Lost at The Flackenhacks: One mobile (Nokia/Bite)

Lost at The Flackenhacks (or possibly in a cab afterwards)...

One  Nokia handset: "Black, very new and the screensaver is of the top of the Alps. Some of the names you’ll find in it are Bethan Onions or Greg Callus."

Owner = Tony Lederer of Bite. It would be grand if we could reunite him with his handset...

 

Oh yeah, the winners. . .

1) PR Agency of the Year

Rainier PR

2) Tech hack of the year (freelance)

Jessica Twentyman

3) Tech hack of the year (staff)

Charles Arthur & Michael Cross -- The Guardian
(For their excellent Free Our Data campaign.)

4) Biggest fuck up

Microsoft: The $300m Gates-Seinfeld campaign

5) Rudest hack (Voted for on the night)

Gary Flood

6) Media budget cutter

The shortlist included Sly Bailey (Trinity Mirror), Graham Harman (Incisive Media), Geoff Wilmot (Centaur), Jerry Yang (Yahoo). And the winner was. . . all of 'em.

7) Up its own arse

Google's Zeitgeist conference (feat. Rania Al Abdullah, Queen of Jordan)

9) Wank 2.0: User-generated twat

Richard Bailey, PR Studies ("Created Aug 03")

10) Loyalty to dead media formats

The Financial Times

11) Rebrand of the year (Not)

Enfatico (Probably not a pizza restaurant in East Sheen)

Puzzled hack will say sorry: if necessary

'Twas put to the popular vote on the night. Borrowing from the finest traditions of Zimbabwean democracy, MC Paul Wooding asked for a vote from the floor.

Who was the rudest hack? Charles Arthur, Gary Flood or Giles Coren?

It was Gary. By a nose, we think.

Now here's the thing. At 22.06 last night, Mr Flood rapped out an email to his mailing list as follows. (He must have started writing a few minutes after the award was announced).

Er, apparently I beat Charles Arthur to win 'rudest technology journalist of the year' at the above tonight.

I am a bit confused. I was last a bit 'rude' - aguably, I thought I was doing my job and defending the interests of the readers/users - let's see, when I was the News Editor of Computing - that was in 1999-2000.

I have been freelance since the start of 2001, seven years, and to the best of my knowledge have been nice as pie ever since.

If I'm not then, Jeez, I'm in a bit of trouble on the old self-awareness thing.\

Can anyone - genuine plea - tell me/give me an example of IN 2008 how I have been 'rude,' I'd like to know and if necessary apologise.

But then, as Charles Arthur said on Twitter, pointing out why he wasn't at the 'ceremony,' it's half term and he has better things to think about...

'Puzzled Hack'

Here at The Flackenhacks, we're mindful of the need to promote peace, love and understanding on our fragile planet.

Boys and girls, you know where to send those emails. . .

Award time: The two Steves (of Rainier) & Dan Ilett

Rainier won agency of the year at The Flackenhacks last night. Here's Steve Earl adopting the position alongside Wadds and award presenter (and fabricator) Dan Ilett.

Knackered, but...

. . . you'll find some pictures here on Flickr. (Taken with our special camera that records the date as 15th October, accentuates yellow teeth and makes Mike Butcher look like Shakin' Stevens. Please, feel free to borrow it. Soon.)

Ice creams? Allegedly, you lot ate 120 odd cones. That's what Onur, the nice bloke in the ice cream van, told us. Can't quite believe it, but he had no incentive to lie and used to run a nightclub in Thamesmead. So there you go...

Booze? Mmm. Was it impending recession, or did y'all drink less this year? Last year, believe it or not, you consumed 1.5 bottles of wine each. By the looks of it, less this year.

Sound: there's an inquisition in motion. But we reckon apologies are in order to you the audience (and compere Paul Wooding) for the PA during the first onstage bit.

We think it got better during the awards. But by how much? It was hard to say from our perch on the far left of the venue. Let us know how it was. We'll carry your verdict back to our suppliers...

Oh, and the pies. Where were they? Answer: because of cost pressures, we had to nix them in favour of paella. Good choice? Bad choice? Tell us.

