I like the idea of looking a these categories. However, I would have like to see something celebrating the community and what the community does. This seems very much geared to celebrating the current industry. That really only represents a small portion of all pinball and users on Pinside.
I could see this as a range of categories, but would really like a 'Pinside Award' to be about 'Pinside' with categories and nominations that focus on threads, users, specific contributions, growth, homebrew, etc.
Maybe we can poll and establish some community categories and put them all into a single award spectacular so we don't end up with an Emmy's vs golden globes situation.