International Librarian of MysteryBizgirl's take on the evening is pretty much how it went down. I was at work, Natalie's gmail pinged me, I checked, and was pretty much instantly left in no doubt as to the fact I'd won the thing. A phone-call to Rachel - the hired-gun who'd come in to help organise the event - confirmed it for me. She showed no signs, from what I could tell, of being overly surprised that I turned out to be who I was. After taking a mere second to digest the information, she got on with the job, and booked me on the next plane to Auckland so I could get to the awards before the presentation.

It was pretty much all go from that point. I spent a frantic twenty minutes trying to get hold of my wife to let her know what was going on, to no avail. For only perhaps the second time in my life, I cursed our mutual dislike of mobile phones. The time came when I had to make the call as to whether I was staying or going, and I thought, well, how often does this sort of madness come along, so I left a message at reception to pass onto my wife when she arrived to pick me, jumped in a taxi and went to the airport.

An hour later I was in Auckland, and caught another cab to the event, where Rachel - who was helping Netguide out with the awards and associated media - met me and got me to take a quick squizz at the media release the were preparing. Prefabricated quotes are a scary thing...

"Er, do you think I could maintain some level of anonymity?"
"No."
"Um, yes, suspected as much. Ah, well, ummmm, how about this, can I change 'It's been a fun ride while it lasted' to read 'It's been an interesting exercise in creativity?"
"Yes."

A small victory, at least. I was given a glass of champagne (finally, a cold drink), and was shown to a seat in the auditorium where I'd missed the best part of the evening (inside fireworks!) and the worst (Ralph Norris's speech), catching up with things as they ceremony moved into the actual awards presentation of the evening. I was up third-to-last (which makes it, what, equivalent to Best Actor?), so had some time to work on drying my palms as best as possible for when I needed to shake Ralph Norris's hand. The announcement came, I went up on stage, retrieved the plaque, and descended back to the floor to a mixture of applause and laughter.

A memorable moment, for sure.

Anyway, it was the post-awards carry-on that was interesting. When Rachel caught up with me again, she led me away to be introduced to a couple of people high up in the ACP chain - the people behind the Netguide magazine. We chatted about the blog for a bit, a chat that was to become the archetype for a conversation that I've had numerous times since. Why? Why indeed.

I also managed to catch up with Damian Christie, who I had organised to accept the award on Natalie's behalf. This was when I got to thinking about the media. Now, if Damian had had to get up to accept the award, would there have been a 'sorry, Ms. Biz is unable to be here to accept the award' announcement from the MC Jaquie Brown, or would he have been the butt of the joke? There were no speeches, so no chance for DC to set things right. I mean, other than the goofy grin on my face, how did anyone know I wasn't just Natalie's mate accepting the award on her behalf?

Anyway, I wasn't staring a gift-horse in the mouth. If ACP and their hired PR guns wanted to use me as a pawn to get a bit of air-time for the Netguide Awards, I was hardly going to stand in their way. Turns out it got some coverage on TV3 later that night, and, this was the real kicker, it made the front page Wellington's Dominion Post the next day (online text is a much shorter version of the print edition, and doesn't contain my anonymous photo of me which you can see at the top of this page, or the sexy librarian image that the Dom wrongly jumped to the conclusion of assuming was 'Natalie'). There was also a decent story in the other big daily - the Auckland Herald, written by Alan Perrott before Friday, and which is thus doesn't mention me by name. (Sorry Alan, I didn't see Friday unfolding quite like it did).

Man, it must have been a slow day at the Dom. The other front-page stories were the enrolment of a fifth set of twins at St Teresa's primary school, a 59 year-old grandma expecting twins (I expect they'll go to St Teresa's), and the non-revelatory headline story that Telecom and Vodafone are running a mobile phone duopoly in NZ, and charging far higher than the average OECD rates.

Good company then. And they managed to mangle my one quote...

It's been fun exercising creativity, but I have to say it's nice to be recognised.

"It's been fun exercising creativity..."? What sort of statement is that? And they described me as...

...a man in a suit...

Honestly. I hardly ever wear a suit, and I wasn't wearing one that night.

(Update: I've been informed that the article was pretty much lifted from NZPA, so the blame for any errors lies with them, not the Dom. Not that the mistakes are biggies, but, really, a suit...)

It was all pretty obvious in hindsight - the Personal Blog category was the one award that really had a bit of a story to it, whether or not it was Natalie winning the award, or me. Trademe winning the Site of the Year award is all fine and dandy, but it's not really going to make a splash beyond the IT pages. Ms Biz was a story in the making, and my introduction to the plot just just added an even better twist.

I wonder now, if Rachel, the person behind getting me to the awards was actually aware before she rang me or not. She seemed a pretty sharp lady - I wouldn't have been surprised.

So, yes, an interesting blip in the development of Ms. Biz, who has been my faithful sidekick for nearly six years now. Her first foray into the world of the web came as the manager of my band Debris, and there's still some quotes lurking about online from an interview she did with an American newspaper - the New Haven Advocate - on the development of mp3 back when mp3 was a new thing back in 1999. She's been doing the news for noizyland.com pretty much from the word go, and has had various other jobs thrust at her over the years, most of which she's handled with aplomb.

Where to now for Ms. Biz? Only she can say...
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