Frequently Asked Questions
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 they 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. If you are uploading a screenshot or other image with your entry, please be sure that the image is a .GIF, .JPG, or .PNG file. Other file formats will cause the image to break on the Forrester Groundswell Awards site.
8. There are four divisions this year. Choose your division based on the main participants in your application.
Business to Consumer North America: Applications aimed at consumers in the US or Canada. Also includes global applications where the target consumers include North Americans.
Business to Consumer International: Applications aimed at consumers in geographies outside North America.
Business to Business: Applications aimed at business customers.
Management: Applications aimed at employees of a company.
9. Choose a category based on the objectives the applications accomplish (see the book Groundswell for more on these objectives). The objectives for B2B and B2C categories are:
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 category only).
Supporting: Help customers support one another to solve one another’s problems.
Embracing: Integrate customers into the way a business works, including using their help to design products and improve processes.
Social Impact: Improve society with non-commercial applications.
Mobile Application: Use mobile outreach to customers to accomplish business goals (B2C categories only).
The objectives for Management applications are:
Employee Social Application: Help employees find and connect with one another.
Collaboration System: Help employees work together on projects.
Innovation System: Surface and develop new ideas.
10. The entry deadline is August 27, 2010.
11. We may reclassify entries into different divisions or categories. When we move an entry into a different category or division, we do so based on the definitions given above. In all cases where we move entries, we move them into the category in which they are most likely to win.
12. 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.
13. All winners will be featured on the Groundswell blog. Winners will be announced at these Forrester Events:
Management: Forrester's Consumer Forum in Chicago, October 28-29.
B2C North America: Forrester’s Consumer Forum, October 28-29, 2010, Chicago
B2C International: Forrester Marketing and Strategy Forum EMEA, November 18-19, London
B2B: Presented online on October 28, 2010.
We look forward to seeing your entries. If you have questions these rules don’t answer, email groundswellawards@forrester.com.
