matt.geek.nz

New Zealand just got its own version of the online Oscars.  Last night’s Onyas ceremony, organised by the rock star Webstock crew and held at the Wellington Town Hall, was a classy event, with a red carpet at the entrance and a whole crowd of very clever people dressed up in ‘geek formal’ which, as it turns out, is anything from a dinner gown or tuxedo through to the Silicon Valley jeans and blazer combo.  The Town Hall looked amazing, with glorious lighting, great music and was amazingly well set up, considering that they’d only managed to clear out the Webstock conference goers an hour and a half earlier. Russell Brown was an excellent choice as compère, and Che Tamahori of Shift gave a great opening address which set the tone for the event: these awards matter because they’re being judged by people who work in this industry, at the coalface, every day.

Xero won three awards: Best Web Application, Best User Experience, and the supreme award of the ceremony: Most Outstanding Website. Craig Walker, CTO, accepted the Web Application award and has hopefully started a tradition of double entendre in acceptance speeches with his double entry wisecrack. Acceptance speeches were limited to 140 characters or less: adhering to the limitations imposed by Twitter, which made it easy to tweet your acceptance speech after you’d delivered it.

There was some strong competition.  Pocketsmith are doing very clever things with personal finance planning, Digital NZ and NZ On Screen are remarkable initiatives to preserve our digital treasures and present them in a compelling way, Eventfinder is a fantastic events database with an innovative heart, and Powershop are doing their bit to shake up the notoriously intractable electricity industry: which netted them the Most Innovative award. Every finalist was well chosen and as they played the showreels it was clear that they all deserved to be there.

After the ceremony, we were treated to a light show that was projected on to the interior ceiling and pipe organ of the Town Hall.  It transformed the room into, alternately: a diabolic cathedral, a steampunk gasworks, a blazing inferno, an underwater wonderland, and a galaxy of stars.  It was spectacular.  To see something similar you could check out this video of a recent light show in Hamburg, Germany.  It’s not quite the same, but it’s a similar concept: using projected light to transform architectural features into a shifting canvas.

A fantastic end to a fantastic conference.