Official Everything you need to know about the 2019 Awards Ceremony

[Jordan aka FltAdmlWolf]

Nominations for the 2019 Awards Ceremony open on Monday, May 20 at 12:15am Pacific Time and close on Monday, June 10 at 11:45pm Pacific Time. 

If this is your awards ceremony with us, welcome! This is a tradition that dates back to 1996, wherein we honor the people of the fleet who are simming really well, or contributing OOC.

Back in the "old days," we would gather the entire fleet onto one email list (we were a lot smaller then...) and sim together an award presentation; now we do things a bit differently. Here's how it works today: 

1. Everyone in the fleet submits nominations for consideration. 
2. The group staff (ship COs, EC members, etc.) review the nominations.
3. Each ship has their own awards presentation on their OOC email list for awards in the General Awards category. Award in this category can be given to one person on each ship. 
4. Then, we have a fleetwide presentation of awards here on the forums. Awards in the Duty Post, Special, Staff, and Length of Service categories are presented over the course of three days. One person in the fleet can receive each of the Duty Post, Special, and Staff categories. 

How to nominate:

We rely on each and every member of the fleet to submit nominations so we can recognize the best members of our community who are putting in the time and effort to make this a fun place to be. So we need your help! If you don't nominate your peers and mentors for awards, they won't get recognized. We want to encourage everyone to be really free with their nominations – there's no penalty in putting in a nomination that doesn't ultimately get the award. But ships that have fewer nominations tend to end up having fewer award winners – so don't be shy! Multiple nominations from members of a ship for any given award can help send a signal to reviewers that a certain person is really deserving, but also one really great nomination can be the deciding factor for someone to win an award.

Follow these simple instructions to get started: 

1. Check out the wiki Hall of Honor to see the list of awards and learn more: https://wiki.starbase118.net/wiki/index.php?title=Award
2. Consider who you want to nominate. Then do a quick check on the list of past award winners to make sure they haven't won the award before: https://wiki.starbase118.net/wiki/index.php?title=List_of_Award_Recipients (You can sort the table by clicking on the column headers, or you can use your browser's "Find" feature to quickly find a character anywhere on the page – on PC, use CTRL+F, on Mac use ⌘+F.)
3. If the person hasn't won the award before, head to the nomination form: https://www.starbase118.net/members/personnel/forms/award-nomination-panel/
4. Enter your information and select the award. Then write a nomination reason. For some awards, we'll ask you for a link to a sim if you have one readily available that helps justify your nomination. Don't stress out about finding a sim, but if you have one, it could help.

If you feel really confident about your award nomination, chat with others on your ship who might also feel the same way and recommend they make a similar nomination!

Writing a good nomination: 

Remember, your nominations are going up against other nominations from your ship (for General category awards), or from the entire fleet (Duty Post, Special, Staff category awards). So the better you make your case for why your nomination should win, the more likely it is that it will help your nominee end up getting the award. 

Last year, we put together some nominations that helped nominees in 2017 win. You can check them out for some inspiration: https://www.starbase118.net/2018/award-nomination-examples/ (We'll post some more from last year – 2018 – in the next few days.)

All that being said, don't go overboard! If the case for a nominee self-evident, or clearly shown by a sim, it's okay to write less in your explanation and allow the evidence to stand on its own. 

How to get a sim link:

You can grab a link to a sim by going to your ship's Google Group archive (the link is in the footer of every sim). 

 

Awards Ceremony schedule:

• June 27, Thursday: PRESENTATION: Introduction, General Awards
• June 29, Friday: PRESENTATION: Special and Length of Service Awards
• June 29, Saturday: PRESENTATION: Staff Awards
• June 30, Sunday: PRESENTATION: Duty Post Awards, finale/acknowledgments, complete ceremony posted on the Community News, in an announcement to the fleet via email, and on the wiki.

Questions?

• Head to the Discord chatroom, where we have the #awards2019 room where you can ask questions of other members. 
• Or, ask your FO or CO for help – they're happy to answer questions and have been through multiple ceremonies!

[Jordan aka FltAdmlWolf]

Great award nominations from last year to give you some inspiration for this year: https://www.starbase118.net/2019/award-nominations-help-2019/