Crunchies: Here’s The Winners’ Award
Michael Arrington
52 comments »
Last night we gave an overview of our thought process for coming up with the award that will be given to each category winner for the Crunchies event on Friday night in San Francisco.
The award itself, created by Clockwork Apple, is 14 inches tall and created in a very hard, very heavy cast plastic. The inspiration comes from 2001: A Space Odyssey. In the movie a tribe of prehistoric ape-men interact with a black monolith that appears near them. The monolith inspires one of them to create the first use of technology - a bone used as a tool and a weapon. The video clip of the segment is in our original post on the award.
We are honoring startups that have innovated in technology; thus, we feel the award is symbolic culturally and appropriate. The additional flourishes, such as the baseball cap and jersey, were the idea of the artist to modernize the setting. And the ape is beating on old technology with his bone - a symbol of the disruptive nature of the technology world, where young startups often feast on their older, slower siblings.
One of these awards will be given to the winner of each of the twenty categories for the Crunchies (21 categories actually, we have an additional surprise award). The winners’ logos will be added to the award.
Very last tickets just became available
We are down to the last few available seats for the awards. We held a few hundred in reserve for sponsors, nominees and press. The ones not taken (about 60) have been put into the general queue and can be purchased here. The event starts at 7:30 and should end by 9. We’ll then have a party until about midnight. Everything is taking place at the Herbst Theater in San Francisco.
Thank you to the sponsors of the 2007 Crunchies who are underwriting the event and making it possible to recognize outstanding contributions in our industry. Award Benefactors: Adobe, Charles River Ventures, The Mayfield Fund, Microsoft, Our Stage and Sun Microsystems. Thank you also to our Program Sponsors, including Ask, Intel Capital, Lehman Brothers, Meevee, RealTimeMatrix’s Vortex, our official ticketing sponsor amiando, WeBreakStuff for design and MediaTemple for hosting.
Fitting.
Mike,
Did you model for this one? The resemblance in uncanny
Very nice…quite well done, puts the MTV award to shame
Next year, it should be morphed into Derek Zoolander looking for the files ‘in the computer’
Mayfield might be a happier sponsor if you fix the URL to their site.
You should throw in a free ad placement on TC for a month
My god, that’s one ugly statue
I like it… looks nice and it’s as innovative as some of the start-ups have been with their enterprise.
Jon
http://woodmarvels.com - Create Unique Memories
Yeah I think that symbolically it makes sense, but I agree with #6 that it’s pretty ugly. I’m not saying that I wouldn’t want one of course
That statue is horrid!
Looks like a war monument!
Killer idea for an award but the monkey is pretty ugly
horrid? Ugly? I can deal with that. I just don’t want it to be boring and quickly forgotten.
@12, lol
ANY reaction is a Good reaction; the worst kind of reaction is none or neutral
is this serious?
exactly
I like the form of the statue, it’s just that the color is horrid. Can’t you pick a more vibrant color than dark brown?
Ugliest sh*t people have ever seen.
This fits Evolution science. Seperation church and the state.
That’s awesome. Great work, Clockwork Apple, and congrats to you guys for putting some effort into the award. Much, much better than the standard, God-awful corporate etched glass.
A definite WTF.
It looks like it could be useful as a back scratcher…
it’s very….. male. By the way is he (it?) smashing ibooks?
Fitting indeed.
Web 1.0 = Frog
Web 2.0 = Ape Man
Web 3.0 = Homosapien w/ wheel invention & fire pit
btw - what’s up with the bone?
@4 mattymcg
Fixing the url won’t help Mayfield. They are lost in the world of Web2.0 anyways. Clearly a firm that the best is behind them. Yeah, truth hurts!
I like it! Reminds me of some people I’ve worked with!
What’s its name? Crunchie or Crunch? Will it contain a few gigs of storage embedded and accessible by usb connection?
Ape-men wearing shoes, t-shirt, and cap. This fits Justin.TV
well that is subtle
the “i hate computers” award
cool
gregory, yeah, it can certainly be seen that way. the clip is key.
Mike, that statue looks boring and quickly forgotten.
It’s so fleeting in nature that I forgot what it looks like as I scrolled down to the comment box, scrolled back up, forgot it again on the way down, and decided not to repeat.
I remember something vaguely heinous though. Still time to change the design perhaps?
