Digital Communication and engagement in Scotland is something that for many people appears to be stillborn in the mainstream media of the country, so it’s been with absolute glee that I’ve been sitting down and reading the winners from Duncan Stephen and his Scottish Roundup of Blogs over the last few days.

They had more than 140 entries – and what’s clear from that is that the blogging scene in Scotland is thriving – because some of the best known Scottish bloggers aren’t even in the final lists, so there’s tons of Scottish blogs out there.

The one moan you could make is that it seems very heavily weighted towards political blogs with six or seven of the 17 categories being of that topic, but here’s links to all the winners and runners-up (note, I’ll update this post as the results go up) with my thoughts afterwards:

• Top Political Blogs
• Top SNP Blogs
• Top Green Blogs
• Top Labour Blogs
• Top Journalist/Mainstream Media blogs
• Top Conservative/libertertian Blogs
• Top Lib-Dem Blogs
• Top Photography Blogs
• Top Sport Blogs
• Top Culture Blogs
• Top Hyperlocal Blogs
• Top Music Blogs

There’s a couple of surprising omissions in the categories though: nothing for Scottish authors who blog (like Charlie Stross), best business blogs or food/drink blogs and shockingly missing is anything on Scottish Computer Gaming – one of our key industries. Similarly, no award for fashion/beauty blogging, mum or dad blogs or even a best designed blog award. No best use of video of audio in a blog also reflects a bit of an old-fashioned view as to what makes a blog in my opinion.

Some of the results are a surprise as well. No sign of Iain Hepburn, Shaun Milne, Scott Douglas, Stewart Kirkpatrick or Stephen Rafferty in the journalism blogs awards (or Neil McIntosh if you allow ex-pats)? In fact, if you look, there’s a distinct whiff of the posh papers and the BBC in that one. But I don’t think it’s a conspiracy as they left Pat Kane out. And what about uber-blogger Ewan Spence?

On the politics side I was really surprised to not see Tom Harris‘ name. I may not always agree with Tom or his party, but he’s certainly embraced digital and been a fantastic champion for digital blogging. On a sarky note I’m amazed they found 10 SNP/pro-independence bloggers after the recent row.

Having said that, none of this should detract from the winners, so congratulations to Anne McLaughlin (who is now on her fifth blog! What’s even more amazing is that her own blog doesn’t tell you it’s the blog of Anne McLaughlin MSP), Jack Deighton, Greener Leith, Joan McAlpine and all the others.

What was really good to see though was that – especially in the hyperlocal category – it wasn’t all about the Central Belt with Islay and the islands in particular doing well.

Still a few categories to come as well, so well worth keeping an eye on (and no doubt PRs and communicators will be bookmarking a lot of these…).

And while I may wonder about some of the results (but everyone does that with this sort of thing), you can’t say Duncan just picked the winners out the hat because he certainly was thorough in picking judges – not just a few mates down the pub. No, he got 15 people to take part including Colin Campbell, Lis Ferla, Stephen Glenn, Lily Greenan, Armin Grewe, Yousuf Hamid, Malcolm Harvey, Holyrood Patter, Philip Hunt, James Mackenzie, Misssy M, Will Patterson, Sara, Scottish Tory Boy and Duncan Stephen.

But what this shows is that while the news organisations, mass media and businesses (with at least three exceptions in the form of Mackay Flooring, BrewDog and Whyte & Mackay as well as some communication companies) have on the whole been slow to adopt blogging, individuals are going right for it. And it’s great to see. This is what digital communications should be about – finding new voices and old voices finding new ways to express themselves (which is why I’m now spread over three blogs – this one for all things social media and digital communications, one for being a Scottish blogger dad and one for my work as an author/cult commentator).

This might also be a decent opportunity to mention that Nation1 are throwing a blogging for business event on Feb 17 (just a few hours before the Political Scottish Social Media Dinner) in Glasgow. It would be shameless to point out that I’m one of the speakers, but I’m feeling kind of shameless so there we go.