It was a blustery, wintery night on December 11th, 2008, when the Columbus IT Community celebrated the close of 2008 by raising over $6000 for Big Brothers Big Sisters of Central Ohio and Buckeye Ranch! The Bar of Modern Art (BOMA) played host to IT Martini Hour 3: Festivus for the TECH in Us, where a crowd of 450+ IT Professionals gave back to their community at large, while enriching their own.

Tom Keiser, CIO of Limited Brands, delivered a pointed keynote about getting involved with the Big Brothers Big Sisters program. He also had an important message about finding your talent - and figuring out how to use it for the betterment of your community. The entire keynote is available for viewing right here, courtesy of Motiondrift Films!

In between activities on the main stage, discussion leaders Ben Blanquera, Steve Harman, and Sandy Blanquera were making the rounds to attendees, sponsors, and demos. Check out their video footage for some very topical conversation about 2008 goals and accomplishments.

On the subject of demos, congratulations to JoeMetric, voted to receive the first ever IT Martini Community Choice Award! JoeMetric founder, Adam Winter, is providing crowdsource-based market research tools in the mobile space.

But the competition was fierce: five other demos included GotGameRecruiting, matching high school athletes with college recruiters, KidsLinked, providing resources for Ohio/Indiana kids and families, Toobla, managing your widgets and media in one place, Servee, hosting content management for graphic design, and B2BSX, providing a marketplace for custom SAP development. It was the holiday spirit, and the spirit of innovation, co-located!

And then there was IT Family Feud: the Old Guys (Phil Skinner, Tom Keiser, Doug Bond, and Carl Gerber) faced off against the Young Pups (Mike Reznik, Mandy Borkowski, Pam Bowman, and Stacey Richardson) in a battle of the wits! The question was simple: ‘Name an IT Professional accomplishment for the year 2008.’ In a dead heat, the Old Guys walked with iPod Shuffles, final score 38-37.

It was a blast hosting another event for YOUR growing IT Community in Columbus! Hopefully all IT Martini Hour 3 attendees had a chance to share their recognition and celebration of accomplishments for the year 2008. From our perspective, YOU deserve to be recognized and celebrated for helping to grow the Columbus IT Community - let’s take this momentum into 2009!

Our sponsors deserve to be celebrated and recognized as well: Quick Solutions, Donna & Michelle from Coldwell Banker King Thomson, MindLeaders, and CBTS. Without them, IT Martini Hour 3 wouldn’t have happened!

We also owe a thanks to our IT Martini Community Partners: Unicon International, PDM Technologies, Working IT Solutions, Manpower, Cafe Apropos, Tony’s Italian Ristorante, Virgin Fitness LLC, BOMA, Platform Lab, TechColumbus, CbusTechLife, Motiondrift Films, and Sequent. A very special thanks to McAfee for providing valet parking through Avipark.