Ray Leach, CEO of JumpStart Inc., wrote in a February 2011 Huffington Post blog post that Ohio may be the new Silicon Valley.

"Ohio is one of several states in the Midwest where successful entrepreneurial companies are charting the way for a new economy and demonstrating that high-growth entrepreneurship can happen anywhere when a region plays on its existing strengths," said Leach.

Seven early stage companies are demonstrating their products at IT Martini Hour 17: Swing with Agility on Thursday, May 26. All DEMOS in attendance have a shot at the IT Community Choice Award given at each IT Martini event to the start-up that gains the most votes from IT Martini attendees.

Past winners include MobileXpedition and Janova, with the next winner coming from this field of seven:

1. AppNinjas provides credit card processing solutions for iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch and Android devices. You swipe at the store, the gas station and the bank -- now swipe on your mobile device.


2. Blue Campaign Solutions is a website platform for Democratic political campaigns. Products include Calltime Pro which helps campaigns improve fundraising efficiency. Campaign Pulse allows campaigns to track websites and blogs to see what is being said about the campaign.


3. Duet Health provides mobile software that helps connect doctors and patients. The purpose is to increase doctor/patient communication and ultimately strengthen their relationships with one another. 


4. Social Raves makes it easier consumers to find and discover trusted local businesses using their social network, and for small local businesses to get the referrals and recommendations they need to drive traffic and grow revenues.


5. HotBarSpot is an app that allows you to search for bars in any area. Out of town and looking for salsa dancing and margaritas? HotBarSpot can help.


6. Ripple Mobile creates apps for businesses and consumers including Phone Tag which lets users track their friends’ locations and talk to them in real time. On Time is a fascinating app which helps users plan a busy day by incorporating their schedules with travel times and even traffic patterns.


7. SpeakerSite is the place to find a speaker for your event - any event. What kind of speaker? Input your topic, budget, location and any other relevant keywords to find the appropriate speaker for the message you want to convey.


8. Vacation View has created an Internet marketplace for vacation rentals – ResortGems.com, which enables consumers to easily rent resort vacation properties at the lowest prices in the market – by far! Resort Gems has aggregated thousands of resort properties from individual timeshare owners who offer their properties for rent at dramatic discounts. 


9. Functional Delights, LLC Last July, they released SeizeTheDay, a reminder-based task management app for the iPhone. SeizeTheDay is free with iAds, and offers an upgrade to remove ads. It has seen over a 250,000 downloads from the App Store. The company is launching “Zero”, an elegantly-designed simple task management app with calendar syncing for the iPhone shortly.

Congratulations to all start-ups for getting in front of the IT community and showcasing your work. Attendees of IT Martini Hour 17: Swing with Agility are eligible to vote for their favorite from 5:30 p.m. -7:45 p.m.

Editor's Note: IT Martini is celebrating its third year of service to the Columbus IT Community at IT Martini Hour 17: Swing with Agility on May 26th. This wouldn't be possible without amazing Top Shelf Sponsors like Central Ohio Agile Association, Expedient and Quick Solutions.

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Angela Slezak has 10 years of marketing experience, specifically in database marketing and mail planning. Angela also hold as Masters in Library Science and speaks Mandarin Chinese. She speaks Spanish un poco, and eavesdrops on conversations for fun and learning. Angela's role in database marketing puts her in close contact with IT Professionals. She is eager to support the IT Community through communicating about past and future events.