On Saturday, November 15th, Maine's electronic music community and its supporters gathered together to celebrate the 2008 wepushbuttons Awards. This blockbuster event was held at SPACE Gallery, featuring awards in 17 different categories with over 100 nominees, spanning the range of electronic and hip hop music. During the event. nine different performances incorporated 16 performers from the wepushbuttons community of talent.

Congratulations to all the winners! The list of winners and their respective categories can be found here:

http://www.wepushbuttons.com/wpb2008awards_winners.html

The Awards event was produced by wepushbuttons, a collaborative organization of electronic music artists, producers, performers, promoters, and advocates from around the state of Maine. Aside from the winners of the Awards, the event itself was a winner, drawing a notably stronger audience turnout and diversity of performing and presenting talent than last year's event.

Todd the Rocket Richard, co-founder of WPB and host of the Awards, said, "On Saturday night, wepushbuttons showed our city, our state and our worldwide community of electronic artists that we have an extremely innovative and unique scene here, and that Maine is truly a world-class environment in which to write, produce, and perform. Thanks to the generous contributions of the audience and the creative community, we are celebrating our most successful and meaningful event to date. On behalf of every individual that makes up wepushbuttons, we send our gracious thanks to everyone who voted and attended."

Richard, in his role as host, underscored a few key points to the audience at the event. "Many ask how they can join and be a member of wepushbuttons and offer support. By virtue of you being here tonight, you are already a member. Our ranks are made up entirely of individuals who realize that better communication with venues and media, better collaborations across genre lines, and better outreach to the rest of the world is best achieved in concert with each other. The easiest way to do this? Make sure you introduce yourself to the people next to you tonight. They are the ones who could make a difference."

wepushbuttons offers congrats and thanks to all the artists who were nominated, and who worked tirelessly to mobilize their audiences to plug in and vote. This is what made this event such a success.

wepushbuttons would like to thank the following organizations, groups, and artists for their support of the 2008 wepushbuttons Awards.

A Very Special Thanks to:

Portland Phoenix, sponsoring the wepushbuttons Awards for the second year

SPACE Gallery, hosting the wepushbuttons Awards for the second year

Many Grateful Thanks to the wepushbuttons Community, including:

Atomik

Alchera

Pentateuch

Metris and Vik44

The Secret Weekend

A-Frame and Mike Clouds

Shupe, Pensivv, Ill By Instinct, and Doc Joshua

Spose

VJ Foo

Joanne from Appleton Radio

Kait, Shanna, and Nessie

Suge Knight

Maine Roller Derby

The White Heart

All the presenters

All the media outlets that promoted and offered previews of the event

Ian Paige, Ryan Wallace, and the entire SPACE Gallery staff

Marc Shepard, John Marshall, and the Portland Phoenix