I am very happy to announce the first (of many, hopefully) annual Crunchies, a year-end startup competition and award ceremony/party that we are coordinating with three other blog networks – GigaOm, Read/WriteWeb and Venturebeat (click on the links to see their coverage).

More details will be coming soon, but the idea is to let the community decide who to nominate, and who wins, in a number of award categories. And the whole thing will be topped off with a big award ceremony and party in San Francisco. Who are the most compelling startups of the year? We’ll know soon.

There will be sponsors for this event (see the event page for details if you would like to participate). Big thanks to Sun Microsystems Business Analytics for stepping up to be the charter sponsor of the Crunchies.

On a side note, the four participating blogs will be sharing the decision making process and the economics of the event. This is what I love best about blogging – even though we all compete very hard, we recognize that there is a community around what we do, and sometimes it’s important that we band together as part of that community.