Anyway...........we hope you enjoyed it. As for us, well, The Flackenhacks is signing off after a 22-hour day. AKA seriously bushed.

Tomorrow, we'll put up a post thanking those who need to be thanked (and there are quite a few of you). For now, though, cheerio peeps. And thanks for coming.

Last minute things (including a 3-ton ice cream van)

Righty-ho. We're just getting ready to head off to the venue, where a 3-ton ice cream truck will be arriving at 3pm. Yeah, we're hoping it'll make it down the ramps on to the floor... Fingers crossed...

What's been happening?

• Steve Earl from Rainier PR has just booked a ticket. He's asking that we keep all the horrid PR people away from this year's event. Sorry, mate, it's a bit late for that. 250 of them have their compasses fixed on Shoreditch tonight...
  
  
• eBay bidding

-- Martin Veitch: £200

-- Phil Muncaster: £86.00

-- Gordon Kelly: £86.00 (ongoing)

-- Eric Doyle: £50.00

-- David Meyer: £36.00

-- Mark Dye: £36.00

-- Bryan Glick: £30.99

-- Mark Samuels: £26.00
-- Rob Kerr: £26.00

-- Jeremy Kirk: £26.00

-- Mike Dempsey: £19.99

-- Rupert Goodwins: £19.99

-- Andy McCue: £19.99

-- Tim Phillips: £19.99 (ongoing)

• Dress code

-- We keep getting people asking us this. There isn't a dress code. Come as you are. . .

• Ticket sales

-- They stop at 1pm today. No ticket sales on the door (really -- it will just hold everything up...). If your name ain't on the guest list by 1pm, Brendan Cooper of Fleishman-Hillard will deny you entry.

• Er, that's about it. See you lot at 7.30.  We're off to buy in some more wine. Just in case. . .

The Shortlist: Part 3

9) Loyalty to dead media formats

·         The bosses at Independent News & Media
-- Editor turned MD Simon Kelner thinks the web is like a horrible noisy bar. Really

·         The Financial Times
-- Crap online, brilliant in print. Memo to Mr Barber: Resign and hand the show over to those Alphaville boys. Before it's too late.

·         Incisive Media
-- When he shut down IT Week, MG Graham Harman told Press Gazette: “You have to say to yourself ‘If I was launching into this market now what would I do? What do [readers] want now and how do I service them?’”
Fine advice. So why the hell is Incisive still publishing Computing as a weekly newspaper? Answers on a postcard, please.
 

10) Rebrand of the year

Company in trouble? Call it something else…nobody will ever guess. Product not selling? Give it a new name…that'll boost sales. Do they think we're stupid? No, they don't think it. The research said so.

·         Enfatico
-- Jesus. What's this? A pizza 'n' pasta chain? No, sorry. . . it's the appalingly weak name given to WPP's standalone agency dedicated to Dell. Apparently, Enfatico signifies: "a hyper-responsive, truly integrated marketing agency designed from the ground up to create value for our clients". Or should that be client?

·         CNET Networks becomes. . . CBS Interactive
-- Take one hallowed digital brand and flog it to a TV company whose DNA owes more to Mad Men than dot.com. Granted, we quite like CBS's logo. It has stayed the same for so long that it's become hip again. Back to square one? You betcha.

·         CSC
-- The "leading global consulting, systems integration and outsourcing company" isn't quite the world's leading anything. But the guff it used to explain its rebranding this year was very dire. El Reg's gag about cutting corners is priceless.

11) Bandwagon jump of the year

·         McAfee warns of terrorists in virtual worlds
-- But if they’re virtual, can they terrorize us? Er, no. don’t think so.

·         HP, Sun & Teradata: Wind power madness
-- Why have hardware manufacturers started using pictures of wind farms on their websites? Like, everywhere. . .

·         IBM: Project Big Green
-- Big Blue promises to spend $1bn on a bid to "dramatically increase the efficiency" of the company's software and hardware. But IBM has told no-one how it intends to spend this money. . . And oddly, the company stopped issuing Big Green press releases around the time (late August) that the price of oil started to plummet. Funny that.