Almost 30 nominations were received from across the industry and these were narrowed down to a shortlist of 10 finalists for the panel of judges to ponder upon. The judges for this year's awards were Roy Bickel, Tony Giovannetti, Anne Militello, Jason Rudolph, and Wendall Harrington.
The judges panel was chaired by Mike Wood, who said prior to announcing the winners, "The winner might be a product that could change the industry, it could be a remarkable way that someone has used a product, or it could be an entire project which brings together the expertise of many in a single enterprise. It could be anything anyone in this room devises, creates, designs, constructs, installs, or uses. No rules, other than we are proud to be part of the industry that produced it."
The judges were given free rein to select as many or as few winners as rocked their world, and the winners were: ENTTEC for the DMXIS Lighting Control Package; Martin Professional for the P3-100 System Controller; PRG for the Bad Boy Luminaire; Element Labs for the Helix P1 in Marco Borsato's Wit Licht Concert Tour, and ETC and Martin Professional for the Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi.
The judges also voted a special award to the 2008 Beijing Olympics Opening and Closing Ceremonies. In announcing the award, Wood stated, "They were one man's vision but the translation of that vision into reality involved equipment from just about every manufacturer of entertainment technology sitting in this room along with skilled teams of designers, artisan, technicians and practitioners from all over the world."
(Jim Evans)