Five emails turned up on Friday night, all from the same address, eleven minutes apart. My first thought was that something had broken.
There are usually two explanations for a burst of email like that. Either myself or Emily has been on Amazon sorting Christmas and birthday presents, which is a perfectly acceptable thing to be doing in August. Or somebody's Power BI reports have failed to refresh and I am about to have a long evening.
It was neither. They were from Alec Jones-Hall at the Great British Business & Community Awards, and between them they carried five Bronze Winner awards. More than 2,770 nominations went in across the awards this year.
Two of them are mine. Three belong to a team.
The two I have to answer for
Networker of the Year, and Business Leader of the Year.
If you have met me, you will already know why the first one is funny. I am a nerdy, AuDHD, technically minded man who will happily talk your ear off about the things he loves and then need a dark room and a long silence afterwards. I am not a social creature by default. I have become one slowly, and only after finding the people who were worth being social with.
Twelve months ago I had never run a user group. Since then I have helped run our first, then a regular monthly one, then a summit, and I have spoken in five different countries this year, which is genuinely mental to write down. So: from nerdy loner to nerdy social butterfly, with a continued and non-negotiable need for recharging.
Business Leader of the Year is the same story with a different label. I was not leading anything twelve months ago. Now I co-run a whole community, and the community is the part I would actually put my name to.
The three that matter more
Which is convenient, because the other three awards went to East of England Tech Community: Innovator of the Year, Outstanding Contribution to the Community, and Charity of the Year.
That is the not for profit behind NPPUG, the group that ran EoEPPS last year, and the team putting on the East of England Summit next year. Three awards to my two, and 614 nominations across those three categories against 238 across mine.
None of it is anyone's job. It is volunteers giving up evenings and weekends, and a decision made early on that the conference day should be free so nobody gets priced out of learning something. Last year that meant 112 people in the room across 31 sessions, chosen from 174 submissions by 88 speakers, with an average session rating of 4.93 out of 5.
We are also, separately, finalists at the UK IT Industry Awards 2026 in Charity (Third Sector) Project of the Year, which is a sentence I still do not entirely believe.
What happens next
All five go to final judging on 6 September, and Silver and Gold get announced at the national ceremony on 25 September at the Crowne Plaza in Marlow. I have no idea which way any of it lands, and no strategy for it whatsoever.
Thank you to whoever put our names forward. I would genuinely like to know who you are.
If you want to see what the fuss is about, NPPUG runs monthly and is free, and the East of England Summit returns on 30 April and 1 May 2027 in Norwich, with a free conference day. Come and say hello. I will be the one who needs a lie down afterwards.