Bulgarians, forget about Adobe Max Awards you are not eligible!

If you are a Bulgarian Web agency or a software development company working with Adobe products chances are you have heard about the world famous Adobe Max Awards.
The annual MAX Awards recognizes the best of the best uses of Adobe software for creating engaging experiences.

Wow, you would think a world competition, and you can submit your work for recognition in the whole world. Imagine what it would be to even make it to the final round. Offcourse you must have done something really significant before you even consider submitting a project to participate in Adobe Max right?

This was the case with my company, Gugga. It took us 4 years and hundreds of projects, comparison with other companies projects that have been submited in MAX before we even decide that we feel eligible to even try.

Never would have cross my mind even for a second that there could be a list of countries that can submit!?
Much to our surprise it became evident that we are not eligible to submit because we are from BULGARIA!

That's right, in year 2007, when Bulgaria is already a member of the EU, Bulgarians are not allowed to submit their work for Adobe Max Competition.

But let's take a look at which countries are ...well most of the EU countries are , even our neighbors that are not even in the EU are allowed, for example Croatia and Turkey.

Here is the Adobe official position:
" Thank you for your interest in the MAX Awards. In response to your question, the MAX Awards accept nominations from many countries around the world. However, due to local rules and restrictions on contests and awards programs we are unable to extend the MAX awards programs to some countries. We are continuing to work with our global teams, and these countries, in the hope that we can include their projects in future years."

Now let's step back for a second here. What locale rules and restrictions?
This is a competition that takes place in the US. There is not money involved, you are not winning a price that you can cache so all we are talking about here is just a matter of honer and to be recognized inside the creative community arround the world.

So I decided to ask for a bit more specific answer, one that actually explains what are those locale rules and this is the follow up:

"Our intent is not to discriminate but truly to highlight our customers’ innovative applications and projects from around the globe. However, based on certain legal restrictions we are unable to simply open this program as a worldwide competition but required to list individual countries that do not have any restrictions about participation. For example, certain countries have requirements, special fees, etc. regarding contests that prohibit us from including those countries.

This is the first request we have received to include Bulgaria and will definitely recommend to our legal department as a country to add to the MAX Award eligibility list going forward.

We apologize for any inconvenience and appreciate your understanding and flexibility with this matter. Thank you for all your hard work on your projects and hope there is one you will consider submitting for next year or consider for Adobe’s Site of the Day Program."

As politly this answer is , probably written by someone very educated corporate person from the legal department, this is really insulting our collective Bulgarian intelligence.

Gugga is a company that has purchased products from Adobe not to mention we are an Adobe Solutions Partner.

Gugga is recognised by Adobe as company that adds value to their products and technologies, but only because we are in Bulgaria we are not eligible to participate in the competition.

I took the liberty and checked and there is no legal issues that prevent us from participating in the competition. What are we talking about here since the competition takes place in the US. Basically our legal advisors told me this is rediculous and is probably only an internal corporate matter that has nothing to do with legal.

So I urge you fellow Bulgaria collegues let's make a stand and make this rediculous and insulting situation go away. Because today its us tommorow its you. We are not talking about something that discriminates a particular company we are talking about discriminating a whole country and its industry.

Anyone interested in pursuing this issue until its resolved please contact me. I think we as Bulgarians deserve better. Our products and efforts, our work deserves more.