Game demos and startup founders were among the booths at Mt. Vernon Marketplace Friday night as the BIW17 Innovation Celebration put an exclamation point on the weeklong series of events.
The food hall’s vendors provided oysters, poutine and plenty of drinks for attendees as they got caught up and tried video games like Mister Mart.
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Then it was time to hand out some awards.
After an open call for nominations, readers voted to select the winners of the 5th Annual Baltimore Innovation Awards. The awards themselves were created by the Station North makerspace Open Works.
Here are the winners:
- Indie Video Game of the Year: Pure Bang Games, the Highlandtown studio, for development of Zombie Clicker.
- Tech Mission Org of the Year: Moms as Entrepreneurs, the academy program for mothers seeking to launch businesses which recently announced expansion through a partnership with Etsy and Open Works.
- Dev Product of the Year: Osmosis, the learning platform founded out of Johns Hopkins for medical students and professionals that offers personalized learning and video content.
- Design/Dev Firm of the Year: Mindgrub, the Locust Point–based agency which has brought on recent clients such as Exelon and Royal Farms.
- Technologist of the Year: Mike Fried, the CIO of the Baltimore City Health Department who was a guiding force for the TECHealth program, which brought technologists and city government together.
- CTO of the Year: Gorkem Sevinc, the Chief Technology Officer of emocha Mobile Health, the Johns Hopkins Fast Forward 1812–based startup that’s looking to apply its video-based apps to the treatment of opioid addiction.
- Tech Startup of the Year: Notice and Comment, the ETC–based company that makes Regendus, a platform bringing data analysis tools to public notices. The win came on the heels of founder John Davis’ talk at the #BIW17 Business Conference.
- Growth Tech Company of the Year: ZeroFOX, the Federal Hill–based social media cybersecurity firm which closed a $40 million Series C in July.
