MITX held their 20th Annual Awards program on Wednesday, May 25th and for the 20th time I was fortunate enough to serve as a judge and I am happy to say, the bar keeps rising.
The level of innovation, the improvements in usability and the variety of issues that our innovation community is addressing is mesmerizing.
Having Lenny Clarke handle the entertainment side of the house is always a great call. Here’s hoping that he returns again next year to make it 3 years in a row.
While MITX dispensed with the print programs (here is a link to the online version of the program), the applications themselves were as diverse and as interesting as ever, while the level of ambition continues to climb. The theme of the day in honor of the 20th anniversary of this event was reinforced with a variety of short animated pieces highlighting some of the milestones that the digital marketing industry has seen through the years – though I ‘m sure that everyone associated with a few of these things would just as soon leave them in the rear view mirror. Honoring Michael Barron and Larry Weber, two of the founding pillars of MITX (back when it was still called MIMC) with a video presentation assist from former MITX President Kiki Mills Johnston was a great touch as well.
The MITX Awards once again integrate Website Design & Development award categories and Technology Applications themselves (for about half of the past 20 years these categories each had their own show). The 28 categories ranged from things as disparate as Best UX to Most Insightful: Big Data & Analytics Innovation, to Selfie Marketing and Best B2B Technology. For those of you that couldn’t attend, checking out the program is a good way to get a sense of the range of great applications being produced within the New England Digital Marketing community. For those of you outside of the industry and looking to either hire or join one of these innovative companies, reviewing the program or a listing of the winners is a shorthand way to get a sense of the industry players that you might want to reach out to. But make sure to give yourself sufficient time to get lost in reviewing some really compelling work.
While the categories change from year to year, the one constant is the increasing improvements in UX, the more compelling underlying technology and the simplification of this technology from the users perspective.
There were a lot of great winners (and finalists that did not win for that matter), a few of my favorites were Deep Information Sciences deepSQL database technology and the ZAIUS Behavioral Marketing Engine application from the Best “Newbie” Technology category.
