A rainy, humid day in the dead of Summer brought nearly 200 IT Pros together at Cincinnati’s first IT Martini Hour!  But that wasn’t the only first - funk legend Bootsy Collins joined the gathering, along with a QUICK Bus full of Columbus IT Community representatives.  The result was a martini of IT Pros: shaking, stirring, and discussing IT Professional ‘contributions to the world’ while contributing over $1000 to some very worthy causes.

Some Queen City IT veterans engaged in a panel discussion about these IT Professional contributions: Dave Hatter, President of Libertas Technologies and an Adjunct Professor at Cincinnati State; Steve Feller, CPIM, CBCP, a DataScape Business Leader & Security Advisor for Harland Financial; Jon Caplinger, the Director of Emerging Technologies and Strategy at CBTS; and Tom Simpson, Director of Architecture at CBTS.  If you weren’t there - you can watch the discussion, the questions from the audience, and the final verdict on YouTube thanks to Motiondrift Films - coming soon!

But the evening was only getting started - in support of the Cincinnati USA Music Heritage Foundation, funk legend Bootsy Collins stopped by to funk IT Martini up!  Bootsy brought an autographed guitar as a raffle donation, which helped spark over $1000 worth of donations to a couple of great causes: TECH CORPS Ohio and the Cincinnati USA Music Heritage Foundation.

The dance floor at Havana Martini Club played host to four Cincinnati start-ups who DEMOed their products.  They included Click360, a performance management tool for organizations to easily set up competencies and goals; MobileDefense, an app that allows remotely locating, locking, backing-up, and wiping a mobile phone; Balanced Insight, a business intelligence product that enables executives, managers, and employees to manage assets within an information portfolio; and DitoAdvisor, an app that brings quality financial guidance to younger consumers.

When YOUR votes were tallied, MobileDefense was left standing as the winner of the IT Martini Community Choice Award, presented by SproutBox.  Congratulations to the MobileDefense team!

We owe many thanks to many people for the success of IT Martini Hour 5, especially ‘Top Shelf’ sponsors Technology for Ohio’s Tomorrow and CBTS.  They’re committed to building the IT Community in Cincinnati - reach out and thank them somehow!

And another thanks is deserved by IT Martini’s ‘Call’ and ‘Well’ Sponsors: Quick Solutions, SproutBox, CincyTech, Manpower Professional,  Motiondrift Films, and Havana Martini Club.

IT Martini Hour 5 was a great FUN and thoughtful first experience in Cincinnati!  We’re looking forward to growing YOUR Cincinnati IT Community with the help of IT Martini.  Help IT Martini by sending your feedback!