The first Portfolio Night, held on September 21st,  2011 at Pakhuis de Zwijger was all about showing your portfolio and hoping to be scouted. Long tables gave 150 photographers, art directors, graphic designers, interaction designers and copywriters the chance to talk to their favorite agencies. All photos here.

The Tomorrow Awards are being hosted in Amsterdam next week. The founder of the awards, Ignacio Oreamuno – also the founder of the creative platform ‘I have an idea’ and the international Portfolio Night – introduced this bi-annual award show to celebrate work that pushes the technological boundaries. What is special about the awards is that there are no categories, that ‘the crowd’ is used to make the first round of eliminations, that the entire judging process is filmed and shared as a small documentary so that people can learn from it, and finally, that there are only 5 winners. Enough reasons to ask Ignacio a few questions.

When and how did you come up with the idea to start a new award show?
I started the Tomorrow Awards in 2010 because I wanted to create an international award show that served the advertising industry by not just awarding great work, but teaching the agencies about where advertising is going. I had worked with all the major international award shows for years and at one point I realized “Hey I don’t have a TV anymore, I don’t subscribe to print media, and yet I go to award shows that still award things based on the way the past worked.” I don’t believe I need to ask for permission to change my industry, so I created the Tomorrow Awards to compete directly with the big award shows and serve a higher purpose in the industry.

It’s a bi-annual event. Doesn’t that feel a bit contradictory to the exclusiveness you want to create by only giving away 5 awards?
The reason we give only 5 trophies each season is because each winner is meant to give agencies a specific lesson to take home. For example, R/GA’s Pay with a Tweet from last season taught us that agency should consider to fund their own social media platforms in-house and develop them without an actual client.

At the same time the Tomorrow Awards is bi-annual because the rate of innovation in advertising has changed. The award shows that take place once a year award work that was entered last year that sometimes was produced year and a half ago. By the time the prizes are awarded it is too late to learn from them. Every time we do a new judging it is incredible to see how much technology has advanced and how much the work changes.

So, no, I don’t see it as contradictory.

In a recent article on ‘I have an idea’ you said that most industries adjust to change and that the advertising world is an exception. Doesn’t your award prove the opposite?
Since the Mad Men days of advertising, not a lot has changed. We resist change, but I think that the world has moved on and we have to catch up with it. The purpose of the Tomorrow Awards is to help the industry navigate through change by squeezing the know-how out of all the work that is pioneering and present it to account people, creatives, and producers at agencies that are still working like Mad Men.

How are the ‘Monster Judges’ selected?
The chairman of the Monsters selects them. The first Chairman was AKQA’s Rei Inamoto and our current Chairman is Robert Wong, the creative director of Google Labs. We pick Monsters so that the jury is balanced not just internationally but also by where they work. I like to have a balance of massive global agencies, independent agencies, and digital agencies.

Most award shows are money machines. What about the Tomorrow Awards?
Award shows have categories for the simple reason that it makes them lots of money and ironically the more categories they create the less value an award represents. And yet agencies keep sending in work. Rei Inamoto, our first Monster Chairman, was the one that helped stone this in. When we started the awards he said; “No categories”. And we did just that. So an entry in the Tomorrow Awards could have multiple tactics, as long as it’s part of the same campaign.

What is, in your opinion, the most impressive case submitted so far?
I love most of the shortlisted work in all seasons, but The Human Jukebox from Sweden tops the crazy factor. The shop owner of an audio shop swallows an internet controlled speaker that playes song requests as it plays through his colon.

Ignacio has two tickets to give away for the awards show next Tuesday. If you retweet the article or ‘Like’ it, you might win one!