This document outlines how the CMX HQ team organizes nominations, and how Community Industry Award finalists and winners are determined.  

Nominations

Once a nomination is submitted, the CMX team looks at the quality of the nomination. 

• Are the questions answered in full?
• Does it meet the minimum criteria (word or character count if applicable, all questions are answered, etc.)
• Is the nominee relevant to the particular category (eg. if they are nominated for Developer Relations, we ensure they actually work in Developer Relations)
• All nominations for one person or community are combined into one nomination (the number of nominations does not determine the success of a nominee).

All accepted nominations are put up to a public vote*

*Not all nominations move forward to the voting round. Our team reviews each submission to ensure it meets the eligibility criteria for its category. If a nomination didn’t advance, it may be because it didn’t fully align with the category requirements. Additionally, each nominee must accept their nomination in order to move forward. If the nominee did not accept before the due date, their nomination was not included in the voting round.

Voting

The voting phase is a chance for nominees to spread the word about being nominated. 

We allow people to vote once per person per category. We require the voter’s email address in order to track the number of times they have voted per category. Duplicate votes are removed.

Judges

All nominations are made anonymous prior to being shared with the judges.

• Nominee name is changed to NAME
• Company names are changed to COMPANY
• Names of programs are changed to PROGRAM
• Pronouns are changed to them/them
• Removal of all websites, links, youtube videos, blogs etc. 

The judging panel scores each anonymized nomination out of ten, ten being the highest score Their criteria: 

• Thoughtful response in application
• Clear examples shared that show measurable growth/success, etc. For example:
  • a community grew from 1000-2500 members through 2021
  • NPS or customer satisfaction score increased by 25% in 2021
  • the community saw 30% more posts in 2021
  • individual members posted/commented 18% more in 2021

Judges also select ONE nominee in their category whom they believe should win the overall award of Community of the Year or Community Professional of the Year.*

Note, after 2023, CMX Community Industry Awards will not include the Community of the Year or Community Professional of the Year awards

The Scoring

Public Vote Rank: 

Public votes are tallied and each nomination will be ranked based on the number of votes they received, using a scale of 1-10, with 10 being the most number of votes. 

If a category has more than 10 nominees, the nominee with the most votes gets a 10, and the nominee with the least votes gets a 1. The nominees in between are tallied from 2-9, some nominees earning the same score. 

The Final Score: 

To tally the final score, the public vote rank is added to the average of the judges scores.

Extra points are awarded to nominees who received 10/10 from judges, as well as if their average judge score is a 10. 

• 1 point is awarded for every 10 awarded by judges
• If the average judge score is 10, nominee gets 2 points

In the event of a tie in the final score, the nominee with the higher average judge score is the winner.

In the event the average judge score is also a tie, the nominee with more public votes is the winner. 

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Note: A new category was added in 2025 - Best Community Podcast. This category will not be put in front of the judging committee, and instead the CMX team will do the scoring based on relevance to community builders and industry focus. This score, coupled with public votes will be added the same way as below.

Example of determining Final Score:

In this example, Nominee A received the sixth most votes, and had an average judge score of 10, giving them two points. Three judges gave them a 10, so they were awarded 1 extra point for each 10. Their Final score is (Public Vote Rank (6) + Average Judge Score (10) + Best of Votes (5)) = 21

Nominee C and D tied in their Final Score. In this case, we look to the Average Judge Score and see Nominee D had a higher Average Judge Score than Nominee C, making Nominee D the third finalist

The judge score is weighted higher than public votes. In this example, Nominee B received more public votes than Nominee A, but Nominee A received the higher Average Judge Score.

Nominee G received one 10 from Judge 1, giving them 1 extra “Best of” Point. Their Final score is (Public Vote Rank (2) + Average Judge Score (7) + Best of Votes (1)) = 10

Nominee A, B, and D are the three finalists in this category. 

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This program keeps getting better every year, and a big part of that is thanks to your feedback. If you have thoughts, questions, or concerns, we want to hear them! Help us keep improving and making this program even more valuable for everyone.

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