Celebrating the elite

It is always a pleasure to see members of the information technology community gather together. And if that gathering is for the NME Innovation Awards 2008 - well, so much the better.

Last evening, at a gala event held at the Mina A'Salam hotel in Dubai, the fourth annual NME Innovation Awards recognised the best in projects, products and individuals of the networking community from across the region.

In working up to the awards, I have personally gone through every single nomination and researched each of them to the extent where I felt convinced that I had reached the point where I understood the implementation, vendor or end-user as well as I possibly could. (This was how the judges of the Awards also worked.)

This stringent process created a feeling of strong identity with each entry and it was perhaps because of this, that it wasn't without a little pride that I watched each winner walk up to the stage and receive the award that they truly deserved. Congratulations to all of you! (Read the June issue of NME for the complete listing of winners and reasons on why they got to take the trophy home.)

With the dust hardly settled after the NME Innovation Awards 2008, I have already started thinking about the next one. Next year, in keeping with the rapidly changing dynamics of the region, more categories will be added and others will be modified to make for a true reflection of what is happening in the Middle East. The nomination process itself will be more streamlined and I am already working on a form that can support more detailed information on and from nominees. As I stated last evening, working on the Awards has been a rewarding and interesting experience, and for this reason I am certainly going to miss the NME Innovation Awards (for another six-odd months, after which work will start in earnest for the next year's awards function).

Meanwhile, there is always the ACN Arab Technology Awards, which will take place in conjunction with Gitex this year, to look forward to.

Once again, thanks to all of you who came out in force last evening and to everybody who gave your valuable feedback on the awards.

Trust me when I say that NME Innovation Awards 2009 cannot come around soon enough for me.