sidebar including rollovers, and choosing to display a hundred categories, can be considered rather cluttered.

And then there’s ads, and ad-blindness or not, despite them being text ads, they’re not exactly subtle. A lot of people in the blogosphere don’t like them, and I can’t blame them - but food on the table and all that.

Ah sure there’s always next year.

Oh, and yeah, I’ve seen the hills. I always scroll to the bottom of a site on my first visit. It often throws up interesting stuff like which engine and tools are behind the site - just a professional interest for me. Sometimes it even lets slip the real identity of an ‘anonymous’ blogger - just me being nosy.

Yes it’s only Twenty’s old site that is to be considered and I’m sure that is what was voted on rather than the new one. Reading from various comments around I think Twenty himself knows he shouldn’t have been shortlisted for Design. It is a clean design, with nicely worked graphics, but there were about ten blogs with much stronger designs that didn’t make it.

Why? Probably block voting. A lot of people like Twenty, as do I, but if they don’t read that many sites maybe they don’t care about design and just want the blog they like to win another award.

Maybe for my own I should have reminded everybody of the little green hills of Ireland that I drew at the foot of my site - I mean does anybody ever scroll all the way to the bottom? I don’t.

It would be great fun if Jason and Damien released the figures for the votes.

The bit that’s really bugging me is how Twenty got in for Best Blog Design. Okay, he changed sites mid-voting and his new site is better(ish), but his old site, the one that was being voted on, wasn’t even fit to tie the shoelaces of yours.