“They win, they have power over me when that happens. I ignore them as much as possible and surround myself with better people” If I only surrounded myself with better people, I would never learn how to get along with everyone.

I was hoping other readers would see an opportunity to ask you questions too but maybe they are all smarter than I am

The SEMMYS aren’t a teaching tool. They’re for our industry. The OSCARS don’t exist to teach filmmaking, right? You don’t see the Academy up there giving feedback to the directors who don’t win about what they could’ve done better. Maybe this is part of the issue here — your impression of it is different from what the SEMMYS are.

Define “great” … aye, that’s the beauty of it. You can’t define great. It’s different for everyone, and that guarantees that we get a nice variety of nominated posts every year. Again on the OSCARS theme — define “Best Picture.” They don’t. The GRAMMYS don’t define “Best New Artist.” It might be sales, it might be impact, buzz, whatever. I don’t agree that all the nominees are “great,” but I respect and value the opinion of the committee and if they think something’s great, so be it. If they nominate something that’s not great, either the judges or the public will usually make sure it doesn’t get an award.

“….I have seen and experienced a lack of professionalism by peers and so hence, I am grumpy about the topic.” — at the risk of getting all Dr. Phil here, why be grumpy about it? It’s out of your control. Only thing you control is your reaction to it. People that act that way — I don’t let them bother me. They win, they have power over me when that happens. I ignore them as much as possible and surround myself with better people.

Anyhoo, fire away with questions anytime and I’ll do my best to answer.

I ended up with more questions and a deeper appreciation for you and the SEMMYS.
Peer to peer review may work in some fields but I have doubts about marketers. They are competitive by nature.

“,,,no rules limiting a nominee to a certain publication”….good. So it could be author, not by pub. Thank you.

“I’m sorry to say that, if you’re looking for explanations for why each nominated article was nominated, that’s just not feasible with 100-200 articles nominated each year”…Interesting. My perspective is that I am viewing this as a teaching tool, in which feedback fits in.

“Only matters that it was written during the calendar year and is great…” Define “great”, LOL The rub, for me, is that great means ??? I was contacted by someone who read an article of mine who said I had just written his thesis paper for him. Quite a compliment, but was it great for others?

The chance to narrow down options by readers is something I always liked. Would that be a time to get feedback for the nominees?

You are more optimistic than I. I listen to a lot of people and know how I am treated as well at conferences by a few folks. I know what its like to be on the receiving end of a hate campaign. I have seen and experienced a lack of professionalism by peers and so hence, I am grumpy about the topic.

costs…I face the thing with the forums. Ads drive the community nuts so I try to avoid them. We get donations but not unless I periodically admit we need it to pay for domains, server and software. People forget or expect. I can’t remember if you ask for help….bad kimmy.

Here locally, there is an All Star thing they do for high school football, where coaches from other teams scope out talent and nominate boys from competitor teams for awards. They are not allowed to nominate their own talent. It bugs them when someone they want in the All Star rank isn’t selected but I guess it is a way of being objective.

You have done your best to answer my questions without freaking out on me. Thank goodness! With online communication, it is hard to know the feelings behind words. I am your friend. I support the SEMMYS, even more so since you strive so hard to make it the best. Thank you sincerely for responding.

1) I always try to have judges be as smart as possible about the topic they’re judging. This year, for example, Chris Churchill and Adam Audette are judging the PPC category — both very smart in that area (not to mention several other areas). But I also have a rule that no one can judge category in which s/he is nominated, nor can they judge a category in which his/her site is nominated, nor in which s/he has direct ties. This makes it incredibly difficult to assign judges. A couple examples:

Rand/SEOmoz: There are at least a half-dozen of his staff members who write on their blog, not to mention all the user-generated content — some of which gets nominated, too. While I trust Rand implicitly, it wouldn’t look right for him to be judging a category in which SEOmoz is nominated. So this rule automatically precludes him from judging from about half the categories.

Lisa Barone: Lisa writes for Outspoken Media’s blog, for Small Business Trends, and has occasionally written for Search Engine Land and other sites during 2009. She’s nominated in a LOT of categories. Outspoken Media and Small Business Trends are also nominated in a lot of categories. I trust Lisa implicitly, too, but she shouldn’t be judging categories where the sites she’s affiliated with are among the nominees.

I could go on with examples like Barry Schwartz, who can’t judge any category where Search Engine Land is nominated. Aaron Wall would be a great SEO category judge, but his blog is nominated several times in that category (and several others). And making judging assignments even tougher is the amount of guest blogging that goes on. The most difficult part of my job is assigning the judges. I have charts and spreadsheets and handwritten notes with scratches and scribbles all over them — you name it. If I had longer hair, I’d be tearing it out every year I do this.

When choosing judges, I’ve tried to choose the smartest people possible — people who aren’t one-trick ponies. So even though they may not end up judging the category they’re most associated with, they’re still smart enough to know good content when they see it. I’m not a PPC guy by any means, but I think I could judge what a good PPC article looks like. (I’m not a judge, for the record.) You even said in your comment that you judge an SEO contest, yet I believe you consider yourself first and foremost a Usability person, right? My point is that, for the most part, many of the categories run together and are closely related. It shouldn’t be tough for a person who’s considered an expert in Category A to also be smart enough to judge Category B. And in the rare case when a judge tell me s/he doesn’t feel qualified to judge a certain category, I don’t assign him/her there.

2) Personal feelings & peer judging. Yep, we all have feelings. But we’re all professionals, too. I’ve nominated a couple dozen articles this year, and several of them are from people who’ve hurt/attacked me in the past in various forums — including about the SEMMYS! You assume that emotions will always get in the way of fairness, but putting emotion aside isn’t tough for everyone. I’ve told the nominating committee and judges several times that they have to be professional and fair. I believe they are. If I’m aware of particularly sensitive personal issues, I’ll make sure certain people don’t judge certain categories. And judges know they can tell me if they’re uncomfortable with the assignment I give them. So again, I’ll ask: If peer judging is not a good idea, how do I automate this and who pays the costs?

3) Why is something chosen? We have a page on the site that explains how the process works:

http://www.semmys.org/how-it-works/

There are 8 people who nominate articles throughout the year. They do so with very general instructions from me: When they find great content related to online marketing, nominate it. Doesn’t matter if it’s an article, blog post, podcast, video, whatever. Doesn’t matter who wrote it, where it was published, etc. Only matters that it was written during the calendar year and is great. Then we post all the nominated content. I assign 20+ judges, usually 2-3 per category, to read the nominees and — as a group — come to a consensus on a smaller group of finalists. (So, for example, Chris and Adam will have to agree on the PPC finalists this year.) We post the list of finalists, and then public voting decides who the winners are in each category. This last step isn’t perfect, but it does eliminate any of the personal feelings stuff you mentioned. And even though I don’t always agree with who the voters choose as a winner, I’d rather have them do it than have a small group of industry insiders do it. Plus, public voting puts the burden on the finalists to prove their worth to a degree by making them market their content if they want to win. I’m okay with that.

I’m sorry to say that, if you’re looking for explanations for why each nominated article was nminated, that’s just not feasible with 100-200 articles nominated each year. And it’s not possible to

4) On your second comment — I think if you look through past nominees and winners, you’ll see that there are no rules limiting a nominee to a certain publication. Pretty sure you’re nominated this year for something not on this blog. Lisa B. is nominated for her articles on several sites.