Big news for the Starfish: the 2007 Perth International Arts Festival web site has been nominated in the Events category of the 11th Annual Webby Awards.

The 2007 Festival web site project was a joint effort: local creative agency Block Branding did the design and art direction, Clever Starfish created and managed the site, and PerthWeb did the hosting and some content preparation. Various members of this team worked closely with Perth Festival marketing staff, particularly Georgia Malone (now at PICA) who wrote the content, entered all the events and came up with new crazy ideas to implement.

Working on the site was at times hectic, but also a lot of fun. The Webby Awards nomination comes on top of news that the 2007 Festival broke all records with respect to ticket sales and web site usage – meaning that all in all, it’s been a very successful year!

So what are the Webby Awards? It seems every news article and press release includes the quote from the New York Times – “the Oscars of the internet” – and while it’s clichéd, it’s also true: run by the The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, the Webby Awards is the largest and most respected international programme acknowledging excellence in web sites, interactive advertising, online film and video, and mobile sites. Given the star-studded list of previous winners – including the BBC news online, Google Maps, National Geographic online, and photo sharing application Flickr.com – being nominated is truly an honour.

The Webby Award winners are announced on May 1. As well as the official Webby Awards, the Festival site is also eligible for the People’s Voice award. Members of the public can vote for their favourite sites in each category until the 27th of April.

So, if you’d like to see the Perth Festival win a Webby People’s Voice Award, please register to vote! It takes just a few minutes to let them know you think the Perth Festival site is great, and if you’re feeling enthusiastic you can have your say on any of the sites nominated in any of the 100 categories. The Festival site can be found under Websites, in the Living category, under Events.