TechWag

seattle20 Last night the inaugural Seattle 2.0 awards last night and it ended up being a great night for everyone who attended. The event sold out, and there were easily 300 people there (all the tickets that they had), meaning it was a huge success for Marcello and Danielle, with a big round of thanks for putting on the event. We had a great time last night and would do it again.

The best part was the community turn out, and this is one of the reasons why events like this are so important. Beyond networking, the ability to find people of like mind, sit down and talk with them, and learn from what they are doing has a huge advantageous boost to other people who are doing startups right now. While the focus on this was the technology startups in Seattle, all startups and people starting up companies would have benefitted from the event. There were enough ideas floating around the room as people talked to each other to launch at least a dozen new companies right then and there.

But you probably want to know who the winners of the show were last night, and here they are:

• Best Startup: Picnik
• Best Boot-strapped Startup: Picnik
• Best Startup CEO: Jonathan Sposato (Picnik)
• Best Startup Technologist: Nat Brown (iLike)
• Best Venture Capitalist: Matt McIlwain (Madrona Venture Group)
• Best Angel Investor: Geoff Entress
• Best Startup Product Designer: Peter Roman (Picnik)
• Best Service Provider to Startups: Shannon Swift (Swift HR Solutions)
• Best Blog from/about Startups: TechFlash/John Cook
• Best Social Event for Startups: Lunch 2.0 by Josh Maher

Given all the great entries, the above winners have really done something special, and the community recognizes them for those accomplishments. We were there taking video (poor quality sorry about that) and pictures (not bad at all). I put all the pictures of the Seattle 2.0 awards posted up on smugmug, they are CC 2.0, free for whatever use you want to use them for, attribution only. Have a great time mixing, matching, folding and spindling them. In the mean time, it was a great experience, and given the positive reaction to this year’s inaugural award program, Marcello and Danielle will have to get a bigger spot next year.

The awards ceremony last night really demonstrated that the Seattle startup community is a vibrant, alive, thought provoking and idea generating place to be. While we might compete with the Silicon Valley, Boston and Austin, Seattle has a unique environment to bring up a new company. We have bloggers like Techflash and Xconomy, we have support of the community, and we have community leadership that takes the time out to help others accomplish the things they want to accomplish. With all of those mechanisms, Seattle stands out from the crowd, and last night really demonstrated just how much fun this place can be to have a company.

Big thanks to everyone who came to the show, Danielle and Marcello, the winners, and everyone else who came. We will be there next year covering the second Seattle 2.0 awards.