Who in your tech community deserves the spotlight? Nominations are open for the 2022 Technical.ly Awards

The Technical.ly Awards are back — and you have a chance to shape them.

Technical.ly is again honoring the top companies, leaders and organizations in tech communities across mid-Atlantic markets.

Before we get into how to nominate folks, let’s look back. For last year’s awards, we continued to closely track responses to societal shifts that emerged in 2020 — a year wracked by a deadly pandemic, jolting awareness of systemic racism and repeated hits to a fragile economy.

At Technical.ly, we reported on all of these shifts, including the locally helmed scientific breakthroughs, workplace culture changes and small business pivots, as well as the lessons to be learned for a (hopefully) more resilient future. More than celebrating success for success’ sake, we wanted to honor challenges overcome, as well as ongoing work to make local tech and entrepreneurship communities places that also challenge the unjust status quo.

For our 2021 awards program, we intentionally focused less on rapid responses, and more on the long-term change needed. See who won in Philly, Baltimore, DC, Delaware and Pittsburgh, from a dating app for Black women to an “equitech” community group to a newly public edtech company.

In 2022, we aim to look forward — to capture emerging trends, and recognize those keeping the tech industry strong and equitable ahead of another uncertain year.

With that, nominations for the 2022 Technical.ly Awards are open.

It’s your chance to shout out the success of local tech businesses, as well as the dedication of professional, technical and impact leaders. Who’s making your community better? What products and companies will most shape the future? Who’s done the most work this year to widen tech’s tent pool?

The categories are:

• Invention of the Year — What product, project or release this year is best poised to change their industry?
• Tech Community Leader of the Year — Who has most made this community better through coalition building, nonprofit work, access-minded initiatives, policymaking or other pathways?
• CTO of the Year — Who is leading groundbreaking technical work within their company or organization? (Similar titles beyond CTO will be accepted.)
• Tech Company of the Year — What promising startup or growth-stage company is tackling an interesting problem, shaping its industry or inspiring a brighter collective future?
• Culture Builder of the Year — What empathetic leader or organizer is making their workplace or professional group more inclusive, resilient or engaging? (“Leader” doesn’t need to mean they hold a leadership title.)

Submit your noms by 5 p.m. on Monday, Nov. 21. Nominations will be curated by the newsroom, to reach five finalists, and released for a public vote following the close of public nominations. Winners will be announced during a virtual event on Wednesday, Dec. 14.

Our ultimate goal is to bring folks together and recognize the hard work that’s been happening, as well as what remains to be done. Join us by telling us who should get the spotlight.

P.S. If you missed them, be sure to check out the 2022 RealLIST Engineers in Philly, Baltimore, DC, Delaware and Pittsburgh.