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Hamburg, January 2009 — The second European Podcast Award, the only Europe-wide award honouring the most popular and professional audio podcasts, has now begun. The award enables producers and podcast fans alike to nominate their choice of candidates and also rate them at www.european-podcast-award.eu. Nominations can be submitted via the portal up until 15 March 2010. In 2010, Olympus Audio Systems will once again be supporting the “Initiative European Podcast Award” as its exclusive sponsor.

Last year, over 750 audio podcasts were nominated from across Europe. A total of eleven European countries (Germany, Austria, Switzerland, UK, France, Spain, Italy, Holland, Czech Republic, Denmark and Poland) are taking part in the second European Podcast Award, which will be overseen by a specialist editorial jury in each country. For lots more info on the award, visit the EPA blog at: http://blog.european-podcast-award.eu/

In May 2010, a total of 44 national winners will be selected in the categories “Personality”, “Non Profit”, “Business” and “Professional”. Four of these will then go on to receive the title of “European Podcasts of the Year” and one will be awarded the “European Podcast Excellence Award”.

This year’s coveted top prize will once again be the brand-new Olympus LS-11 mobile audio recorder including the Cubase 4 LE production software from Steinberg.

Images: Logo, 300dpi + Olympus LS-11

About audio podcasting
A top tip from insiders in the digital-audio world, podcasting is rapidly becoming a lifestyle trend. And here’s why: Whether you’re on the tube, jogging, in the gym, on the road or on a plane — a podcast keeps you informed and entertained wherever you are. Millions of PCs and mobile MP3 players are used to play these audio magazines every day and the number of programmes available on the Internet is exploding. Throughout Europe there are thousands of podcasts from a broad variety of providers, covering a plethora of specialist genres and catering for a wide range of target groups.

About the Initiative European Podcast Award

The “Initiative European Podcast Award” is a European project that promotes a European mindset and cultural diversity. The Initiative EPA was founded in December 2007 in Hamburg, Germany.

For more information, please contact:

If you are nominated for the European Podcast Award, you should know that voting by your listeners is a crucial part in getting to the next stage of the competition. Like last year, it is not all based on voting by your listeners, but it is a crucial part. Why not use some of our images to encourage the listener to vote for you?

[Click here for the images including a copy and paste HTML-Code]

Of course the easiest way  is to use our new player: it incorporates all the edits you have made in the background like name and description of your podcast, as well as the logo and your chosen episode. Plus, most importantly, the “click here to vote” button. It also has a with a direct link to your nomination page on the EPA website. You can find the code for when you are logged in and edit your podcast, pick the point “Player” from the menu at the top.

Other images for you to choose from:

As a podcaster, you can now submit your podcast(s) for the new competition of 2009/2010. If you like, get yourself a user and enter your podcasts through filling out the form. If your podcast has been submitted last time and was connected with your email address, you will see it in the list after login. After the approval of your podcast you can find it in our portal. After a short beta period we will go public and invite everybody to enter their podcast or nominate other podcasters. Don’t forget to test out our new voting player and see what others are saying on Twitter!

Welcome to the EPA 2010!

Our new "vote and play" widget

The goal for the 2009/2010 contest is simple – the same as last time: Find the best audio podcast content from around Europe and show case it for listeners to explore  and help podcasters find new audiences. Nearly 750 podcasts where submitted last time, and we are looking forward to even more submissions this time.

How can you participate?

Easy! Register yourself (see more information below) and fill out all information needed. Once you have submitted the podcast, our local editors will check your podcast and once it is online, you will receive a confirmation mail.

Now you can point your listeners to your voting site and or include our new player on your website. And don’t forget to tell your fellow podcasters – maybe just the ones from other categories ;) – about it!

How to register

Just head over the login page or register a new user with your preferred email address. After a quick registration confirmed email you will be able to enter one or more podcasts of your own. If we had something associated with this mail adress in our database from last year, you will be offered to change the data in this right away. Otherwise, just click on “new podcast”.

Once you click on your new or old podcast, you will get an entry mask per podcast which looks like this:

Adding your podcast is simple

Here you can enter the following information:

• Name of your podcast, as displayed in the player
• Link to your homepage of your podcast
• RSS-Link if available
• Short description (which will appear in the player)
• you podcasts category
• the country you are submitting from
• logo of your Podcast
• Episodes: Choose three episodes which you think reflect best your podcast for a casual listener / voter and later the jury
• you need to confirm that you have the right to represent this podcast
• and you need to accept the Terms and Conditions

After that you just hit submit and in case of an error you will get warning messages and can edit them. If everything works fine, your podcast will be submitted into the backend as “unapproved”. Our local editors then will check the podcast for our criterias and if all is okay approve them so that they can appear in the portal.

You can check any time if your podcast has been approved yet.

Mini FAQ

• I submitted – now what?
  Please have a bit patience, we want to test how this part of the process works. Once we start approving, your entered information will be used right away. And remember – the earlier you start, the more votes you can collect. ;)
• Why do I have to give links to my episodes?
  Part of the answer is that reading feeds is a nightmare. But that set aside, the main reason is that not everybody wants the last three episodes to be on the player but have the chance to really show case what they want. Also not all files are in a mp3 format, which is why we require the links and download the content to be in the player – if they are not mp3 we will convert them on our side.

