This year Mobile World Congress saw the 18th running of the Global Mobile Awards. These are the mobile industries very own ‘Oscars’ or we like to think of them as that. Are they the premier mobile industry awards? There are some impressive stats to back up this claim. 37 categories, 600 entries, 150 independent judges, global spread and coveted prize. The prize is indeed coveted. How do I know this? I see – and sometimes hear – the disappointment from those that don’t win! Oh yes, people care about these awards!
Before I go on, you can see my interview all about the awards with Mobile World Live TV here. I had over 100 texts when this went out from people that saw me on the big screens!
It has been my honour and privilege to act as Chair of the judging panel for the last six years. During this time we have evolved the awards to reflect the vast and ever-spreading nature of the mobile industry. This means adding new categories – dropping some along the way – and of course finding new judges. I cannot claim to do this all on my own. The GSMA and their agencies have an impressive team working on the awards for the previous six months to deliver the highly polished programme we saw again this year. But the GSMA is very keen to ensure that these awards are independent of the GSMA itself. Therefore is does not involve itself in the judging or the selection of judges. This insures the independence of the awards and one of my jobs as Chairman of the Judges is to make sure that the awards are conducting with the highest integrity and remain fully independent of any outside influence. The winners are picked by the judges and the judges alone.
Another thing that has happened over the last few years is that the awards ceremony itself has moved from a black tie evening event to a more open house ceremony now held as part of MWC in the main auditorium. I have mixed thoughts on this. On the one hand it is now accessible to far more people but on the other hand the celebration party is very different now!
I mentioned our 150 judges before and let me say a few more words about them. They come from all over the world, from many different industries, from varying backgrounds and they all give up their time to read and study every entry before awarding marks and selecting the winners. I think we can safely say that this is a very impressive selection of judges. One of the great pleasures of chairing the judging panel is having the opportunity to meet so many knowledgeable people.
The awards ceremony itself is always hosted by an international celebrity. This year it was David Walliams, last year Tim Minchin and previously we have been equally richly entertained by Jonathon Ross, Stephen Fry, Michael McIntyre and Clive Anderson to name but a few. Hey, this job has to have some perks!
The programme this year was the fullest it has ever been. The Connected Life category brought in many new industry sectors such as Health, Education, Automotive as well as established previous categories such as mobile finance and mobile money. We tried to have a ‘where does it all come together category’ we called Smart Cities. Other recent innovations has been the Best Mobile Device Launched at Mobile world Congress where our judges do some real time judging to hunt down the best new device unveiled at the show.
We have also created a very prestigious CTO panel of judges and this year we asked them to pick the overall best technology in the awards programme. Amongst our star studied CTO line up is Hugh Bradlow from Telstra – Hugh and I had the privilege of presenting the award this year to Samsung.
If you want see a full list of the winners and find out more about the Global Mobile Awards programme, go take a look at globalmobileawards.com. I hope this has sparked your interest in the awards and why not find a category that suits your business and make an entry next year. You never know we might just be meeting on stage next year!