You have to be f***ing kidding me. That is just bad design. When Mike said “2001″ I was like, okay it will be a monolith. A symbol of the beginning of conscious for humanity. Instead it’s a monkey destroying computers with a bone. The clothes make no sense, the idea is bad, and the execution looks like something out of CRACKED magazine. Congratulations TechCruch you win the no taste having award. You can put it along side of you most important yet poorly designed blog award. Yikes!
why thank you, anonymous troll people.
As trolls, you people really need to learn about IP addresses. When you leave, say, ten legitimate and reasonable comments using your IP address and then go full on troll under an anonymous name but using the same IP address, it sort of sticks out on our admin system.
Good thing I shy away from “reasonable” comments altogether. The monkey statue sucks.
funny enough, “other,” I noticed that.
Well it’s not boring nor is it good looking. IMHO, it didn’t need any ‘modernization’ though …
Michael, it looks like you should have stuck with the shaped glass crap. No wait, you shouldn’t at all - who cares what this lot think. It is definitely different, it definitely stands out from other awards, and you have clearly put a lot of thought into it and are happy with it.
I really like it, by the way!
Great, I think the weird monkey statue made an appearance in a dream I had last night. The big question is if he’s now a cast member … in future dreams, will he help me when I’m being chased by machine gun toting clowns wearing blog schwag, or will the last thing I see before (hopefully) waking up is that bone crashing down on my skull.
The form itself is cool. But it just dosent look like an award in those colors/materials.
More like a figure you’d pick up at Comic-Con.
The winners who have this displayed on their mantle will be asked why they took it out of the package and decreased the value.
Kudos for thinking different though.
New techonology, as disruptive as it can be, is always based on previous technologies, if not as an reaction, at least as an evolution. By destroying bones the ape-man discovered tools, the first disruptive techonology maybe (or was it fire? who knows). The point is, if the tool is an extension of the hand, radio an extension of the ear, tv an extension of the eye, computers an extension of the brain, what’s this statue representing? Ugly or not, irreverent or whatever, you might be representing nothing but the opposite of the innovation you are rightfully honoring. In other words, destroy something today and you might get a nomination for the Crunchies next year.
That said, I love it as an action figure, any chance to get one for my birthday?
nicely done….i like the modernization but next year, since i am sure it will still be in fashion, could the apeman be wearing “the uniform” - i.e. vertical striped shirt, designer denims, and black square-toed dress shoes? I think it’s been the fashion for as long as web 2.0 has been around, seems kinda fitting.
2001: A Space Odyssey? My first thought was “Planet of the Apes”.
These people are bad-mouthing it now, but I’ll bet they’re the first to buy one on eBay next week.
One of the few awards presentations NOT boycotted by the Writers Union.
queue code monkey:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4Wy7gRGgeA
lol what are some of you talking about? I LOVE IT!!! It is a unique trophy alright, with so much to look at. I have never seen anything like it. It would no doubt be a memorable award.
What an awesome trophy! Original, unique, cool as hell. People who don’t understand a reference to 2001 can be safely ignored.
Oh boy, what a joke!
One does not have to make things hideous to make them memorable. U can sit this with the rest of Action Figures in your kids bedroom, the monkey will blend right in..
I am gonna close the tab after this post, can’t scroll up to see this thing again. The computers in the bottom with the cheap plastic thing going on.. ain’t we proud to be nerds!
The idea is good but the design sucks. Clockwork Apple could have done better with the execution.
By the way, who won it? I was not following.
I love it! The concept is delightfully whimsical, yet fitting. The scene with the monolith perfectly captures what people mean by a “disruptive technology”. Plus, having a chimp-dude hitting something with a bone is *freakin’ different*.
OK, so it could stand to have something lighter than black as the main color, but that’s what v2.0 is for.
I also approve of the customizable base. Sweet.
(The other commenters are just jealous. Probably bought a dud monolith in SimEarth.)
Interesting concept
meebo won it
tat monkey is so gay!!!!!!!! y is he holding a bone and standing on a computer? y is their even a pic of him he is so gay icould just keep on sayin tat he is gay!!!he is gay!!!he is gay!!!he is gay!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
omg i have actcualy sent a request!!!!!!
heyy wat up who world!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1
hola mebuen hi bibibibibibibi
bi meebo!!!!!!
Um I dunno about you guys but this statue is sooooo Weird…I mean who in the world would want a statur like this. Well this company of coarse.
I really am sick of looking at this statue im going to leave now… Black I cant stand it!!!