On Christmas Eve, esctoday.com announced the 2006 esctoday award winners. Sietse Bakker, the man behind the new official EBU websites, eurovision.tv and junioreurvision.tv and former chief editor and managing director of esctoday.com was awarded the year's award for Outstanding contribution to Eurovision
Beingpresented with the awardtoday, Sietse said:
"Winning this award means a lot to me. Even though the work itself gives me a lot of satisfaction and pleasure, the recognition behind this award is a cherry on the cake!…Even though I miss working with esctoday.com, which makes sense after six years, I enjoy the challenges in my new job each and every day. There is a great team working behind the Eurovision Song Contest – people with a lot of experience. Working with the top of the European TV, music and entertainment industry is, in one word, amazing!"
The executive producer of the Eurovision Song Contest and Junior Eurovision Song Contest, Svante Stockselius,also paid tribute to Sietse: "Congratulations to Sietse. A well deserved award and we are happy to have him on "our" side to produce an even better Eurovision Song Contest in the future".
This year, there could be no other winner. Sietse Bakker was the founder of esctoday.com back in 2000. It was the simple school project of a teenager that was done so well that it got out of control. When he handed over the site and left this summer, he handed over the, most popular and most visited independent Eurovision Song Contest website online. At the age of 22, he was rewarded for all of his efforts with the chance to recreate the official Eurovision Song Contest website. eurovision.tv launcheslater thismonth.
Siestse achieved much more than simply creating a popular website. His knowledge, skill, ability to understand the people involved with the Eurovision Song Contest and his passion to help publicise and support the event, whilst maintaining his independence by refusing any donations or payments from any participating parties are tennants which guide the philosophy of this website today.
Never one to fight competition, Sietse has helped to guide and support many other websites over the years, and today esctoday.com boasts a proud list of partner websites that share information and help to provide Eurovision fans with a huge font of information. All of our partner sites share a love of the Eurovision Song Contest and a true passion about it's future.
He helped to create a community of Eurovision Song Contest fans across Europe and beyond, through the forum, the reactions section and by providing the most comprehensive and informative source of news about the Eurovision Song Contest. esctoday.com is grateful for his contribution, both to this site and the Eurovision Community, and almost six months on from his departure from our team, there is simply no-one better that we could find to present our first Outstanding Contribution Award to.
