Silicon Valley dominates the entries – but will they dominate the shortlists?
London: Judges of the first-annual Tech Trailblazers Awards are busy finalizing the shortlists across the nine categories: big data, cloud, emerging markets, infosecurity, mobile, networking, storage, sustainable IT and virtualization. The awards program has been an outstanding success so far, attracting more than 100 entries from enterprise technology startups across all five continents.
Around 80% of the entrants hail from the traditional home of the information technology startup, Silicon Valley. However, there are representatives from all continents, including entries from Taiwan, India, Singapore, South Africa, the UK, Ireland, Norway, Costa Rica, and, of course, the US. Regardless of their country of origin, all entrants share the spirit of tech entrepreneurialism.
Steve O'Donnell, chairman of the judging panel and blogger at www.TheHotAisle.com, commented, "The quality and quantity of entries has given the judges an enormous challenge to come up with a shortlist. Across the board, we are seeing not only sector winners of the Tech Trailblazers Awards, but great companies and products that will shape the future direction of the industry, and for some, the potential of going all the way to a future IPO."
The shortlists will be tweeted out shortly. A public vote will open at the end of October, once the shortlisted companies submit their videos or Prezis to support their entries.
The IT public will be voting until voting closes in early December and the winners will be announced later that month.