And a reminder: Vote now and be counted!
The 2014 RISC OS Awards poll has been underway since the beginning of December, and the deadline for votes was to be the end of January – in one week’s time. However, that has now been extended, and the new deadline for votes is 7th February, 2014. If you haven’t voted yet, you now how two weeks in which to make your decision and cast your vote.
The aim of the RISC OS Awards is for everyone in the RISC OS community to be able to celebrate what they think is the best the platform has to offer. The poll is a way to give recognition to a favourite piece of software or hardware, to a person or company who has done something particularly worthwhile for the community, helping to move things forward in some way, and so on.
Receiving the most votes in any category is encouraging for the relevant person or company. It tells them that people like what they’re doing, or what they’ve released – but more importantly, while people could tell them that directly, to vote is to contribute towards a more open show of recognition, and an award win therefore says, publicly, “We, as a community, like what you’ve done. Thank you!”
The reasons for the extension to the voting deadline are firstly some problems experienced by the Awards website (along with RISCOSitory, and other sites on the same server) last weekend, and secondly the disappointing number of votes so far – which currently stands at around sixty.
I accept some blame for the low number of votes – both because of the late announcement on RISCOSitory of the 2014 poll (though an announcement was sent to comp.sys.acorn.announce much closer to the poll being opened), and the nature of the voting form, which itself presents no options and therefore requires some thought as to what to vote for.
However, if you are short on ideas for things to vote for, have a read of this trip down memory lane and see if that gives you any inspiration. Alternatively, ROUGOL discussed the subject of the 2014 Awards at their January meeting, and have published a list of nominations, as suggested by the group’s members at the meeting.
So there really is no excuse – if you are a member of the RISC OS community, no matter whether you are new to the operating system or an old hand, or whether you only use it once in a while or use it every day, and no matter what part you play in that community – your voice should count: Cast your vote now!