Preparations for The Europas – The TechCrunch Europe Awards 2009 – are coming together. I really hope you have July 9 booked in your diary, and you got your tickets and your hotel and flight booked (if needed). Remember also that you can check out, and book hotels through our hotel search partner HotelMap (which is a pretty cool rendering of hotels in London).
The Europas will be the first Europe-wide awards ceremony for technology innovation, honouring the best tech companies and startups across the web and mobile scene from across the continent of Europe. The first tranche of tickets are now on sale.
Plenty of people want to nominate their company for the awards, so we’re going to tell you how. Here’s the order you need to follow:
1. Make sure your company is in CrunchBase, with all fields filled in, as well as key staff, like CEO etc. Don’t forget you logo and your picture! And make sure your address, and especially your country HQ/base are filled in. We are using CrunchBase as a basis for our research into potential nominees.
2. We’ll shortly release a list of companies in each of the 15 categories which you can vote on. We want you to vote on those, but in the comments on the posts those will appear on, you’ll also be able to give us feedback on the nominees, and make any additions if we’ve missed anyone. Europe is a big place, and there are a lot of companies to cover.
3. This is not essential, however, you can also email the TechCrunch Europe Editor, Mike Butcher, and nominate your company, or a person, in one of the 15 categories below. Please make begin the subject line with “Europas Nomination”.
4. Here are our categories again:
Best European Web Application Or Service
Best Design
Best Bootstrapped Startup (less than 3 years old)
Best Social Innovation (which benefits society)
Best Enterprise Startup
Best Cleantech/Environmental Startup
Best Hardware / Real World Gadget
Best Entertainment Application or Service
Best Mobile Startup
Best Mobile Application
Best Startup Founder
Best New Startup in 2008/9
Best European Investor of the Year (VC or Angel fund)
Best Investor Personality
Best Overall Winner
5. Here again is all the details you need on how all this will operate. Like I said, we will be releasing the list on nominees to vote on shortly. After that we will produce a list of the final nominees in each category – then all you need to do is come to the awards and find out who won (oh and party with the cream of Europe’s tech scene, of course).
The Awards Ceremony will take place in London from 6pm Thursday, July 9, at Delfina. It’s in one of London’s coolest parts of town with 300 places going for the attending audience. This is not a formal “black tie” event. It’s an event to celebrate! But we’ll be encouraging you to “dress to impress” and show off your startup somehow in a cool, fun way.
On the evening itself we will be joined by some of the great and good from the European startups scene. Check out who is coming already, and you will notice a number of familiar faces from the European startup and VC scene. Many will be handing out awards to the winners. Just a handful are below, and include:
Michael Birch, co-founder of Bebo
Stefan Glaenzer, co-founder of Last.FM
Sarah Lacy, author & TechCrunch editor
Tariq Krim, founder of Netvibes
We’ll also have some startup pitches (see here for how to pitch) sponsored by UK Trade & Investment (UKTI).
So, the key details are:
Opportunity to Sponsor awards : Please contact Petra Johansson petra(at)twistedtree.co.uk for further details.
Press/Media enquiries:Please contact Rassami Hok Ljungberg on rassami(at)rassami.com
Editorial/Awards/Programme: Editorial queries related to the awards, the programme and the pitch competition should be directed to Mike Butcher, Editor, TechCrunch Europe.