Over 500 IT Pros in Columbus took shelter from the rain on Thursday, September 24th at Park Street Patio and The Social, where they raised $1500 for EdHeads and Groundwork Group!  It was an electric crowd, thanks to the rain, the close quarters, and an IT Community saying goodbye to Summer.

The evening kicked off with a panel that tackled 'handling career adversity', with Michael Fergang, CIO of Grange Insurance; George Photakis, CIO of Anchor Hocking, Deborah Smedley, CIO of Franklin County Department of Job and Family Services; and David Wilkie, IT Director at Cardinal Health.  Janice and Jeremy Worthington, of Worthington Career Services, hosted the discussion - soon to be released on video.

Following the panel, an IT Martini first took place: a Tech Talk that focused on mobile security, hosted by Dan Houser from Security MBA, as well as Accuvant and Tripwire.  It was a deep dive!

Rounding out the program were the DEMOs: MobileWait, an on-demand, web-to-SMS loyalty and wait list management solution; Cornhole Allstars, a fun and outlandish iPhone game; TasteCasting, which leverages social networks to engage people with a 'taste experience' at local restaurants; CheddarGetter, a plug-in subscription management and billing system; and cNotify, which enables governments, universities and other organizations to contact you with public safety related messages.

When YOUR votes were tallied, TasteCasting was left standing as the winner of the IT Martini Community Choice Award, presented by Bricker & Eckler.  Congratulations to Dan Harris and the TasteCasting team!

We owe many thanks to many people for the success of IT Martini Hour 6, especially ‘Top Shelf’ sponsors Datacenter101 and GRIP Technology.  They’re committed to building the IT Community in Columbus - reach out and thank them somehow!

And another thanks is deserved by IT Martini’s ‘Call’ and ‘Well’ Sponsors we haven't mentioned: CareWorks, SproutBox, iHostXtremes, Technology for Ohio’s Tomorrow, CBTS, and Quick Solutions.