What are the Pegasus Awards?

From the OVFF Pegasus Awards page: "The Pegasus Awards were founded to recognize and honor excellence in filking. These awards are given annually at the Ohio Valley Filk Fest (or OVFF). Anyone with an interest in filk can nominate songs or individuals for the awards, and anyone can vote. You do not need to be a member of the convention to be involved in the nomination and voting process."

Currently awards are given in six categories: Best Song, Best Classic Filk Song, Best Performer, Best Writer/Composer and two topical categories that vary from year to year. "Some examples of past categories include: Best Love Song, Best Literature Song, Best Techie Song, Best Sing Along, Best Battle Song, Best Song that Tells a Story, etc."

Early in the year, a "brainstorming poll" is held online, where filkers are invited to send in suggestions for various category nominations, and these are posted on the Brainstorming Poll Results page. Filkers are then asked to send in actual nominations during the late spring and summer, and then the Finalist Ballot is distributed in the early fall. The entire process is administered by the OVFF convention committee.

The awards are presented at the Saturday night banquet at OVFF.

For more information, please see the Pegasus Awards page.

Comments

[Erica Neely]

The brainstorming polls also have a physical form; they go to whatever cons we manage to get to and can also be mailed in. Brainstorming generally closes around FKO (with occasional slippage - this year I decided to close after Dorsai Thing, since one of the categories was best Dorsai song); Nominating ballots are released at Marcon.

The brainstorming poll exists so that people aren't faced with a blank ballot when they are asked to nominate; this means we get more nominations and more varied nominations! For the brainstorming poll, a single brainstorm is sufficient to be included; the nominating ballot is where songs/people need to collect enough votes to make it to the final ballot.

The final ballot closes online (and mail-in) slightly before OVFF; the at-con version closes at midnight Saturday of OVFF (noting here that midnight is the first point of the day - so that means you have all day Friday and none of Saturday to vote. *Grin*)

Samples of the nominated songs are available online so that people can make informed decisions; we also hold the Pegasus concert at OVFF for that reason. (That way people don't just vote for X because it's the only song they've heard.)

Lastly, nominees in the Best Classic Filk Song category must be at least 10 years old.

And that's probably way, way more information than you wanted.