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They were there to pay homage to the best sites on the Web. They were there to see and be seen. They were there to have fun. And they were expected to dress the part.
Around 2,000 people turned out at San Francisco's Palace of Fine Arts Theater Friday night for the 1998 Webby Awards, a celebration of digital creativity where the invitees were urged to dress "future swank."
Introduced onstage as the man who epitomizes future swank, San Francisco mayor Willie Brown told a cheering crowd that the event proved his city was ground zero for the millenium.
"You can go to New York to for the Tonys and you can go to LA to catch the Oscars, but the Webbys are right here in the digital capital of the world, San Francisco!" Brown bellowed.
As a testament to the populist spirit of the Web, winners ranged from deep-pocket sites like CBS SportsLine and CNN/Time All Politics to such shoestring, individualistic operations as Bert is Evil! and Entropy8.
The Webby Awards appeared last year with the launch of The Web Magazine, a startup of PC World Communiations, who also publishes PC World. But by year two of the Webbys, The Web Magazine is gone while the award bearing its name lives on.
Steve Fox, former editor in chief of The Web Magazine said that his presence at the fete "had a bittersweet element to it." While he and his former staff did a lot of the background work for the event, such as selecting nominees, they are now "here in the usual capacity as guests, as opposed to sponsors or working press."
"We're actually here to enjoy it," Fox said. Difficult as that might have been for a gang of people fresh out of a job.
Still, festivity prevailed as 1940s-era press photographers lugged their cumbersome cameras, glamour girls with mile-high beehives slinked around in their swankiest future swank and avante-garde human art was on hand for sheer bewilderment.
Among the 95 judges selecting from about 95 sites were Chicago Bulls superstar Dennis Rodman, former California governor Jerry Brown, Dilbert creator Scott Adams, Jane magazine editor Jane Pratt, film director Kevin Smith (Chasing Amy, Clerks), and musician Thomas Dolby Robertson. If any of these worthies were in attendance, however, they kept a low profile.
The master of ceremonies was software manager-turned-comedian Chris McGuire, who held winners to acceptance speeches of "five words or a 17-syllable haiku."
An example of McGuire's geekish humor was evident when he compared male and female computer sex styles: Women, he imagined, "probably press a series of very complicated keys. CTRL SHIFT DOWN, UP INSERT BACKSPACE HOME. HOME. HOME .HOME .HOME .HOME. Guys just hit F1 ESCAPE and they're outta there."
One Webby winner thanked Bill Gates "for not buying us." David Talbot, editor of Salon, attributed his site's success to the notion that "words still matter." Salon's executive editor, Gary Kamiya, added that "good magazine journalism works on the Web as well as it does in print, even better as it's more timely."
The Winners:
ARTS: Entropy8
COMMUNITY: The WELL
EDUCATION: StarChild
FILM: The Internet Movie Database
GAMES: BeZerk
HEALTH: Mayo Health Clinic Oasis
HOME: BabyCenter
LIVING: gURL
MONEY/BUSINESS: The Vanguard Group
MUSIC: Experience Music Project
NEWS: News.com
POLITICS/LAW: CNN/Time AllPolitics
PRINT/ZINES: Salon
RADIO: AudioNet
SCIENCE: Exploratorium: ExploraNet
SPORTS: CBS SportsLine
TRAVEL: CitySearch: New York City
TV: PBS Online
WEIRD: Bert is Evil!
