Thanks to everyone for the recommendations/nominations.  I am happy with the response and grateful for the input. As hoped, the process uncovered some new and previously unknown (at least to me) innovative new media concepts.  Stay tuned, I'll be posting the winners next week.

Just one more week for nominations. Please keep them coming in. 

Here some recent nominees:

MyCatholicVillage.com - This is a terrific Catholic social networking web site out of southern California.  It is small but growing.  The founders have been good about extending the on-line community to offline gatherings, such a charity runs and youth activities.  I believe one of the founders is a surfer as well.  Cool.  Funny thing, I went to college in Southern California hoping to ride a few waves. Alas, the rigors of studies and lack of funds meant that best I could do was ride the bus to the library.

www.catholicradiointernational.com  - A Catholic pod casting web site.  It is intended to "bring honest and truthful information about our world." 

iBreviary: the prayerbook for iPhone.  The Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Social Communications has blessed an app developed by an Italian priest made in conjunction with a web designer.   iBreviary provides the text of prayer in languages including English, Spanish, French, and Latin. Portuguese and German are expected to be available in the near future. The application is available through the iPhone App Store and retails for US$0.99 with future upgrades being free. Proceeds from the sale of the application will go to charity.

Body Language, a new album from Critical Mass:  The new Critical Mass album is based on the Theology of the Body.  According to the bands headman David Wang, Critical Mass is "using rock to teach the faith in a unique way.  We are putting together a discussion forum on our website to discuss the songs and creating an updated set of liner notes to teach about the Church's stand on sexuality and love."  Rock to teach the Theology of the Body.  Innovative!

CatholicMom: CatholicMom celebrates "all things Faith, Family, and Fun from a Catholic perspective."  Enjoy fresh perspectives from over 30 contributors.  Read the latest selections from their Book Club.  Check out great tunes from an array of talented Catholic musicians.  Help your child make the most of the Liturgy of the Word with our Sunday Gospel activities.  Listen to our weekly Catholic Moments Podcast for interviews with special people doing extraordinary things to live out our Catholic faith and share it with others.  A great site. Check it out.

Speaking of Catholic moms, here is a very kind nomination from everyone's favorite Catholic Mom In Hawaii: 

"Aloha Tom:

I'm not sure if I am doing this right but here goes.  I would love to nominate Love to be Catholic.  It has been a really blessing to have a pure Catholic alternative to YouTube.  Unlike other similar sites, we are actually encouraged to upload videos, join groups, etc."

Thanks Esther, appreciate the shout out.  I have to recuse myself and LoveToBeCatholic.com from the competition.  Bad form to hold an award and then give it to myself.  Thanks again for the encouragement and kind endorsement.

I will be accepting nominations for the Catholic New Media and Innovation Awards through January 23.  Lots of people have sent in terrific suggestions.  Keep them coming in!

Thank you to our favorite Catholic Mom In Hawaii for sharing this Merry Christmas greeting....Hawaiian Style. It warms us up on this, a cold and snowy winter day in Minnesota.

It will help tremendously if nominations for the Catholic New Media and Innovation Awards include a short and compelling pitch on why the particular nominee is innovative and/or represents the best in new media.  Also, while I plan to highlight new media, I am very interested in those outside of the medium who are innovative in their approach to evangelizing the faith.

Look forward to hearing from you all.

Who is the best in Catholic New Media?  Where are the innovators in Catholic evangelization?  I want the world to know.  So this year I am rolling out the first annual Catholic New Media and Innovation Awards.  The purpose is to find and highlight the best in Catholic New Media and acknowledge those using innovate ways to evangelize the faith. 

This is something I have wanted to do for some time now. It is my hope that this informal award will bring attention to those working tirelessly and unselfishly to promote the good works of the Catholic Church and share the gifts of our faith.

Here are the rules:

1. Open Nominations
2. There are no specific categories.  I prefer to keep the nomination field broad and defined only to new media and innovation. It will be fun to see what suggestions people send to us.
3. Jury Panel = me. The awards are subjective but based on my experience, expertise and input from those who are kind enough to send me their thoughts.
4. Winning entries will be posted on this blog and will receive a glowing email with congratulations from yours truly. Wow!

OK, so there's no red carpet, banquet, or celebrities fawning over the winners.  Just me and my platform to share the good works of generous people.  I'll probably announce the winners on a Catholic radio program or perhaps EWTN or Catholic TV if they'll have me.  First things first. Send me your nominations.  I promise to thoroughly review them and announce the winners in early January.

I set up a special email account for nominations and related correspondence.  Please send you suggestions and comments to awards@lovetobecatholic.com.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Our one-year anniversary has quietly come and gone.  I didn't make a big deal about it.  Perhaps I should have done so.  When I set out to develop LoveToBeCatholic in January 2007, I had no idea what to expect. Would Catholics embrace the concept of user generated video?  Would people be inspired by what they see?  Will the people use this medium to express themselves spiritually and will Catholics post their stories to inspire others?  Will this idea of evangelizing via new media take off?  After a year of plugging away, the answer to those questions are an emphatic yes, yes, and yes.

We are still in our infancy and continue to grow and build credibility.  New members sign up each day and our video library is rapidly expanding.  The Catholic media has noticed and a few bloggers as well.  We still have much work to do.  The potential for LoveToBeCatholic is endless. My limitations are time and resources.  Yet there is no shortage of spirit, drive, hope, and enthusiasm.  Every time a new member signs up or a new video is uploaded, it is a lift that encourages me to drive harder to succeed. 

One thing is for sure, since launching we have impacted a lot of lives, generated some good buzz, and grown into an important worldwide source for on line Catholic video.  We are a global community, with members from around the world including Australia, the Philippines, Thailand, Japan, South Africa, Europe, USA, Canada, Mexico, Argentina, just to name a few countries. We have thousands of members and almost 2,000 videos.  All these videos are uploaded by members for the Catholic community.

It has been a terrific and exciting first year.  I hope that everyone continues to enjoy the web site and participates by uploading and sharing videos. Please encourage your friends and family to join LoveToBeCatholic.com.  After all, we are the first Catholic user generated video web site.  Since launching there have been numerous others who have copied our idea.  We welcome them as the more Catholic content on the web the better.  LoveToBeCatholic remains the original and we will continue to make it the premium source for Catholic video. 

You are the stars, the community, the heart and soul of LoveToBeCatholic.  Thanks to you, it is a place to find Catholic spiritual enrichment, any time, 24/7.

Thanks to everyone for your support and inspiration.  I look to great things for many more years to come.