Mobile chalkboard Wins a 'Cracky' Award from Crackberry.com
Best of WES 2008 - Cracky Awards Show
By Kevin Michaluk, CrackBerry.com
May 21, 2008
WES 2008 is now over and that means one thing...time to do our CrackBerry.com Best of WES 2008 Awards! And just like last year, the Crackies are given out in important categories such as Busiest Booth, Best Schwag, Every BlackBerry Addict is Gonna Buy One of These, If I Ran a BES I'd Want It!, The No Brainer, and More! Let the Award Show begin!
Welcome to CrackBerry.com's Best of WES 2008 Awards Ceremony
Doing up a Best of WES in 'standard' categories (enterprise, consumer, etc.) is a really challenging task, as what you'll find if you attend WES in person is that every single exhibitor is extremely passionate about their product, and has something unique to offer that could easily make it one person's favorite solution depending on that person's needs. If a BlackBerry solutions provider doesn't win a Best of WES award, that doesn't mean their offering isn't stellar.
I'll put up the disclaimer straight away and say the Cracky Awards are bit biased by definition...since the judge here is...umm.. me. Nobody offered up any bribes though, so all in all this year's picks should be pretty spot on. If you think I missed out on a pick, you can drop a shout out to your favorites in the comments. When it does to come to the 'normal' categories and a more diplomatic process, our buds over at BBCool really picked up the Best of WES banner this year and ran a pretty professional competition, with judges and voting and all (good job guys!). You should check it out after you have seen all of CrackBerry.com's Cracky Award Winners.
Overall I was really impressed with the Solutions Showcase. It was BUSY right up until the very minute it closed at 2pm on the last day, and while many of the established names in the BlackBerry world were back with similar offerings to last year, it was clear that a lot of progress and refinement has been made over the past 12 months by everyone. Last year’s vaporware are tangible products this year, and last year’s established products are even better. It seems nobody sits still in the BlackBerry space.
Another thing to note is that not every Best of WES candidate is actually found in the Solutions Showcase. Two of last year's winners, WickSoft and SimulScribe (now PhoneTag) never had a booth last year but when I bumped into them among the WES festivities and was shown their apps I was blown away. The same thing happened this year. It does cost a chunk of money to exhibit at WES so a lot of companies with great apps make their splash outside the show floor, which I think is totally awesome. In the case of last year's 'No Brainer' award winner WickSoft, they were back with a booth this year which helped them spread word of their powerful Mobile Document Access solution. It's exciting to see RIM announce their first annual BlackBerry Developer Conference (coming up the week of October 20th) as that will really bring together all of the BlackBerry Software developers out there. Stay tuned for a BEST of BBDC 2008 following that show.
OK. Enough Reading from the Teleprompter.... and CrackBerry.com's BEST OF WES 2008 Cracky Award Winners are....
Biggest BlackBerry Buzz: Unify4Life
Busiest Booth: Otter Box
Best Accessory: Bayalink's Liberty
If I Ran a BES I'd Want it: Boxtone
Enterprise Coolness Award: Mobile chalkboard
Best HallWay Pitch Award: BeamBerry PDF Reader
Best Apps I Can't Talk About Award: BBSmart
Most Effective Marketing at WES: Viigo
Where Has This App Been All My Life Award: AlertMatrix
