The Perth Festival web site is a nominee in the events category of the 11th Annual Webby Awards.

The 2007 Perth International Arts Festival web site has been nominated for a Webby Award. As part of the awards programme, the site is also up for a Webby People’s Voice award, nominated by members of the public. You can help us win by signing up to vote in the Websites > Living > Events category – but be quick, voting closes this Friday, the 27th of April.

So, why do I think you should vote for us? Well, the Festival site has been my pet project for the past 5 years, and I love it to death! But apart from that, it’s a site that has been built with love and care, and most importantly, lots of web standards. I won’t say that every page definitely validates without warnings – but the templates and structure are all sound. Which is more than can be said about the other sites in the same category – while they all look great, two are completely Flash based and the other two use layout tables and much crufty, deprecated markup. Ewww!

I was lucky enough to work with a very talented bunch of people to pull the 2007 Perth International Arts Festival web site together – especially Isabel at Block Branding, who did the gorgeous design, Ben Kroll, who coded the “My Festival Planner”, both CF/Fusebox back end and Ajax-enhanced front end, and Georgia Malone from the Festival (now at PICA) who managed all the content and drove the marketing efforts. In 2006, Georgia stamped her foot and said “I want to win a Webby!” She then set about making sure that the 2007 Festival web site was amazing in every last detail – and this nomination shows that she was right on track.

So get voting, and remember – a vote for the Festival is a vote for web standards!