The Webby Ceremony

Once the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences has made its choices, Webby Award winners are announced at official ceremonies. In 2008, the Webby Film and Video Awards will take place in New York City on June 9. The Webby Awards will take place on the following day at Cipriani Wall Street. Winners receive certificates and statuettes that look like springs inscribed with binary code.

Group at Webby awards
Photo courtesy The Webby Awards
Ninja of Ask A Ninja, Fritz Grobe and Stephen Voltz, creators of Extreme Diet Coke and Mentos Experiment, & Kent Nichols, creator of Ask A Ninja at the Webby Film & Video Awards

The Webby Awards ceremony has one big difference from many other major award ceremonies -- recipients have a strict limit for the length of their acceptance speech. The Oscars give recipients a time limit, and we all know about the infamous tactic of "cuing the music" to encourage especially verbose award-winners to leave the stage. But the Webbys go one step further, giving recipients an explicit word limit. People who receive Webby Awards have to make their point in five words or fewer. Here are a few of the five-word speeches from the 2007 ceremony, from the Webby Awards official site:

  • CNET.com: This one's for James Kim.
  • LinkedIn: Come connect with me tonight.
  • Sony.com: The focus groups were right.
  • Adobe CS2.3 - The Creative Mind: Ask me about my monkey.
  • That Guy: Hey, don't be that guy.
  • Salon.com: The Pulitzers are history.

Diet Coke and Mentos
Photo courtesy The Webby Awards
Stephen Voltz and Fritz Globe, creators of The Great Diet Coke and Mentos Experiments and winner of Best Viral Video, perform as guests exit The 11th Annual Webby Awards.

For more information about the Webbys and other awards, please check out the links on the next page.