Last Thursday, I was fortunate to attend the TechColumbus Innovation Awards. It was an awesome, well produced event that attracted about 1,000 people (view my pictures). Pretty impressive in a down economy.
Here were the winners of the various categories. Congrats to all who won and were nominated.
High School Student Innovation Awards
Mark Mahaffey (Dublin Coffman High School) and Claire Allen (Columbus School for Girls).
Mark founded mtek Media, Inc., which specializes in converting customers’ VHS tapes to DVD and creating custome videos for special events. Claire is active in Engineering, exploring various types of wind tunnels to investigate small model cars and airplanes. I would have been bummed if I were Mark or Claire since the Columbus Dispatch left out their accomplishment in their brief mention of the awards.
Green Innovation
Velocys Inc. licenses systems that provide energy and chemical companies with substantial capital cost savings, improved product yields, and greater energy efficiencies.
Minority Owned Enterprise
Flairsoft Ltd., which provides IT solutions and services to government, manufacturing and utilities.
Outstanding Service (fewer than 50 employees)
KidsLinked.com is a family management tool, helping families find and manage local family activities and events to assist them in planning their daily lives.
Outstanding Service (greater than 50 employees)
OCLC – World Cat Team. WorldCat Local is a new service that connects library users to local, regional and global search results through a single discovery-and-delivery experience.
Outstanding Product (fewer than 50 employees)
LSP Technologies, Inc. – Laser Bond Inspection Team. Developed a non destructive inspection technology that can inspect the integrity of the bonds between the composite structure and hte adhesive used to join two composite structures.
Outstanding Product (greater than 50 employees)
Emerson Network Power – Steve Madera. Developed the Liebert XD product line, a game changing data center cooling technology that anticipated customer needs and enabled the deployment of high density and high performance servers and computers in todays data centers.
Innovation in Non-Profit Service Delivery
TECH CORPS Ohio – Lisa Chambers. TECH CORPS Ohio’s mission is to enhance K-12 education through the effective use of technology by recruiting, placing and supporting volunteers and by developing partnerships between schools and the community.
Executive of the Year (less than 50 employees)
Michael A. Lanese – ClearSaleing, Inc. Mike is the manager and innovator of ClearSaleing, an advertising technology company which helps large, sophisticated advertisers improve the ROI from their online marketing investments and ensure financial accountability for their advertising budgets.
Executive of the Year (more than 50 employees)
Mark Boyed – Zomax. Mark brought his knowledge and creative approach to problem solving to Zomax in 2007 to consolidate technologies and drive down costs. The company reached profitability for the first time three months ago and has had record earnings in the past two months.
Commentary: I have no doubt that Mark deserved this award. But it’s interesting that soon after I live tweeted the fact that Zomax had “won” the award, I got a response from Bob O’Shaughnessy incredulous that Zomax had won something: “@wyliemac Zomax is days from going out of business! They seriously won something?” I didn’t know anything about it, but shortly thereafter Phyllis Nichols shot back with a Dispatch article from January 13, 2009 describing Zomax’s failed attempt to find a buyer and reporting on Zomax laying off 103 employees.
I love twitter. Instant interaction and feedback. You can’t hide.
On another note, Bob Irwin, the CEO of my employer, Sterling Commerce, presented the award. Bob won the award last year. I did try to introduce myself before the event, but no one was yet seated at the Sterling Commerce table when I went there earlier in the evening. I did get a call from Sterling a week before the event to see if I wanted to go, but I already had a ticket. In hindsight, I should have sat at the big boy table. Oh well.
Outstanding Woman in Technology
Dr. Alice Epitropoulos – Epico / Ophthalmic Surgeons. Dr. Epitropoulos is a cataract and refractive surgeon, a team physician for the Columbus Blue Jackets, and a member of NBC 4′s health team. She invented the EpiGlare Tester, a medical device to document visual disability caused by glare from sunlight or headlights.
Commentary: It’s now 2009. The United States elected its first Black President. Do we need seperate awards for Women and Minorities? Let’s highlight the innovation, not the person’s race or gender. </commentary>
Inventor of the Year
Philip E. Eggers – Cardiox Corporation. Phil has over 34 years of medical industry experience and is the inventor and co-invertor named in over 165 U.S. patents.
Outstanding Startup Business
EXCMR, Ltd. – Dr. Orlando “Lon” Simonetti. Lon and his research team have developed an MRI-compatible cardiac stress testing treadmill that can be placed right next to an MRI machine, resulting in better diagnostic imaging and results.
Outstanding Technology Team
The Research Institute at Nationwide Children’s Hospital – Center for Innovation in Pediatric Practice – Dr. Kelly Kelleher & Dr. William Gardner. The Center for Innovation in Pediatric Practice developed an innovative risk-assessment screening tool for use in the primary care setting.
And there you have it. The winners. I have some thoughts. But it’s late. Maybe I’ll get around to jotting them down. For now, cheers.
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