WTIA Awards: Try These Kids’ Games and Pick a Scholarship Winner

Angel investors and venture capitalists spend a lot of their time beating the bushes for that next great tech genius and entrepreneur who is destined to change the world. This seems like a pretty good place to get some super-early scouting done: the Washington Technology Industry Association’s award for Technology Leader of Tomorrow.

As a part of the WTIA Industry Achievement Awards, the public actually gets to vote on which one of the student finalists will win a scholarship. This year, the competition focused on building a little Web-based video game—you can play all three of the entries and vote for your favorite at the WTIA’s site.

You’ll need to be at a keyboard to test them out, using the arrow keys to navigate the little characters around. The objective in each is to collect points by running into the icons you do want, while avoiding the enemies who will sap your score.

The finalists are Pablo’s Underwater Adventure by Amanze Oleru and Joanna Wong; The Skateboard King by Biruk Araya and Tyler Lam; and Get Rich by Gizan Gando, who actually won last year’s competition.

Here’s the list of finalists for the boring old adult side of the competition—that voting is done by judges, and the awards will be given out March 15 at what is usually one of the biggest events of the year for the regional tech scene.

Best Early Stage Company:
– Appature
– BigDoor
– GreenCupboards

Best Seed Stage Company:
– Simply Measured
– Spiral Genetics
– Zipline Games

Consumer Product or Service of the Year:
– DocuSign
– Parallels
– Zillow

Commercial Product or Service of the Year:
– EagleView Technologies
– SEOMoz
– Skytap

Service Provider of the Year:
– Founder’s Co-Op
– Lighter Capital
– Opscode

CEO of the Year:
– Ben Huh, Cheezburger
– Steve Singh, Concur
– Bryan Mistele, INRIX

Author: Curt Woodward

Curt covered technology and innovation in the Boston area for Xconomy. He previously worked in Xconomy’s Seattle bureau and continued some coverage of Seattle-area tech companies, including Amazon and Microsoft. Curt joined Xconomy in February 2011 after nearly nine years with The Associated Press, the world's largest news organization. He worked in three states and covered a wide variety of beats for the AP, including business, law, politics, government, and general mayhem. A native Washingtonian, Curt earned a bachelor's degree in journalism from Western Washington University in Bellingham, WA. As a past president of the state's Capitol Correspondents Association, he led efforts to expand statehouse press credentialing to online news outlets for the first time.