Two Groups Honor Speed Matters Website for Excellence

CWA's Speed Matters website, a critical part of the union's campaign to push for affordable high-speed internet access nationwide, has been honored by two organizations with awards for its content, design and usefulness.  The site was built with funds from CWA's Speed Matters Strategic Industry Fund.

"We are proud to be recognized for our campaign and for the exceptional work of our webmasters to bring it to life online," CWA President Larry Cohen said.

The American Association of Political Consultants, in its annual Pollie Awards, gave a Silver Medal to the Speed Matters site for "Best Use of Search Engine Marketing" and awarded it an honorable mention for "Best Landing Page."

"The AAPC is the world's largest organization of political and public policy professionals and the Pollie Awards are the organization's signature annual event," the AAPC says in materials about the contest. "Each year the prestigious Pollie Awards recognize the best in political and public affairs communications in 175 different categories."

The Institute for Policy, Democracy & the Internet named the Speed Matters site as a finalist in its Golden Dot Awards for "Best Website – Issue Advocacy Campaign."

"This year was a great success for the Golden Dot Awards as we democratized both the nominating and voting process, bringing it to the public via the Internet," the IPDI said. "There were over 100 nominations and saw 4,000 votes in only a 5 business day-long time period."

CWA's site did extremely well in the contest against tough competition: The winner in the issue advocacy category was www.TeamDarfur.org, the website of a coalition of athletes committed to raising awareness about the Darfur crisis and bringing an end to it.

The Speed Matters website is at www.speedmatters.org. Its features include a speed test to determine your own internet connection speed and a state-by-state report on average speeds nationwide.