Q: What do Joan Rivers, Eminem and Johnny Cash have in common?

A: They were all impersonated at the IABC Gold Quill Awards last night, along with J.Lo, Mick Jagger and Cher! We must admit, with a fair dose of jetlag, little sleep and being confined to a conference hall for the last two days made the night seem very surreal indeed.

IABC's 2007 chair, Glenda Holmes, and vice chair, Todd Hattori, helped deliver the illustrious awards to the hundreds of winners in categories ranging from HR & benefits communication, multi-audience communication, electronic and digital communication - management, employee/member communication...too many to mention! The 11,070 entries worldwide were judged by a panel of 379 judges - quite a feat.

Earlier on in the day the Asia-Pacific IABC branch held their own awards ceremony, and all attendees were given gifts from the region from a lucky dip. Bish Mukherjee was the well-loved star of this event, awarded for his unswerving dedication to the chapter.

In other news from the event in the Big Easy, we've all chatted to communicators from across the globe, some of whom will be featured in a special Melcrum podcast in the next few weeks. Watch this space for insights from Brad Whitworth of Cisco, Connie Eckhard - one of this year's two Chairman's Awards winners, Angela Sinickas - the Hub's Measuring your Impact expert, Shel Holtz - one half of the social media supergroup responsible for the 'For Immediate Release' podcast, and David Grossman (pictured, left) of dg&a, one of the Internal Comms Hub's new editorial board and next-door neighbour to Melcrum in the exhibition hall.

Soundtrack to the blog post: Abba - The Winner Takes It All