News - esctoday.com founder nominated for awards | Eurovision Song Contest News - Azerbaijan 2012 

Sietse Bakker, Manager Communications & PR of the Eurovision Song Contest since 2006 and founder of esctoday.com, has been nominated for the Communication Talent of the Year award in his home country, the Netherlands. Internet users, and thus Eurovision Song Contest fans, can cast their votes online! 13 young communication professionals were nominated for the prestigeous award.

Sietse Bakker created our own www.esctoday.com and ran the website for six years. He helped to influence the direction of the Eurovision Song Contest and created a powerful voice for fans of the competition before being rewarded with the chance to work directly for the EBU and for his favourite television show. His dedication to communications has now been rewarded with a nomination for a prestigious award for young business people in The Netherlands.

The selection is an initiative of branch organisation Logeion, Communications Magazine and Yacht. Its purpose is to stimulate the development of talented communication professionals. Who matches the criterea, has a proven track record and is an example to young colleagues, are being nominated for the award.

"I think you can only be successful if you do what you most like. To me, that has proven to be a valuable goal, both when developing myself as well as while working with an amazing team of volunteers from all over Europe," Sietse Bakker said in the interview with the award organisers, adding that he is "grateful to take part in this election because honestly, I rather let others judge if I am good at what I do than spreading the word myself."

Sietse founded esctoday.com at the age of 16, back in 2000, and left the site in 2006 to join the European Broadcasting Union. We wish him the very best of luck and invite our members and readers to support his challenge to win the award by voting for him at http://communicatietalent.logeion.nl/kandidaten.