Winners!!! Grand Pinnacle Award!!!
We WON!!!
Let me repeat that message, because it's a pretty IMPORTANT one for both Marilyn and me: We WON!!!
To be specific, today the festival won the Grand Pinnacle Award at IFEA (in Dallas, Texas). It's only the second time in our history that we've won this coveted award, which makes us the Best Festival in the World for 2011.
Marilyn did most of the work on our entry for this award, which turned out AMAZING, by the way. (Anyone want to see it? I think I can get it in a PDF that would actually email -- even though the original is HUGE and was used for print purposes.)
Back in July I mentioned ( HERE) the hard work that was going into the Grand Pinnacle project. Marilyn and spent the four-day weekend over the Fourth of July working (while the rest of the Staff had it off, mind you) -- and focused mostly on this project. I admit at the time I was a bit bitter that we missed out on the fun of one of our fave holidays (especially during what was a stressful time for us). But it clearly paid off!
Last night I just kept dreaming about the Pinnacle Awards. I was both excited and stressed about it all day long. Marilyn and I went down to the office to gather with everyone as we waited to hear what things had won, with Jeff (and Sue B., our President) texting us from IFEA. It's impossible to describe what that's like (unless you've been with us for this in previous years), but we're a competitive group of people who like winning -- and there's a lot of time just sitting waiting to hear!
The cool news aside from winning the big award is that we also one 16 total Pinnacle Awards -- which included EIGHT Gold Awards! That's one more total than last year -- and DOUBLE the amount of Gold! (woo hoo)
I'll share more later, but this is certainly our BIG NEWS for now! And here's a photo of Jeff (our CEO) and Sue (our President) holding the Grand Pinnacle (the blue pyramid) and Gold awards (the plaques). So wonderful!!!
Jeff and Sue with the 2011 Pinnacle awards!
The blue pyramid Jeff is holding is the Grand Pinnacle award, by the way. It's hard to tell here, but it's REALLY COOL!