We’re rolling out the judges so that the community can get to know them better.

• JV Rufino, Editor-in-Chief of Inquirer.net
• Malou Mangahas, Editor-in-Chief of GMANews.tv & Co-host of TV Show Palaban
• Bryan Veloso - Creative Director at Facebook, Developer at Automattic, Award-winning Blogger & Int’lly known Designer
• Connie Veneracion - Filipina Problogger & Columnist for Manila Standard Today
• Manuel L. Quezon III - Political Pundit & Editorial Columnist of Inquirer Newspaper
• Annalyn Jusay - Contributor & Blog Columnist for Manila Bulletin
• Melissa Petri - Int’l Travel Blogger & Network Blogger for b5media, Know More Media & Creative-Weblogging
• Abraham “Yuga” Olandres - Netrepreneur, Tech Evangelist & Blogging Advocate
• Gail Dela Cruz-Villanueva - Netrepreneur & Award-winning WP theme designer
• Jayvee Fernandez - Problogger, Contributing Editor for Mobile Philippines & Channel Editor for b5media Blog Network
• Derek Punzalan - CSS & WP Theme Guru
• Dean Alfar - Multi-Awardee Writer, Palanca Awards
• Miguel Paraz - Pioneer in the Philippine ISP Industry
• Jolo Santos - CSS Ninja, UI Architect & developer for Eskwela & Xackup
• Adel Gabot - Group Editor for Hinge-Inquirer Publications, former broadcaster and founder of DWKX-FM, Palanca Award Winner

As promised, here’s the first batch of nominees for the Special Awards. The February 28 deadline is nearing, so make the most out of the next two days nominating your favorite blogs!

The nominee list for the Main Categories has been updated as of 26 February 2007, 10:46AM. Please standby for the Special Awards nominee list, we’ll be posting it sometime today.

Keep those entries coming! Don’t be shy, and it’s ok to nominate your own blog

We have finalized the date of the Philippine Blog Awards to a comfortable March 31 2007. Please mark your calendars for this event. From the meetings we had over the weekend, we have had several options for the event venue. In the next few days we will be doing oculars to see if these places can actually accommodate the 1,000,000 expected guests

Since this is a community-organized event we are also open to suggestions from the blogging community for potential venues for the awards. Things to take into consideration would be the presence of a stage as well as a space to fit more than 100 guests. If you have a great idea for a venue, we would appreciate your help by emailing Gail (kutitots at gmail) or myself (jayvster at gmail) or leave a comment here.

Wow! We’re pleasantly surprised that a lot of people volunteered to help out at the event. Thank you guys

But the thing is, not everyone is available on Friday night. For others, Saturday is much more convenient. So we decided that the volunteers’ meeting will be held in two sessions: one on Friday night, and another on Saturday. Here’s the revised info then:

Friday meeting:
WHAT: Awards Night organizing committee meeting / Friday night out!
WHERE: Starbucks Coffee in Metro Walk, Ortigas
WHEN: Friday, 23 February 2007, 6PM onwards

Saturday meeting:
WHAT: Awards Night organizing committee meeting / Saturday night out!
WHERE: Starbucks Coffee in Metro Walk, Ortigas
WHEN: Saturday, 24 February 2007, 3PM onwards

Although it seems that most of the discussions will be held online (we have a googlegroup), we would really like the volunteers to meet face-to-face. It really contributes a lot to team work when you’ve already met one another in real life.

So, can you make it? Would you like to volunteer? Just leave a comment here or email me at kutitots{at}gmail{dot}com.