Throughout December, Simple-Talk and SQL Server Central hosted the Tribal Awards. With these awards, we let the technical community choose members who they felt deserved recognition by opening up both nominations and voting to the public. We’re very pleased to be able to announce the winners for each category listed below. The winners were decided by sheer number of votes, some won by a landslide and others by the smallest of margins. We’d like to thank the 800 voters who got involved to make the Tribal Awards something special, and congratulations to our victors!

So, without further ado, here are the winners of the 2013 Tribal Awards.

Article that saved my bacon in 2013

First Place: Transaction Log VLFs – too many or too few? By Kimberly Tripp

Runner up: Why Your Performance Review Sucks by Thomas LaRock

Blog of the Year

First Place:Brent Ozar Team Blog: http://www.brentozar.com/blog/

Runner up: Paul Randal’s Blog: https://www.sqlskills.com/blogs/paul/

Person you’d most like to have a beer with

First Place: Brent Ozar

Runner up: Paul Randal

Best Presentation at any tech conference

First Place:PASS Keynote – Dr. David DeWitt

Runner up: There are not the joins you’re looking for – Rob Farley

Best Tech User Group

First Place: AtlantaMDF

Runner up: MADPASS

Best new community voice

First Place: Mickey Stuewe

Runner up: Mark Rasmussen

Beyond the call of duty / Outstanding Contribution

First Place: Grant Fritchey

Runner up: Jonathan Kehayias

Best Free Script

First Place: MaintenanceSolution.sql – Ola Hallengren

Runner up: sp_blitz – Brent Ozar

Most Authoritative voice

First Place: Paul Randal

Runner up: Paul White

Best outfit or costume at a tech conference

First Place: Gail Shaw and her Jedi Robes

Runner up: Andrea Allred

SQL Karaoke performer of the Year

First Place: Colin Stasiuk and Jason Strate Tik Tok)

Runner up: Ed Watson – Just a Gigolo

Finally, a big congratulations to all our nominees, everyone has been great and hopefully we’ll be able to do something similar again next year.