Shareware Industry Awards

The Shareware Industry Awards are a series of awards issued annually at the Software Industry Conference.

The Shareware Industry Awards were conceived as a way to honor and acknowledge some of the best software available that uses the shareware marketing model.

The Shareware Industry Awards were the idea of Michael E. Callahan, aka Dr. File Finder, in 1991. Michael had the awards logo created by Michael Coman, who was then the art director for Shareware Magazine. The first Shareware Industry Awards were held in 1992 during the second Summer Shareware Seminar.

At that time the awards were voted on primarily by the librarians of the big disk vendors. These people looked at lots of shareware and were quite knowledgeable. For those first awards in 1992 there were eight (8) categories and thirteen (13) voters. In the years that followed the categories were expanded as were the number of voters.

As the days of the disk vendors ended, however, the number of qualified voters began to dwindle. So, in 1999, Mr. Callahan opened up the voting to shareware authors, journalists, reviewers, and the representatives of companies that develop, package, sell, or distribute shareware products.

Since that time the Shareware Industry Awards have continued to grow and expand. Currently there are several thousand voters in 92 countries, all 50 states, and every province of Canada.

The People's Choice Awards were also created by Mr. Callahan in 1994 and are coordinated by him. These awards are voted on by the general public. Voting takes place on software author Web sites, and is hosted by sites like Download.Com, PC World, Simtel, and Tucows.

The Shareware Industry Awards and People's Choice Awards have continued to grow with expanded categories and voter participation. In 2007 a total of 38 awards were bestowed to software companies both large and small.

Origin of the Shareware Industry Award

The Software Industry Conference website notes: "The Shareware Industry Awards were created by Michael E. Callahan aka Dr. File Finder at the time of the first shareware conference - as a means to focus attention on the shareware industry. Michael felt that while the conference would help shareware authors in general, an awards ceremony "like the Academy Awards" would benefit the shareware industry as a whole."

References

http://www.sic.org/history.asphttp://www.siavoting.com/index.phphttp://www.siavoting.com/history.php