The Europas — The European Tech Startup Awards — Is Back. Get Nominating.

Since 2009 I have thrown together a little celebration of the technology startup scene in Europe. It started out very simply as an opportunity to get the best minds in the business to pore over the scene, pick the companies and people they thought were doing amazing things and give them some public recognition and praise, with a real celebration. So to that end The Europas – The European Tech Startup awards – have proved a great opportunity to come together as a community.

They’ve recognised and rewarded the hardest working people and best startups in Europe. We’ve awarded everyone from Soundcloud to MindCandy, Peer Index, Nordeus, iZettle, Spotify and Betfair. But with the enormous growth of the scene in the last couple of years, this little side project of mine has become much bigger than just one person.

Over the past two years there’s been a surge in the quality of tech events in Europe. From Pioneers to Le Web, DLD and of course The Web Summit. While last year’s Europas Awards saw almost 500 people turn up, literally to a simple bar in West London I’d hired to throw the event in, the next event will need to be bigger and better. So with that in mind I’ve decided to hand over the organisational logistics to a team I know can execute a great event for everyone – Paddy Cosgrave and his Web Summit team.

I will be staying on board as a guiding editorial voice for the direction of the awards, which will now become an independent entity unattached to any one media organisation. I will happily do some MC-ing, I’ll be hosting and chairing the judging panel. But to bring you guys the recognition you deserve it needs people to sort out tricky things like venues and logistics – never my strong point!

Thus, we’d like to invite you to join 1,000 others at The Europas Tech Startup Awards, to be held in Berlin on Tuesday, January 22nd. The Europas will be a huge celebration of all that Europe tech startup scene has to offer. The event will feature not just the hottest startups in Europe but also a number of Silicon Valley A-listers.

We also want to make the awards “fully” European. So we’ve decided we also want to share the awards around. That means we’ll be working on moving the event around Europe. For the last few years the awards were held in London. Next year we will move them to Berlin. It’s likely they will be subsequently held in other European cities as the years go on. We hope this will shine an international light on many of the booming technology clusters around Europe.

We’ll be retaining the awards party atmosphere, holding it in the cool Postbahnhof space, right in the heart of Berlin

The event will begin at 6.30pm and include an after party with some awesome entertainment. In addition to many of the existing categories, there will be a Hall of Fame awards and a number of “people’s choice” awards. Tickets will be available soon. For now you can apply for a 2 for 1 voucher for a seated ticket.

Nominations are open now and will close on November 30th. The Advisory Board of Judges will be announced next week.

You can follow the action on the site, on Facebook or Twitter.

I hope to see you there.