Even South by Southwest hangovers and the start of March Madness couldn’t keep people away from the Washington Technology Industry Association‘s annual Industry Achievement Awards, held once again at the Showbox Sodo.
But if you couldn’t join the hundreds who made it for last night’s show and shindig—or just cobbled together too many drink tickets to remember clearly—here’s the rundown of winners, selected by a panel of industry experts.
—CEO of the Year: Steve Singh, Concur
Concur, which sells expense and travel-management software for businesses, was making deals left and right in 2011. The publicly traded company (NASDAQ: [[ticker:CNQR]]) started it off with a $120 million acquisition of San Francisco startup TripIt, which helps travelers plan their trips. It also invested $40 million in India’s Cleartrip, acquired London-based GlobalExpense, and invested in Yapta.
Other finalists: Ben Huh of the Cheezburger Network and Bryan Mistele of Inrix.
—Consumer Product or Service of the Year: DocuSign Ink
Electronic signature company DocuSign had previously focused on getting its technology used broadly in the business world, but in the later part of 2011 rolled out a consumer smartphone app in DocuSign Ink. The company has gone through some turmoil in recent years, churning through a couple of CEOs and seeing competitor EchoSign acquired by Adobe.
Other finalists: Zillow and Parallels.
—Commercial Product/Service of the Year: Tie, SEOmoz Pro and Skytap Cloud
SEOmoz‘s web-based software tools help companies manage their online marketing. Led by Rand Fishkin, the Seattle-based company is profitable, growing, and very active in the local startup and technology community. Skytap‘s software helps companies manage their IT resources, run cloud-computing applications, and create hybrid systems that combine in-house datacenters and public clouds.
Finalist: EagleView Technologies.
—Early Stage Company of the Year: BigDoor
BigDoor provides “gamification” software that rewards Web users for sticking around a publisher’s site and interacting with its content. Getting people to stay once they’ve arrived has been a longtime struggle online, where the entire universe is always a click away. Cracking that “engagement” nut could be a big opportunity in online advertising.
Other finalists: Appature and Green Cupboards.
—Seed-Stage Company of the Year: Zipline Games
Video-game startup Zipline, housed in the Founder’s Co-op building in South Lake Union, that makes both the Moai game developer platform and its own games. WolfToss, the company’s latest game, was rolled out simultaneously on iOS, Android, and Google’s Chrome Web browser.
Other finalists: Spiral Genetics and Simply Measured.
Finally—but usually the highlight of the evening—we have the Technology Leader of Tomorrow scholarship, which rewards youngsters who develop a technical demo. This is a great award for scoping out who we’ll all be working for in a few years.
This year’s winner was seventh-grader Gizan Gando, who actually won last year as well. This year’s competition focused on building a little Web-based video game, and Gizan won with “Get Rich.”
Other finalists: Amanze Oleru and Joanna Wong, Biruk Araya and Tyler Lam.
Note: Xconomy was one of the media partners for this year’s awards, which basically means that we listed the event on our calendar and were mentioned in the program. No money changed hands and there was no influence on editorial coverage—I covered it the same way I did last year, when we weren’t a media partner.
