The Blogisattva Panelists

I want to thank everyone who has volunteered both their time and ideas to this years Blogisattva awards. As you know it can be difficult to find people who are familiar with the Buddhist blog-o-sphere, who are knowledgeable about Buddhism and are also willing to give some of their spare time to be a part of this panel. While we are still in the final stages of rounding out our panel, I wanted to take this opportunity to announce to the community the good folks who have so graciously offered up their time and expertise to be a part of this years Blogisattvas panel.

Without further ado, in alphabetical order:
(The bio's are borrowed from each of the panelists websites.)

Rev. Danny Fisher - Rev. Danny Fisher, M.Div., D.B.S. (Cand.), is a professor and Coordinator of the Buddhist Chaplaincy Program at University of the West in Rosemead, CA.  He was ordained as a lay Buddhist minister by the Buddhist Sangha Council of Southern California in 2008.  In addition, he is certified as a mindfulness meditation instructor by Naropa University in association with Shambhala International.

J. Andy Lambert- Andy is a practitioner from the humid lowlands of the Texas Gulf Coast. He struggles to maintain a practice, overcome the five hindrances, and walk the eightfold path. Andy has taken refuge and received the precepts in the Chinese Mahayana tradition and is a Zen practitioner. Andy co-writes Bayou Buddhists on the Houston Belief portal of the Houston Chronicle.

Barbara Hoetsu O'Brien - Barbara is a journalist and student of Zen Buddhism currently living in the greater New York City area. She began formal study with John Daido Loori in the late 1980s, and she currently is a student of Soto teacher Susan Jion Postal. Through these years Barbara has been actively engaged in meeting Buddhists from other traditions and learning about the many forms of Buddhism. She now blogs at the popular about.com site and has her own personal blog,The Mahablog.

Philip Ryan-  Philip has worked for Tricycle: The Buddhist Review on and off (mostly off) since 1996. He is an inconstant and unreliable sitter, mainly in the Zen Buddhist tradition. Asked by Tricycle ’s founder Helen Tworkov in his job interview why he wanted to work at a Buddhist magazine, he cannily replied, “I don’t know.” When he is not working on tricycle.com, he eats and goes to sleep.

We heartily thank these fine folks for generously giving both their time and expertise to these awards!

Thanks and remember to nominate your favorite blogger!

To answer a few questions....

...the Blogisattva Awards are, and were, not intended to become a popularity contest. As the founder of the Blogisattvas himself said, they are intended to shed light on bloggers who's ability to write insightful articles impact the buddho-blogosphere.

Our panel, which is still coming together, is very diverse-- that was our intention when reviving the Blogisattvas.

The process, for how this will all work is this, for those that are unsure. It is different than how the original Blogisattva's were awarded, and since we are an all volunteer panel, this seemed to be the best and most fair way to get it done.

Nominations will be taken until November 1st. Upon receiving the nominations, the panel will convene and pick 5 deserving bloggers from each category and will have a run-off vote. This run-off vote will be done by the public, the blogosphere. Our nomination process uses forms built through Excel spreadsheets, which is how the end voting will be put together as well. We believe this is the way to keep things fair and square.

Our intention has always been for this to be something fun. There is no conspiracy, there is no corporate take-over. I can barely put food on my table and pay the bills, no corporation involved here folks. This is supposed to be fun, and that's how it'll stay with us.

I've enjoyed being part of the process and I hope you are exposed to some new and refreshing blogs come the end of the year.

Nominations Are Open!

Feel free to use the Submit Nomination tab to nominate your favorite bloggers /blogs. The nominations are open for the time frame of Dec 1, 2009 to this Nov 1, 2010; so there is still plenty of blogging to do before the finalists are announced. We have already had quite a few entries!

We will finish up all the details soon and they will be made available up on the guidelines tab.

We still need a couple of folks to finish filling out the rest of the panel, so if you are interested please contact us at this email address.  If you have any questions, comments or suggestions please feel free to make them here in the comment section or send us an email. (edit: The panel has been filled, thanks for everyone's interest!)

One last item, if you would like to have a logo for people to click on your blog so they can nominate you, or another blogger, you can use the following graphic and point it to http://www.blogisattva.org/p/submit-nomination.html.

Thanks and good luck!

Blogisattva is making a comeback!

With Tom's blessing, he is giving a small number of us access to this blog in order to revive the Blogisattva Awards.

A note will be posted within the next couple days as we pull some things together and then start the nomination process.

Thank you Tom for allowing us to help and giving us the opportunity to revive the Blogisattva's!!

Kyle has taken it upon himself to get the BA's a domain, to make it easier for people to find us. The new url is http://www.blogisattva.org and it of course, directs folks to this blog. Please update links if you are pointing any toward the BA's!