Forrester Groundswell Awards Rules

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. The only way to submit an entry is to use the online form. 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 becomes 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, soon after submission. Visitors to the Forrester Groundswell Awards site will be able to rate and review all entries.

4. We'll block 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. This year, there are five categories for applications aimed at consumers, six for business-to-business applications, and two other categories. You can put your submission into any single category, but we may reclassify submissions into the category that is most appropriate, or where we feel it has the best chance to win. The definitions of the categories are as follows (or you could always read Groundswell):

LISTENING. Find out what customers are really saying in order to understand them better.
TALKING. Spread messages about a company.
ENERGIZING. Get a company's best customers to evangelize its products.
SPREADING. Get customers or users within a company to encourage others to adopt a product or service. (B2B only.)
SUPPORTING. Help customers support each other to solve each other’s problems.
EMBRACING. Integrate customers into the way a business works, including using their help to design products and improve processes.
MANAGING. Empower employees and managers within an organization.
SOCIAL IMPACT. Improve society with non-commercial applications.

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

9. All winners will be featured on the Groundswell blog. Winners in the Consumer, Managing, and Social Impact categories will receive their awards at the Forrester Consumer Forum in Chicago. Business-to-business winners will be announced in an online teleconference.

10. There is still no rule 10.

We look forward to seeing your entries. If you have questions these rules don’t answer, email groundswellawards@forrester.com.