Hasta La Ideas

Celebrating the Internet’s most valuable European players

Now in their second year, Europe’s Lovie Awards are quickly gaining momentum with a jam-packed program based around meaningful recognition of achievement in the interactive fields. In an awards-heavy industry, The Lovies—sister to the US’ Webby Awards—stand out for carefully selecting work that is as relevant now as it will be in the future. This distinction is clear even in the naming, which borrows from Ada Lovelace, the world’s first programmer who insightfully saw the computer as a tool with way more potential than simply calculating sums.

“The Lovie Awards are a pure kind of awards,” explains founder Nik Roope. He, along with a permanent panel of judges from the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences will pick winners from over 80 categories, ensuring a more standardized selection process for the annual competition. “I think awards are really important,” Roope says, adding that they created The Lovies “to try to help establish what things should be the standard, and what we should celebrate.”

In the lightning-fast field of technology, it’s easy to be overwhelmed by the increasing surplus of applications. Like the Gold Rush or the Industrial Revolution, this surge of digital arts and sciences is “full of brilliant inventors etc., but it’s also full of bullshit,” Roope remarks. In the same way he and his agency Poke London help clients navigate through the ever-changing digital landscape, the expert judges behind The Lovies reel it all in and decipher what will become embedded in our culture, creating “anchors” for the world to use as meaningful benchmarks for creative thinking in the digital realm.

As media partner, Cool Hunting is excited to see what The Lovies will put forward this year. There are still a few days left to submit an entry, which is “open to all European organizations and individuals involved in designing, building, managing, maintaining, marketing or promoting Websites, Interactive Advertising & Media, Online Film & Video, and Mobile & App content for European business, consumer or general audiences.” Also keep an eye out for the awards themselves, taking place this November during Internet Week Europe.