Standing Cloud to Sponsor First Annual Blue Drop Awards

New Community-driven Awards to Recognize Drupal Achievements

February 24, 2012 – Boulder, CO - Standing Cloud, a leading provider of cloud application management solutions, has joined veteran Drupal community members Volacci, Lingotek and Build a Module in launching the first annual Blue Drop Awards, designed to spotlight the best-of-the-best in current Drupal website development and design.

Conceived in 2012, the Blue Drop Awards is a community-nominated, community-voted event that aims to recognize and celebrate the excellent individuals, companies and projects that have pushed the limits and maximized the capabilities of Drupal, the open source content management system. Representing more than 630,000 contributors and developers, Drupal is the largest, most active open-source technology community in the world.

The Blue Drop Awards were created to promote Drupal to the greater technology community and to recognize innovative, next-generation websites and the companies that built them. With thousands of sites leveraging Drupal, the new awards program is designed to be the first democratic, voter-driven recognition program for Drupal.

“We are excited to bring this to the Drupal Community. There is a great deal of phenomenal development work that is undertaken by our members every year and we have come together to create this opportunity to specifically recognize those accomplishments,” said Ben Finklea, CEO of Volacci, the Drupal-focused SEO and marketing firm that is spearheading the inaugural effort.

"At Standing Cloud, we've made no secret of our affection for and commitment to Drupal," said Therese Wells, Director of Marketing for Standing Cloud. "We've worked hard to build a cloud application management platform that makes it fast, simple and hassle-free to deploy and manage optimized Drupal sites on the cloud of your choice. We excited now to join forces with other leaders in the Drupal community to give something back, and to recognize all the amazing work that is being done."

The Call for Nominations for the First Annual Blue Drop Awards is now open, running through March 5, 2012. Nominations can be made online at http://www.bluedropawards.org in the following categories:

Best Enterprise Website Built With Drupal

Best Business Website Built With Drupal

Best Marketplace Website Built With Drupal

Best Social Website Built With Drupal

Best Non-Profit/Education Website Built With Drupal

Best Media Website Built With Drupal

Best Personal Website Built With Drupal

Best Interesting Website Built With Drupal

Drupal Website of the Year (The website with the highest overall votes will be named The Drupal Website of the Year.)

Finalists will be selected by the Blue Drop Awards Nominating Committee based on Drupal Innovation, Use of Drupal Best Practices, Content, Structure & Navigation, Visual Design, Functionality and Overall Experience. Award winners will be selected by vote by the Drupal community. Open community voting to identify winners in each category will kick-off on March 15, and will continue on-site at DrupalCon Denver, March 19-23rd. The winning projects, which will represent the best-of-the-best in the world of Drupal, will be announced on March 27 and highlighted throughout the year on the Blue Drop Awards Showcase website.

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