News & Events

The 2010 yMedia Awards Dinner

yMedia co-founder Adele shares her highlights of the awards evening.

Thursday, 19^th August wrapped up the biggest and best year yet of the yMedia Challenge. Seeing the Floating Pavilion transformed into sparkling glasses, fairy lights, laughter and applause was pretty cool. Even cooler was observing the nervous anticipation of the participants – it almost felt like a warped version of the (digital, Kiwi, youth) Oscars.

MC Simon Pound guided everyone through the evening, obviously having done his research. It’s no easy feat to sum up the sweat, blood and tears that went into each project, in only a few sentences – but he smoothly introduced each team’s work.

What was really rewarding, was to see so many of those who had once been students participating in the Challenge, come back as agency mentors.

The funniest bits of the evening included the impromptu ‘thank-you’ speeches from the various winners (or the sheer horror they directed towards the microphone, and the speed at which they shyly, silently scurried offstage).

All in all, it was the ideal finale to a Challenge that produced some of yMedia’s best work yet. I gushed enough about Eddy, Jade, and the management team during my speech, but the Awards night, as well as the event in general, demonstrated how they have turned a new chapter in yMedia’s history.

Having been limited to watching from the sidelines this year, experiencing the Challenge only via my Macbook in London, it was fantastic and surreal to be able to meet participants in the flesh and experience the energy that comes from being in the room during Awards night. That energy is indescribable – I don’t think I was the only one in the room who felt very lucky to be part of something incredible.