According to the Second Life Insider blog, Linden Labs, the creators of Second Life, are accepting nominations between now and July 22nd from the Second Life open source community for the 2007 Linden Lab Innovation Awards.

Here is how it is going to work:"

1. Nominations
If you would like to nominate an open source developer or open source community contributor, then
* sign in to the Issue Tracker and add the person's Second Life avatar name as a subtask to the appropriate category (below), and
* write a comment about what their contribution was and why you find it to be exemplary.
Linden Lab employees and family members are not eligible.
Nominations are open from now through 22 July 2007 23:59 PDT.

This year's categories are:
*Contributor of the Year https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/MISC-392
*Best Contribution https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/MISC-393
*Best Feature https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/MISC-394
*Best Bug Hunter https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/MISC-395
*Best Community Organizer https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/MISC-396

2. Judging
Judges will be announced separately and will include Linden developers and open source team members. These are juried awards, and they will be awarded based on a set of criteria and point system used by the judges.
A note about voting: JIRA has this nifty voting feature. You are welcome to vote for nominees you believe have merit. However, winners will not be selected by popular vote but through the juried process above.

3. Awards
Award winners will be announced in Second Life and during the Second Life Community Convention, held August 24-26 in Chicago, IL (http://slcc2007.wordpress.com/). A later announcement will give the date, time, and location of this event.

The Contributor of the Year will receive a MacBook Pro.
We appreciate all the contributions of the Second Life open source community, and we'll be listening to your feedback and recommendations for improving the awards program for next year. Please add constructive comments to this wiki:
https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Linden_Lab_Innovation_Awards.

Any questions, post them to sldev@lists.secondlife.com or email liana@lindenlab.com.

A completely biased recommendation: If you are wondering who to nominate for Best Community Organizer, consider nominating Susan Tenby/Glitteractica Cookie, TechSoup's Senior Online Community Manager who has been organizing the launch of the Nonprofit Commons in Second Life. Watch the video above for more information.