• You say Europe – then why can’t I submit if I am from country X?
  One of the major complicators in this is that we do encourage submissions from different countries with different languages which requires checking in local languages by our editors in a regular and formalized way. For this we do have paid country editors who speak the local language(s) plus we do need to find jury members who speak the language too. Plus there need to be enough podcasters to justify this amount of work.

  For this we have the support of our Sponsor Olympus and we are working on getting more countries on board. :)Please do not submit podcast under different countries as they will not be approved. We will though collect suggestions again and if you have information about podcasting in your country, feel free to ping us with a blogpost you wrote f.e. in english to showcase your country. :)

• Why audio only?
  Video is great, and there are a lot of awards for videos and more – it is just that we feel that we like audio more and want to promote European audio podcast content.

Also, why not check out other podcasters from Europe?

From left to right our winners 2008 / 2009: Jose Antonio Gelado (Communicando Podcast), Annik Rubens (Schlaflos in München), Mark Pentleton (CoffeeBreak Spanish) and Diana O’Carroll (The Naked Scientists)

A short video from the ceremony (look further down for a longer one plus interviews)

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDZ-fQk0fqE

Chosen from ten participating countries across Europe and over 750 nominations, the panel of judges awarded the first European Podcast Award to five winners from Germany, UK and Spain. The award seeks to promote audio podcasters across Europe and to encourage the continuation of first-rate achievements. All this has been made possible exclusively by Olympus Audio Systems.

The invitation to attend the ceremony in Hamburg was reason to celebrate for the award-winners. The award was topped off by an elegant glass trophy and the high-end LS-10 mobile audio recorder from Olympus.

David Prest, English member of the panel of judges, says: “The award does a much needed job all over Europe in recognizing excellence in podcasting. These podcasts are clever, creative, imaginative and extremely valuable programmes with high production values. Event organiser Michel Mertens from the German “Initiative European Podcast Award” continues: “Without the innovative support of Olympus across Europe this would not have been possible.”

Using online voting and with the help of a panel of judges, all the nominated podcasts were judged according to comprehensive assessment criteria. This marked out the national winners and then the European front-runners. The biggest surprise of all was the Spanish contingent, with the country ranking at number 3 after Germany and England due to its number of nominations.

The European Podcast Awards of the year 2008/2009 go to:

• “Schlaflos in München” [Sleepless in Munich] / Germany
• “The Naked Scientists” / United Kingdom
• “Communicando Podcast” [Communicating Podcast] / Spain
• “CoffeBreak Spanish” / United Kingdom

Special prize: European Podcast Excellence Award

Honored with a special “European Podcast Excellence Award” where living legends Wolfgang Rudolph and Wolfgang Back from the “ComputerClub 2″ / Germany.

Thumbs up and the “European Podcast Excellence Award”. Wolfgang Rudolph, Award-Speaker Nicole Simon and Wolfgang Back (left to right)

Videos and Interviews from the Award Ceremony in Hamburg

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlYThHIa9Lo

Diana O’Caroll, The Naked Scientists

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjXfrIjnD7g

Mark Pentleton, CoffeBreak Spanish

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8M_FW4fDYZY

Annik Rubens, Schlaflos in München

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDqlT5_GTS4

Wolfgang Rudolph, ComputerClub 2

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l204L7QgLbg

Nicole Simon, Speaker European Podcast Award

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RtWYiRpj_Y

Dave Wallies, Manager Olympus Audio Systems Europe

What about next year?

Looking forward to the next edition of the EPA? So are we! After a short break we will start again in June with the EPA for 2009/2010, including some new features. Stay tuned for more information about this years edition and subscribe to the newsletter if you like to be one of the first to know about it:

In order to promote European podcasters we also have started a fresh Facebook page for the EPA (would love if you become a fan) plus a new mini forum where you can promote European podcasts you like.

Additional Links

• overview of all national winners of the EPA
• Norman Osthus has put some video from the ceremony onto youtube as well as put together interviews in his German Normcast Episode 135.

Out national awards have been shipped out and already reached their winners. See a short shipping videos and the ‘unboxing of the award’ of one of the winners.

As much as we all love online (at least that is what I assume most of you do) there is something special about this thing called “real life”. Therefor it was our great pleasure to send out not only a virtual thank you but make it ‘real life’ and send out a small packet. As to be expected, we did put in an award you can put on display,  but also a DS-55 audio recorder, curtesy of sponsor Olympus.

Now the only thing missing for the European Podcast Award 2008/2009 are the European Winners. These will be announced during a ceremony in Hamburg on the 31st of March. European Winner, Jury member, journalists and partner from Olympus will be celebrating together on the famous Hamburg Kiez in a club called OnAir.

The evening will be documented on Video and yes, we have listened to your complains. The video will be online on youtube as we assume that site will be able to handle the traffic. ;) in order to test the system we use them already for this first video of the shipping of the awards.

Now showing you the to be shipped items is one thing. But how did our winners react? Meet for example Deek Dekster from the Pod of Funk. We are not sure what’s up with the hats, but we love his reaction when he discovers the award. ;)

Stay tuned until April 1st to see the European Winners!