At the Manchester Blog Awards

• Robin Hamman
• 16 Oct 06, 07:07 PM

As advertised, we're at Urbis right now, waiting for the Manchester Blog Awards to kick off.

Manchizzle, who is standing behind me busily trying to deny that she organised tonight's event - something that seems to happen at most of the blog related events I get to these days - has explained on her blog that the awards kick off properly at 8pm and will be proceeded by music, which is on now, and poetry, which must be coming next.

As things get warmed up I'll return to this post...

20.05: The third perfomance poet, Conor Aylward, is still on but he admitted, at the start of his turn, that he's blogged his entire piece so I guess the overlap is forgiveable. Sadly, my mobile, which I'm using to access the internet, is nearly out of juice.

22.10: We're in the pub, which is where most good blog meets, at least in my experience, tend to end. I managed to record a podcast of the entire award ceremony, which included readings by Geoff who blogs about his travels on the 43 bus and the anonymous blogger behind The Airport Diaries, both of whom were nominated for the blog of the year award which Geoff won.

In the other categories, A Free Man in Preston, who also blogs anonymously, won best personal blog, and best arts and culture blog was won by Yer Mam!. Political blogging, recently the focus of another blogging event held at Urbis and much in the news, had it's own category, with Norman Geras's Normblog winning.

I did some audio interviews with the organiser of tonight's event and some of the winners which, with any luck, will be aired on BBC 5 Live's Pods and Blogs next week.