CoderDojo co-founder becomes youngest ever Spider Award winner
The youngest ever eircom Spider Award winner was announced last night at the annual internet award ceremony at the National Convention Centre, Dublin.
James Whelton, 20, was awarded the Internet Hero Award just two years after winning a Junior Spider Award.
The webpreneur and developer was presented with the award for his contribution to digital innovation through co-founding CoderDojo.
The movement which started in Cork and which has gone global, provides free and open learning to young people in programming technology.
James won the 2010 Best Web Design Award at the eircom Junior Spiders for his Leaving Cert Countdown Timer before setting up a computer club in his school and then teaming up with angel investor and XING co-founder Bill Liao to co-create CoderDojo.
Bank of Ireland scooped three eircom Spider awards including best overall campaign (for the 'Dragon’s Den' campaign) and Best Financial Services award.
They also won the eircom Spider Grand Prix Award for the 'All About Business – Dragon’s Den' campaign.
A total of 17 awards, for categories such as business to social media, sports and digital start-up were awarded to Ireland’s most innovative websites.
Among the award winners were Journal.ie for its Mobile App, Trazoo.ie won the Travel, Tourism & Hospitality Award, Miinto.ie won the Retail Excellence award and The National Lottery (m.lottery.ie) won the best User Experience award
The winner of the inaugural eircom Spider Business’ Choice Award, as voted by the public, was MenuPages.ie
The eircom Spider Digital Start Up Award went to Cleverbug.com, the website which personalises, prints and delivers birthday cards using Facebook photos.
Carolan Lennon, chief commercial officer, eircom and chair of the Spider Awards Judging Panel said: “Congratulations to all the winners in what was a hugely successful year for the awards.
“This year the introduction of the eircom Spider Business’ Choice Award and the Digital Start Up Award was a key part of our continued development and our desire to recognize the role of SMEs to the digital economy.
“The opportunity to showcase the role of SMEs to the digital economy is more important than ever and we are delighted to be a playing a part in this.
“The overall winners are truly deserving and epitomise the aim of the awards- which is to reward digital excellence.
“We are very optimistic about what the future holds for online innovation.
“With the upcoming eircom Junior Spider Awards we aim to foster talent so that one day we’ll again be rewarding an eircom Spider Internet Hero Award to a former Junior Spider Award winner.”
