Wednesday, June 4, 2008

Fire alarm fails to dampen MITX awards — Bose named to Hall of Fame

By Christopher Calnan

A fire alarm evacuation interrupted the Massachusetts Innovation & Technology Exchange annual awards event in Cambridge Tuesday night.

More than 300 attendees were forced to evacuate a ballroom at the Royal Sonesta Hotel during the awards ceremony portion of the event that recognizes the leading digital technology companies in the Bay State each year.

The interruption was caused by a false alarm in the hotel pool area, MITX executive director Kiki Mills said.

The ceremony was delayed for about 30 minutes when attendees were required to exit the ballroom while Cambridge firefighters inspected the floors of the hotel. The bulk of the attendees returned to the ballroom when the event resumed, Mills said

MITX, founded in 1996, distributes the awards in eight technology categories and recognizes five companies with impact awards.

“It was an unfortunate incident, but all told I was really happy with the depth of the companies represented,” Mills said. “It was a really good cross section.”

Tuesday was the fifth year for the event. Last year, 200 people attended the awards ceremony and the 50 percent increase in attendance is a positive indicator for the local digital technology industry, Mills said.

“It’s a large, vibrant and growing community,” she said. “Last night was evidence of that.”

During the awards ceremony, MITX recognized Amar Bose, the chairman and technical director of Framingham-based Bose Corp., as the innovation hall of fame honoree.

Cambridge companies dominated the awards, as Visible Measures Corp. received the award in the analytics and business intelligence category; StyleFeeder Inc. won the collaboration and social networking category; EveryZing Inc. won in the content management and search category; and Dataupia Corp. won in the data management category.

Also, Needham-based GotVMail Communications LLC won the enterprise technology category; Lexington-based Mall Networks Inc. won the marketing and customer relationship category; San Francisco-based iScoot Inc. won in the mobile category; and Cambridge-based Brightcove Inc. won in the video category.

In the MITX impact awards portion of the event, Acton-based Azimuth Systems Inc. won the customer impact and support award; Cambridge-based HubSpot Inc. won the innovative business strategy award; Burlington-based Veracode Inc. won the sector impact award; Framingham-based Punchbowl Software Inc. won the usability award; Marlborough-based VidSys Inc. won the implementation award.