A few weeks ago I got an email inviting CollabMind to apply for an industry award. The subject line was flattering. The body was full of the kind of language that makes you sit up a little straighter: recognized leader, innovative disruptor, celebrating excellence in construction technology.
I read it twice before I noticed the catch. Buried a few paragraphs down was the actual ask: a “nomination fee,” and if you wanted to be a finalist, an additional “feature package” that came with a suspiciously specific price tag. Pay enough, and you were basically guaranteed a badge to put on your website.
I said no.
It wasn’t a hard decision, but it did make me sit with something I’ve been chewing on for a while: how much of what passes for recognition, community, and even connection right now is quietly for sale.
The Award Wasn’t the Problem. It Was the Feeling.
I want to be clear that not every award program works this way. I actually did put together a full nomination for a legitimate one earlier this year, the Stevie Awards, because the category fit and the process felt like an honest evaluation rather than a transaction. There’s nothing wrong with putting your work up for judgment. That’s part of building something and wanting it to be seen.
What got under my skin about this other pitch was the implication that recognition is just another line item. Pay this much, get this badge. Pay a little more, get the bigger badge. It’s not that different from what’s happened to so much of social media, if I’m honest.
I’ve watched my own feeds change over the past couple of years. Posts from people I actually follow get buried. Then a “suggested” post shows up, boosted, from an account I’ve never heard of, dressed up to look exactly like organic content. Somewhere along the way the platforms stopped being places where good work naturally rose to the top and started being places where the loudest wallet did.
I don’t think that’s a controversial observation. I think most of us feel it. There’s a low hum of skepticism now every time something looks impressive online. Is this real, or is this paid for? Did this architect actually win that award, or did they just write a check for it? Does this account have 50,000 engaged followers, or 50,000 followers who saw one boosted post eighteen months ago and never came back?
I built CollabMind because I got tired of chaos in my own practice. I didn’t build it so I could turn around and add to the noise. So when a pitch like that lands in my inbox, dressed up as prestige but really just an invoice, it’s an easy no. Not because I don’t want recognition. Because I want the recognition, if it comes, to mean something.
What Actually Feels Real
Here’s the thing that keeps me grounded when the marketing side of running a company starts to feel like a game of who can perform authenticity the loudest: none of that noise touches the actual work.
It doesn’t touch the head nods I see when doing a demo session with a designer and I’m outlining the main reasons CollabMind came to be. It doesn’t touch the camaraderie felt at a networking event when a colleague talking through a handoff problem she’d been wrestling with for years, not because she wanted anything from me, but because we were two people who understood the same headache. It doesn’t touch the quiet satisfaction of watching a project move from Dream to Design to Build without anyone losing a selection, an idea, or their patience.
That’s the part of this work that never gets old, and it’s the part no algorithm can boost or bury. A client trusting their architect with the biggest investment of their life. A designer and a contractor actually talking to each other instead of past each other. A project finished on good terms, with everyone still speaking, maybe even friends.
I think that’s the heart of what most of us signed up for, whether we’re designing houses or building the software meant to support the people who design them. Not the badge. Not the follower count. The relationships, the trust, the work itself.
So I’ll keep saying no to the pay-to-play stuff. And I’ll keep saying yes to the parts of this job that actually feel like something: a good conversation, a project that comes together, a client who feels taken care of. That’s the only kind of recognition I’m really after.
