About Us

In April 2004 we decided to join hands and establish a non-profit organization, called the Bulgarian Web Association. From the very beginning we became part of the family of International Media Events and for three years we managed to transform the Web festivals held in Albena into a tradition and a real prestige model. We made these festivals not only a genuine competition and noble battle but we also put stress on the individual approach to all participants.

We imposed a completely different style for presentation of the projects and the achievements of the Bulgarian Web Branch throughout the years. We also managed to attract 115 Bulgarian and foreign Websites to the Albena Web festival in 2004, nominated in 16 categories in advance by an international jury of 6 members. The participants aimed at winning first, second and third place awards as well as the Grand Prize of the 2004 Albena Web Festival, the golden statuette “the Golden Umbrella”.

During the days of competition we decided to initiate branch meetings for discussions. Our so-called Seminars have become emblematic in their form and content for all festival events in Albena throughout the years.

In 2004 the BG Site competition became part of the activity of the BWA in partnership with the international audit company PricewaterhouseCoopers and communication partner M3 Communications Group.

For the 2004 BG Site, under the slogan “Start from here”, we managed to attract 113 professional and amateur websites in the Bulgarian language, developed by well-known web teams or by beginning designers and programmers. There were 15 categories and high-tech websites competed for a separate award in the Broadband category.

Following the idea of Justine Toms, on September 12th 2004 BG Site organized that residents and guests of Sofia formed the most popular symbol in he World Wide Web - “@” at the garden in front of the National palace of Culture. By doing this, we symbolically displayed the desire and striving of the Bulgarian Web Community and Web users to be a noteworthy part of the World Wide Web.

The 2005 International Web Festival was open for all organizations, companies and people from all over the world. We paid special attention to professionals in the field of design, creation and development, support, marketing and advertising of Websites coming from Eastern European and Central European countries.

It was exactly this year we managed to put in regulations that included ban for the participation of websites, which violated human rights; spread information and all kinds of copyrighted materials; broke local, European and international laws; violated the rights of children; spread software viruses or programming code, which aimed at destroying software of hardware; websites with pornographic content and/or such websites propagating hatred, racism, religious antagonism and violence… The main theme of the seminar programme of the Albena Web Festival 2005 was “Project management and effective Web decisions”. This topic became the guiding principle for the other competition in the Bulgarian Web - BG Site.

133 participants, divided in 16 categories were assessed by a jury of 5 international members that made the decision for the year of 2005 to give only one First Prize award for each category. The Albena Web Festival 2005 will also be remembered for the participation of Artemii Lebedev (Russia) as the Jury Chairman, who was invited by Petko Karamotchev, a present member of the BOD of the BWA and former BWA Chairman.

2005 BG Site was held under the slogan “Show yourself!” and got a record 11 746 number of votes from the audience. We attracted over 120 participants for the competition, divided into 15 categories, assessed by a jury of 13 members. Within the framework of this event, on 3rd and 4th November 2005, we organized a seminar to discuss the following main topics: “Effectiveness of on-line decision making” and “Internet Advertising”.

October 10th 2005, we participated as partners at “A Game with Your Idea” National Competition of Ideas for Computer Games without Violence, a project of the State Agency for Protection of Children and Ronald McDonald House Charities Bulgaria, with the partnership of Dir.bg web portal and Аz-deteto.com.

2006 BG Site and its slogan “Click the World Around” gathered 325 participants in 17 categories, assessed by a jury of 14 members. Our Web Seminar consisted of three modules “Usability day”, “Blog Usefulness Debate”, “Promotional Campaigns held in the Bulgarian Internet”, “Business opportunities offered by contemporary mobile technologies and the Internet, advantages of combined printed and on-line advertising”.

254 websites in 51 categories were presented at the Albena International Web Festival 2006, assessed by a jury of 7 international members and by a “Branch Jury” having 22 representatives. Three websites were nominated in each category and one of the respective nominees was awarded Best Website for its category. We set up a special award, for which three websites, chosen from all categories were nominated. One of these won the special award. From all websites in the competition, three were nominated for one of them to win The 2006 Best Website Award.

The main theme of the seminar programme of the Albena Web Festival 2006 was “Intellectual Property and Copyright Protection on the Internet; E-government; technology programmes and financing to the EU; Internet advertising, etc.”

28th February 2007, We offered our members the practical seminar 'Intellectual Property Rights and Cybercrime – Overcoming the Gap between Law and Information Technologies' The seminar was held by the Law and Internet Foundation, financed by the Democracy Commission. The topics were: “Copyright and Cybercrime”, “Trademarks Law on the Internet”, “Fight against Cybercrime. Internet Investigations”.

At the end of 2007, the BWA elected its new Board of Directors and by-laws. The main changes in the by-laws concerned the association’s internal structure by forming sections, specialized after the major sectors in the Web Branch, namely: Web design, Web Media and Web Services.

Dimitar Ganev was elected Chairman of the BOD, replacing Janet Naydenova. There were some changes in the Board of Directors, too:

Dimitar Ganev (Ecard)
Boril Karaivanov (BSH)
Vladimir Petkov (Economedia)
Martin Zachariev (My media)
Petko Karamotchev (Magic Solutions)
Plamen Voushev (Verax)
Yanislav Tankov (Intersoft)