- Eleftheria Parpis

NEW YORK The International Andy Awards is crowdsourcing its jury selection, said show co-chairs Ty Montague and Michael Lebowitz.
 
Beginning today at electthejury.com, members of the global ad community can vote for and nominate potential jurors for the 2010 International Andy Awards.
 
"Our hope and our goal here is to bring in people with a greater diversity of both discipline and cultural background," said Montague, co-president and CCO of JWT North America "[And in doing so] that we get a more accurate, fair snapshot of what has been done in the past year."
 
Big Spaceship CEO and founder Lebowitz added, "The composition of the jury is as important, or maybe more important, than the individuals on that list."
 
The site features a selection of more than 120 potential jurors and also allows visitors to nominate others who are not already listed for the final jury of 25. Deadline for participation is Nov. 15. "We believe in the wisdom of crowds," said Montague. "Hopefully, we will turn people up that we hadn't thought of as potential jury members."
 
Montague recruited Lebowitz as co-chairman last month, marking the first time the awards chairmanship is being shared. Montague said he initiated the partnership in order to better represent digital work. "It was an important signal to send to the people in the digital/interactive realm that their voice will be heard," he said.
 
The co-chairs said they are currently evaluating the competition categories and so far have decided to eliminate the "viral" category. "Viral is a goal," said Lebowitz. "Our perspective is that it was a category that was mostly online film and should be judged as such," added Montague.
 
A new category is being introduced that will honor agency innovation in non-client-driven work. "More and more, it's incredibly important that agencies make things and that we try things and do research and development in both a traditional and non-traditional sense," said Lebowitz. "It doesn't need to be something salable to a consumer. It could be, but [it's for] things that agencies make to learn stuff."
 
The 2010 show will take place April 7 in New York.