Lightning Awards Recognize True Digital Change Makers

Taking pride in your website comes from something special. It results from cross-functional teamwork, setting clear goals, a culture of innovation and experimentation, and a drive to make a difference in your industry and the world. To celebrate the Pantheon customers who best demonstrate this style of website operations (WebOps) in building, running, and growing their websites, we are thrilled to announce the winners of the 2021 Lightning Awards. 

From fighting racism and supporting the homeless to empowering content editors and creating novel digital experiences, these winners are driving deep, positive change by embracing WebOps to deliver their web and design strategies

- Pantheon Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer, Josh Koenig 

About The Awards and Our Winners

The Pantheon Lightning Awards are an opportunity to recognize and learn from customers who are driving real world results with their websites. In the last year, we've seen a pace of digital transformation that's 65x faster than the historical baseline. For companies to keep up in this rapidly evolving, all-remote world, they are extending themselves operationally and prioritizing their website as their most important digital and marketing asset. 

The Lightning Award winners continue to make adjustments to adapt, innovate, and excel. They are unleashing new web strategies to achieve extraordinary progress toward their company’s mission. And they are leveraging proven best practices such as positioning IT at the forefront of business strategy, investing in cloud-based technologies, breaking down data silos, and improving efficiencies to reach digital maturity and agility. 

We separated the awards into five categories, including: The Trailblazer Award; The Mover & Shaker Award; The Innovation Award; The Impact Award; The Community Advocate Award. 

The Judges 

The award selection committee included Open Web and industry experts, Pantheon executives, and members of Pantheon Heroes, the Pantheon customer advocacy program. WebOps teams within organizations of all types and sizes located across the globe, including the United States, Philippines, Argentina, Canada, France, and the U.K., submitted nominations. Winners were then selected for each of the five award categories.

Honorable Mentions

These notable web projects, immersive sites, and site refreshes caught our eye — taking honorable mentions for each of the following categories. Check them out. 

Mover & Shaker Award, Honorable Mention

The COVID-19 Corporate Memory Project: Capturing History in Real-Time by Mediacurrent 

Why we like this project: This free, collaborative project collected, preserved, and presented the real-time history of the COVID-19 pandemic through the lens of the corporations responding to the crisis. 

Innovation Award, Honorable Mention

Travel Nevada Website by Noble Studios 

Why we like this innovative site: Immediately , you get an immersive sense of the grandeur presented by Nevada's scenic outdoor destinations, interesting history, and world-class entertainment — with tons of interesting stories, captivating images, and informational resources sparking interest and helping you plan your next trip to the Silver State. 

Trailblazer Award, Honorable Mention

Kenmore Cares -Pandemic Response by COLAB

Why this response caught our eye: Kenmore Cares, a response driven by Kenmore Envelopes and built by COLAB, provided front-line and essential workers with the protective face shields they needed during the COVID-19 pandemic, when personal protective equipment was extremely hard to come by. 

Impact Award, Honorable Mention

GoldenGlobes.com Website Redesign & Development by Pastilla Inc.

Why we enjoyed this refreshed site: The refreshed site's elevated look and feel captured the essence of the Golden Globes organization, which was imperative not only on desktop but mobile devices, seeing over 60% of the site's visitors were coming on their mobile device. 

Community Advocate Award, Honorable Mention

AmyJune Hineline of Kanopi Studios

Why we appreciate AmyJune's contributions to our community: As an Open Source Community Ambassador at Kanopi Studios and Pantheon Hero, AmyJune Hineline helps individuals contribute back to the open source community on a daily basis. AmyJune loves to give back to the community by expanding accessibility with her deep involvement with A11yTalks, an online meetup series that aims to build a more inclusive web. 

Drum Roll ... And the Winners Are:

We wish to thank everyone who submitted to the 2021 Lightning Awards — choosing our winners wasn't easy! We're thrilled to introduce: 

2021 WebOps Team of the Year + The Trailblazer Award

Covenant House by Kanopi Studios — For operational agility and transformative response to accelerate fundraising for homeless communities while faced with COVID-19. 

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While most of NYC closed due to COVID-19, Covenant House needed to open their arms wider than ever to protect youth experiencing homelessness. With an amazing vision, hefty goals, and growing organizational needs, they needed a digital presence that could make a bigger impact online.

The Mover & Shaker Award

Pimento Relief Services by Clockwork — For best application of WebOps capabilities to securely activate and scale a social movement. This dynamic and expandable information hub and social network organizes and activates toward economic, social, and political liberation for all Black people. 

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We're taking a content-first approach to building this website. As events continue to happen in the community like the Derek Chauvin trial and additional police community interactions, we are confident that the site will remain running and performant regardless of traffic spikes or interest.

The Innovation Award

Provus by Promet Source — For creating an innovative user experience enabling content editors to quickly and easily customize, iterate and deploy websites on-brand and at scale for large, multisite networks.

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With Provus, we were able to roll out 53 websites for Orange County, CA, completing 2-3 sites from start to finish every six weeks. We helped them to migrate their content into a new Provus Drupal website 2-3 times faster than the traditional method, saving the County tens of thousands of dollars per month on hosting, IT, and proprietary web software.

The Impact Award

New Relic Website by New Relic — For leading a complex, multi-platform open web migration that successfully delivered three high-visibility, system-wide product launches. Automated tools, clear processes, a relentless focus on customers, and real-time collaboration with business stakeholders enabled a large team of 20 designers, engineers, content editors, and project managers across four different time zones to successfully deploy five major project milestones. 

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Community Advocate Award

Anya Mykhailova of Kalamuna — For consistent passion and dedication to the open web community, demonstrated through her volunteerism and WebOps leadership. Her mission includes developer education, Drupal training, contributing to documentation, WebOps workflows, and user testing software and patches.

Anya's bio from Kalamuna:

Whether on qwerty keys or piano keys, Anya’s never met a challenge that didn’t inspire her into action. In fact, challenges are this Acquia Grand Master’s self-proclaimed cherry on the cake. She approaches architecting complex migrations and developing tricky features with both an expert proficiency and a playful ease. So, watching her work feels like watching someone solve a rubix cube with their eyes closed.

Thanks for Contributing. We'll See You Next Year!

Not only would we like to congradulate all the winners from this year's Lightning Awards, but we'd really like to thank all of the innovative professionals that entered their exciting digital experiences,  useful contributions to the open web, and tech-savvy solutions aiming to make the world a more equitable place. We're really excited to see what you have in store for us next year!