Let’s celebrate our European technology heroes

A lot has happened over the last few years on the web and it is not all coming from San Francisco. In Europe we have made great progress and a lot of European startups are taking the lead. With initiatives like OpenCoffee, conferences like LeWeb3, FOWA, DLD (and let’s not forget The Next Web Conference :) ) the European Internet scene is working on its come back.
We have highly skilled developers, we know how to do business, we speak multiple languages and are used to be working with different cultures (see Saul Klein’s writeup on ‘Why Europe can seed growth of its new stars’). So let’s celebrate all these great European startups!

Hold on to your braces, ’cause The Next Web Awards are coming! Together with fellow European bloggers TechCrunch France, TechCrunch UK, Loogic (Spain) and Frankwatching (Holland) we’re co-hosting these public awards for European* based technology companies for future accomplishments.

Why Europe? Next Web Blogger and of the initiators of The Next Web Conference Boris explains: “Europe has a great technology and entrepreneurial scene. A lot is happening in Europe, but most of the attention goes to Silicon Valley based companies. The Next Web Awards celebrates European startups and technology companies”.

So, I’ve made the announcement, now it’s up to you. Nominate your favorites on The Next Web Awards site before March 10. Actually, do it right away, why wait?

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These are the categories:

• Entertainment
• Company
• Social
• Web Celeb
• Weblog
• Rookie of the year
• On stage startup**

* Definition of European is in this case: all European countries according to this wikipedia page and Israel.
** 24 startups will do a 5 minute demo during the conference and they are automatically nominated for this category

As of March 11 the final nominees are announced and the website will be open for votes. The grand Award Ceremony will take place during The Next Web Conference on April 4 at 5pm.

By the way, this is the second time that The Next Web Awards are taking place. Last year 85.000 votes were counted in two weeks and amongst the proud winners were LinkedIn, OpenID, Tariq Krim, Youtube and Wikipedia.