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April 14, 2005

The Webby Awards

I just received news that the site I developed (www.ricardoguzman.com) was nominated at the Webby Awards for the Best Personal Site Category. WOW! To think that the Webby Awards is considered as the most prestigious award honoring excellence in Web design, creativity, usability and functionality, being nominated as one of the best among 4000+ entries is unbelievable.The site was developed for Ricardo Guzman (Mexican - American) as his personal online presence as well as to be part of his application to a Film school in the U.S. I started working on the project late August 2004. He was already trying to complete the designs for each page and section for months but wasn't too sure of what he wanted to actually show. At first, it was supposed to be a plain HTML site as he was consulting another designer to do it for him since I was to busy with personal stuff. But looking at the designs, I was insistent on developing the site in Flash as I thought that it would really showcase the designs that he did and would attract more visitors to his site rather than a plain static site. So we met one afternoon to discuss the merits of the site and how he envisioned it to be. Eventually, he agreed to do the site in Flash as I explained that we'd be doing one project that is a website and could also be distributed as a stand- alone multimedia presentation as well. I grabbed the sitemap and started planning how to do everything in Flash; loading of movies, dynamic updates, navigation scripts, etc. The basic script was done in about 3-4 days. The next week, I was pushing Rico to finalize the designs as the structure was ready. We spent about 2-3 months doing the whole thing after work. I wonder if Ricardo is going to keep his promise of sending me to New york if he ever wins? Well, we have to see first if the site really wins! So cast your vote at http://pv.webbyawards.com and vote for the site Pirates, Poets and Passion (www.ricardoguzman.com) under the Personal Category so we could at least win the People's Voice Award.