Spirit of Delphi Award 2009 – The Poll
The nominations are in. Let the vote begin! 
Bellow are the nominees… in pseudo-alphabetical order with a short description for each one – I’m sure that you know them better than me – and at the end you have the poll.
Alister Christie – He has an ‘About’ page on his site but besides that CodeGearGuru.com is a site which is a must read – ok, sorry, a must watch for almost every Delphi newcomer (but not only). Alister’s movies are a very easy way to clarify a lot from our day-by-day programming problems.
Gary Darby – DelphiForFun is just what it says. Delphi for Fun. A feeling which is very rare nowadays in our community. But it is only just for fun? Gary’s ‘fun’ programs are aimed primarily to teachers and to the ones who want to learn Delphi in a nice / hassle-free way. Amazing work done from 2000 till now for free by someone who’s “a 69-yr old (as of 2008) retired programmer “ as he nicely writes in his ‘About’ page.
Jim McKeeth – “Our dearest radio station”, isn’t it? – News and interviews about Delphi and object pascal programming. If Alister’s site is a must watch, Jim’s The Podcast at Delphi.org is a must hear. The restless Jim finds (where? …and how? I don’t know) the most prominent personalities of Delphi community unlocking for us, the mere mortals, the value which resides in them.
Neil Moffatt – A sensible photographer (as one can see from his artwork) but by far, for us the best shot which he did is the “Better Help” – the definitive reference of Delphi’s Basics in a very well organized site – a must read for everyone who just started to program in Delphi. The 10$ which costs the small program which holds his entire site off-line in a searcheable form is perhaps the best expense which any Delphi programmer can make.
Peter Below – (reposted) – Well, what can I say about Peter Below? For the ones who doesn’t know him, the words are quite incapable to describe who he really is. He is and was (and I hope will be) one of the best (if not the best) TeamB members in giving technical support in Borland, Inprise, DevCo, CodeGear, Embarcadero’s technical newgroups since… I don’t know when. Many many many years ago for sure. His very humble and skilled presence gave always a feeling of confidence to all of us.Peter Below – (reposted) -
Primoz Gabrijelcic – By far the “most hacker” one. A real Delphi Geek which reminds us about the shadow of now defunct(?) Hallvard. His blog is stuffed with advanced stuff reaching till extreme cases like super-fast T-Shirts. 
All in all, an invaluable resource for any advanced Delphi programmer. And not to forget that he’s the author of OmniThreadLibrary – at the time of writing, the most used library for parallel programming.
Zarko Gajic – (“About.com Guide to Delphi Programming since 1998″ – as is written in his blog). As perhaps you know, is #1 Delphi Site which provides tips, examples, help, how-to’s etc. In my humble opinion it is an invaluable resource for our community. Also, I do think that without this site, our community would be way smaller. (hint, hint, doc team).
…In a few words these are the ones who you chosen to be candidates for the Delphi Spirit Award this year. (To the nominees: guys, don’t believe the above advertising – I just wrote some words from top of my head in order to push the folks to vote. Thank you.)
Remember, this is a community recognition for everything which they have done for us.
So, guys, sit back, relax, and vote! The result will be made public on Saturday, 24 Oct. 2009.
Zarko’s website has been providing immense amount of updated content. My vote goes to him, despite the fact that the content is probably most suited for less experienced Delphi programmers.
I studied the the fundamentals of Delphi by going through his Website.
Immensely helpful site for a minnow in Delphi.
I Vote for Zarko Gazic!!!!!!
I’ve voted for Zarko ! He really really diserve an award ! Thank you Zarko for all your valuable articles
I voted for Jim McKeeth.
He is really going out of his way to be a very good source for Delphi developers to stay in tune with everything thats going on in the community.
Besides.. He’s a very good friend
Andreas Hausladen is missing!
Nope. He is the last receiver of the Delphi Spirit Award. See my previous post on the theme. We try to avoid the ones who already received it.
Zarko is the guy, my vote is for him…
Couldn’t you have used check boxes instead of options ::grin:: ? I wanted to vote for them all – each and every one of them has helped me, and many others, in one way or another and deserves the award.
Congratulations to all, being on that list is an honor to each of you. The community appreciates your effort.
You know what? I had this thought. But as you know, isn’t applicable.
That’s a great list. I was torn between Jim McKeeth, Neil Moffatt, Peter Below, Primoz Gabrijelcic and Zarko Gajic.
But in the end, I decided to write in Barry Kelly.
