Guest post by John Francis, MITX Board member and co-chair of the 2011 MITX Innovation Awards program. He may be contacted at jfrancis@ontios.com.

SCVNGR, Gemvara, Nasuni, Akamai, or Brightcove; whether shining the light of public attention on promising early-stage technology companies, or acknowledging transformational technology in our midst, MITX has always honored companies for their innovation. And, like the fast-moving technology ecosystem itself, the MITX Innovation Awards (formerly the MITX Technology Awards) program is evolving.

Innovation tends to happen at the intersection of different technologies, continually blurring the line between discrete product categories. To reflect this tendency, we have recast our submission categories. We hope that this will simplify things for our submitters, and better capture the trends that are driving web technology forward.  See our recent blog post for a description of these new categories.

As a longtime participant in the judging process, I look forward to the opportunity to take a closer look at the incredible innovation delivered by our entrants and the trends highlighted by the mix of applications that we will see this year. From incredible Monitoring & Analytics software to thoughtful Customer Engagement tools to amazing User Experience for even the most robust of products, the judging process provides a fascinating look into where the technology sector is heading.

In addition to revising our categories, we are introducing a streamlined judging process and tapping into you, our community, to crowdsource recommended entrants who might otherwise be overlooked. Our goal remains the same: including the most innovative applications from around New England and ensuring that we do an exemplary job of highlighting companies that are transforming their sectors. Whether through their creation of totally new product classes (like SCVNGR two years ago) or the introduction of a novel twist around their business model (like Gemvara last year), our goal is to highlight “What’s Next.” By using the most capable judges and evaluating these innovative entrants as efficiently as possible, we look forward to continuing to deliver the best Innovation Awards program in New England.

The application process is open, so if you or someone you know has developed a product that might make sense for the 2011 MITX Innovation Awards program, make sure to enter here. The call for entries has already gone out, and the competition will be open through April 8th.

Our 2010 finalists included such innovative companies as Netezza (now public), Vertica Systems, Modiv Media, ZipCar, DataXu, Brightcove, ITA Software (acquired by Google since their win) and Spring Partners – a diverse and interesting group! We love helping to shine a light on firms like Sproxil and Vitality or acknowledging the industry leadership that Brightcove and Netezza are delivering.

Best "Doing Good" Innovation
Do you "do good"? This category acknowledges the innovative technologies that are directly or indirectly driving contributions to society.

Two of MITX’s biggest and funnest (fine, most fun) events are our annual awards shows. You may recall the Technology Awards—it’s been happening for 7 consecutive years. Well, we thought it was good, but when we sat down to plan this year’s show (there was a lot of head scratching and beer drinking), we decided that we were ready for a change. A BIG change. Here’s what we realized:

Guest post by John Francis, a MITX Board Member and longtime entrepreneur within the Digital Media community. Contact him at jfrancis@ontios.com. This is one of several guest posts in the MITX 2011 Perspectives Blog Series. Stay tuned for many more posts by Boston's most influential thought leaders.

The one constant in the Digital Marketing and Services industry is change.  The tools change, project sophistication rises, client expectations climb and the skill sets required to address those rising expectations evolve.  Sometimes quickly.  This evolution is consistently displayed at both the MITX Technology and Interactive Awards programs.  A few specific observations:

The Interactive Awards are happening in only THREE days, and we need you to vote! There are 7 fantastic finalists for MITX Agency of the Year, and you can read about them and vote for them on Boston.com!

Week one--done. I’ve reached the end of my first week as the new President of MITX. Wow! There’s a lot to learn and so much to do. One thing is for sure, MITX is an amazing organization.

Networking has changed dramatically with the growing popularity of so many social networking tools, and the upcoming Interactive Awards have got us wondering what that really means. We turned to two of our superstar friends in the industry to hear their thoughts on how networking has developed in recent years, what this change means, and how best to use social and face-to-face networking to achieve both personal and professional goals. I spoke with Joselin Mane (JM) of BostonTweetUp, and Justin Levy (JL) of New Marketing Labs—and got some really great answers.

The third quarter may seem to be quiet for MITX, but there has been a lot of behind the scenes work and development of programs you may not be aware of.

Each year we produce two significant awards programs to highlight the innovation and accomplishments of people and companies here in New England. So whether you're a geek at heart or a creative genius, we've got an awards program for you.

We took a few minutes to speak with some of our gracious winners. You can see what they had to say in the brief clips below.

Daily Grommet (winner of the Innovative Business Strategy award) on why being involved with MITX, and the Tech Awards, is important to them

Episend on how it feels to be a winner of a PricewaterhouseCoopers Promise Award

VisibleGains (winner of the Best of Usability award) on why New England is a great place for innovation to grow