This guest post is by Sana Bakshi.  Sana is currently a sophomore at Emerson College and serial intern. Her passions include social media, marketing and business. She prefers to keep her thoughts under 140 characters. Follow Sana on twitter @sanabakshi.

It’s that time of year again! No, not the end of the academic semester, finals week, or even spring. It’s the time of year when every student, professor, or adult is asking college students, “So, what are you doing this summer?” Lately, my answer has been the dreaded: “I’m waiting to hear back about internships.” But the more I think about this question (and my answer), the more I realize the importance of a good summer internship. Any employer can rattle off the good qualities of an intern, but if you ask a student what the qualities of a good internship are, things get a little bit fuzzier.

We said it was about epic battles, but really it was just plain epic.

Last night’s 16th Annual MITX Awards was one for the books. A great crowd. Amazing finalists and winners (Congrats!!). An amazing networking scene. A giant celebration of what’s new at the intersection of marketing and technology.

Thank you to our winners and finalists for being awesome. To our sponsors, judges, and volunteers for their huge contribution to a successful event. To John Michael Higgins for being unbelievably entertaining.

Now that we’ve been through it, I thought I’d share some of the story behind how the MITX Awards come to be each year.

Not sure if the Innovation Awards is YOUR celebration? We've created a short quiz to help you find the answer!

New technology in the digital marketing landscape is affecting financial services companies more and more each day. In the recent past they have explored and succeeded with mobile, illustrating their willingness to enter new territory. Through it all these companies are working to keep all their digital messaging portable, personalized, and participatory. Each speaker on the panel for Meet the Marketer: Financial Services, which included James Bacharach, VP Brand Communications & Creative Services, John Hancock; Hee Kyu Kim, VP Digital Marketing, Bank of America; and John Magee, VP Analytics, PerkStreet Financial; and our moderator Melissa Rodenhiser, Director of New England Sales for CNNMoney.com shared his or her experience over the past year as well as insights into their predictions for 2011.

MITX was thrilled to be the catalyst and creator behind FutureM. Its success came from all of the event partners, sponsors, and participants who made it what it was. And some of the metrics speak for themselves:

I serve on the Advisory Council for the Massachusetts It's all here Initiative, which is a public-private partnership created to more effectively market the state of Massachusetts. I'm really excited for their fall campaign geared towards students - The Stay here Initative.

FutureM planning is well on its way and the feedback we’ve received is exciting. If you haven't heard the buzz or read some of the great blog posts from supporters like Edward Boches, Brian Halligan or bostInnovation - then read on!  

The MITX Membership base has grown like a pack of rabbits in Q2. Or maybe more like America’s “couch time” since Mad Men came back last month? Whatever metaphor you choose, you still see the high volume of new companies that have joined the ranks as MITX members, and multiplied our numbers by encouraging their employees to take advantage of the membership. 

Frankly, it's hard to become a world class center for R&D if you're not a contributing member of the community, so to ensure that we never forgot where we came from we put at the core of our charter, our commitment to being a great partner to the local tech ecosystem.    

LineSider Technologies, founded in 2005 and headquartered in Danvers, MA, was recently announced as a finalist in the 2010 MITX Technology Awards Cloud Computing category! This well-deserving finalist took some time from their schedule to share with us a little about their company and their product, as well as their feelings about making it to the final round!