by Josh Bernoff

One year ago, we began asking for entries for the Forrester Groundswell Awards, which recognize excellence in accomplishing business goals with social applications. We received 78 fascinating submissions and recognized the winners at the Forrester Consumer Forum in Chicago. The winners were some truly amazing applications.

This worked so well that we're doing it again. The number of people creating corporate social applications has increased, so we expect more entries. And we'll be including the community in the process, in ways we'll describe soon.

As before, the 2008 Forrester Groundswell Awards will go to people and companies who have created the most innovative and effective uses of Groundswell technologies like blogs, wikis, social networks, and communities. Nominations are due by September 9, 2008. Winners will get a free ticket to Forrester's Consumer Forum in Dallas on October 28 and 29, where they will be recognized for excellence. They'll also get to show our awards badge on their Web site.

Here are this year's rules:

1. Entries should represent excellent and effective use of social technologies to advance an organizational or corporate goal.

2. You can submit your entries using an online form we'll publicize right here in August. Entries will include a short description, a graphic representing the entry, and a link. The link should take us to a place on the Web where we can see your entry, including your description of what makes it an effective use of social applications.

3. The content of all entries will be considered on the record and can be quoted in Forrester research and any other Forrester materials. All entry submissions will be posted on the Forrester Groundswell Awards site, as soon as possible after submission. This public posting is new. We are hoping to provide a method so that visitors can rate and review the entries. (We'll still be picking the winners, though, based on business effectiveness rather than popularity.)

4. We'll disqualify entries that we think are inappropriate, including those with obscenity or copyright violations.

5. Agencies and vendors can submit applications created by their clients, but are responsible for obtaining the necessary permissions to submit those entries.

6. We'll judge the winners based on proof of accomplishing business or organizational goals, not based on what looks the best or uses the best technology. Innovation and audacity are good, too.

7. There are seven categories: LISTENING, TALKING, ENERGIZING, SUPPORTING, EMBRACING, MANAGING, and SOCIAL IMPACT. Read Groundswell to see what these mean. (A smart entrant would read Groundswell anyway to see how we think!) MANAGING is for internal employee social applications. SOCIAL IMPACT is for pro-social non-commercial applications. You can submit an application in one category only so choose wisely.

8. We will award at most one winner in each category, plus finalists if we feel like it. If there are no worthy entries in a category, we won't give an award in that category.

9. Winners will be featured on this blog and will receive their awards at the Forrester Consumer Forum in Dallas.

10. There is no rule 10.

Watch this space for more details. We look forward to seeing your entries.

If you have questions these rules don't answer, contact Tracy Sullivan (tsullivan [at] forrester dotcom).