That’s because the latest greatest thing that’s happened for Delphi users in the past year (other than Delphi 2009 and 2010) has been the networking of programmers at StackOverflow. Both Jim McKeeth and Primoz Gabrijelcic (as Gabr) frequent that site as well as many other top Delphi programmers.
But Barry is an R&D Engineer who worked on the Delphi Compiler for Borland and now Embarcadero. He has obviously been spending many hours of his time each day contributing to the community through his technical, detailed and knowledgable answers. Seldom do we programmers get the opportunity to get help with our biggest frustrations by someone who knows how it all works. The fact that Barry has embraced StackOverflow is a credit to both him and Embarcadero.
By the way, Nick Hodges also contributes to StackOverflow, but he already won the award in 2004.
Yes, I agree about StackOverflow effect. It is THE community event of the last period. OTOH, Barry is one of the Embarcadero’s compiler engineers (he is not a R&D one) – he cooperates with Tagawa san and Eli Boling rather than with eg. Chris Bensen. Also, Allen Bauer floats over SO.Com and from time to time answer some really hard questions.
Also, the Delphi Spirit Award is given to someone from community. Nick was in 2004 just a customer – he had his own company called Lemanix. But I’m thinking to do something similar about Embarcadero’s employees. What do you think?
Barry says he’s R&D on his StackOverflow profile: http://stackoverflow.com/users/3712/barry-kelly
so he should update it.
Then again, the picture shows him clean cut with short hair. Maybe he should update the picture as well.
The compiler guys are the heart of R&D, so he is right calling himself in R&D, I think.
Jens: Andreas Hausladen won in 2007.
A list of past winners is at: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1556929/where-can-find-the-full-list-of-winners-of-spirit-of-delphi-award/
An updated list is on my previous post.
Wow. Twice in one day, I fail to notice what’s important in previous comments. Sorry again.
Peter Below!
It is unbelievable that he hasn’t received this award yet. He has ‘always’ been there on the newsgroups, answered questions, sharing helpful advice, *never* getting involved in flame wars, etc. etc.
At work we still say ‘ask Peter’ when a Delphi question arises – that means Google AND – and we almost always get an answer.
… Google “the question” AND “Peter Below” …
“At work we still say ‘ask Peter’ when a Delphi question arises – that means…”
Very nice
Peter (and Google groups) helps me always when I’m having trouble with some component…
Zarko Rocks.
Hi All,
To tell about Delphi, about possibilities of it, I have to say it is the best RAD I using in my life. I know a bit C++, PHP and others but Delphi is for me the most friendly.
That all I wanna to say
Considering his contributions to Delphi (speed/bugfixes) I don’t see why Andreas Hausladen can’t win the poll twice or even more. Voted likewise.
That’s why I put the ‘Other’ there. Feel free to do as you wish.
The survey URL is invalid?
What do you mean?
Can I vote for myself
Yes, sure!
…and if you can bring some supporters, you’re welcome!
The votes for Daniel Wolf are cheated due match fixing!
http://www.delphipraxis.net/topic167007_in+eigener+sache+spirit+of+delphi+award+fuer+daniel.html
What do you mean?
They really vote more than once?
Well, if Wings tells Alister that he may bring in some supporters, then I may bring supporters in for Daniel. If thats no cheating for Alister, thats also is no cheating for Daniel.
And Daniel did so much for the community. He is developing and hosting Delphi-PRAXiS for now 7 years, driving the Delphi-Reference ( http://ref.dp200x.de/ ) , organizing and putting a lot effort into the german Delphi-Tage community events for now 5 years.
He definetly deserves this award.
Yes, sure. You can bring supporters for Daniel.
I saw that you already brought a bunch of them. Yes, please do.
You are right, though. But the DP-Users are prompted to do multi-voting for Daniel by changing their IP, deleting cookies and so on. Some are talking about voting-bots… This voting is not prestigious, imho!
This voting is not prestigious, imho!
Yes, of course. But we already took care of this.
There aren’t many frauds. Thanks for pointing this out and thanks for the one(s) who helped me to fix this. 
The DP users are called to vote once and maybe tell others about the poll (http://www.delphipraxis.net/post1093121.html#1093121).
Daniel definetly would not want to win by cheating and I am sure that the vast majority of the DP community is playing fair.
Peter Below: saving our asses since the last Ice Age!
Geeee….
How old are you?
He probably meant the movie? Oh wait… Peter is online much longer than that, so Ronaldo probably meant the real one.
Zarko best
I purely like Zarko Gajic. His contribution is graet.
Prasid