The Serpentine Gallery on a warm summer's evening was the very pleasant venue for the New Statesman New Media Awards . This year one of our projects Patient Opinion made it into the final 5 from 53 entries in the 'Contribution to Civic Society' which put a big smile on Dr. Paul Hodgkin's face (the founder of Patient Opinion). So, not being the kind of people who turn down a free night out, we all decamped to Hyde Park for the awards ceremony.

The Patient Opinion website was 'highly commended' by a panel of industry experts, ruling that Patient Opinion had made an "outstanding contribution to civic society" by providing an engaging and highly usable site where patients can share their stories of the National Health Service, rank the level of medical care they have received, and suggest improvements. Subscribing NHS organisations use the feedback to improve services, benchmark their performance and manage their online reputation. Patient Opinion itself is a not-for-profit social enterprise that makes full use of social software tools and Web 2.0 technologies to make citizen feedback low cost and frictionless.

Patient Opinion very narrowly missed the top spot, which was taken by our friends at mySociety for WriteToThem. Other finalists in Patient Opinion's tightly contested category included the Guardian's CommentIsFree blog, which sadly earned 'nil points' on this occasion.

Other notable winners were BBC backstage thus alowing Tom Loosemore and Ben Metcalfe to be reunited for the evening to collect their prize. Last.fm were nominated in this category as well and I was disappointed that they didn't at least get a commendation as I feel their service is truly innovative not only in the use of technology, but also in the way it is altering the way people consume music. Not a day goes by in the office when someone isn't listening to Last.fm and everyone I introduce the service to raves about it.

Anyway self promotion over :-) If you are interested in seeing some pics from the evening take a look at my flickr account .