The sight and sound of over 450 excited charity employees dressed to impress in the glittering surroundings of the Hilton hotel greeted us as we arrived at this year's Charity Times Awards gala dinner.

I'm the Client Experience Manager for Teacher Support Network, and attended the event with Katy Smith, our Company Secretary, and John Bills, the chair of our board of trustees.

From left: Katy Smith, John Bills and Sally Baker represented Teacher Support Network at the Charity Times Awards 2010 dinner. Our charity was nominated for best use of technology.

It was an evening that was about more than posh frocks and food, but to celebrate the successes of the charity sector. A whole range of charities were represented by people passionate about their work and was a great chance to find out what other charities have been up to, and to have a bit of fun in the process!

Katy, John and I were proud to represent Teacher Support Network. This year we were shortlisted for the 'Best Use of Technology' award, a hotly contested category with no less than eight nominations.

We were nominated in this category for our innovative use of RightNow. This is the software we use across the charity to bring our services together. It helps us to gather useful data but also runs our online tools, campaigns, sends our e-newsletters and much more. We use all of this to help improve the experience our users have when they contact us.

We'd been busy practising our 'happy and surprised' or 'disappointed but pleased for the winners' faces and the tension was building as the host of the evening, Ruby Wax, announced the nominations in our category. We were up against some tough competition and the judges had a difficult time making a decision but the award went to Relate for Parents.

Although we didn't win this time around it was an excellent opportunity for us to represent the charity and celebrate the hard work we've all done this year!