2011 Silicon Bayou 100: The How

  • Molly Oehmichen
  • December 6, 2011

 

Silicon Bayou News is a young news platform. In operation for less than a year, we’ve had our share of growing pains and lessons learned.

We knew ahead of time that creating the Silicon Bayou 100 was an ambitious project and could cause controversy. This post is meant to clarify any questions and provide a starting point for discussions on how the process may change next year.

What the Silicon Bayou 100 is:

  1. The Silicon Bayou 100 is a list created to recognize the most active and influential people in technology and entrepreneurship in Louisiana.
  2. The list is created based on nominations submitted by the public. If someone is not nominated, they will not be on the list.
  3. “Active and influential” is a very broad description. It is up to our readers, those nominating, and the judges to determine how to apply that to the list.

What the Silicon Bayou 100 is not:

  1. A list of people who are in some way involved in SiliconBayouNews.com. Many of those nominated and listed had never heard of SiliconBayouNews.com prior to being listed.
  2. A list of our personal friends, family, SBN writers, etc. Many of the people involved in SiliconBayouNews.com are involved in the tech & entrepreneurial community in other ways and may be nominated/selected for the list. As the editor of SBN, I can say that I do not personally know the vast majority of people on the list this year.

SBN100 Nominations:

  1. Nominations for the list were accepted from September 26th, 2011 – October 15th, 2011 and were announced on this post.
  2. If someone was not nominated, they were not considered for the list.
  3. Nominations were completely anonymous. We did not request or collect any data to determine who nominated someone.

SBN100 Judging:

  1. With over 200 names received from the nominations process, the judging process was not clear cut. There are many individuals doing great work in Louisiana who we were not able to include on the list.
  2. Judges were asked to consider 7 areas of possible nominee activity during the 2011 judging. The 7 categorizations were: Entrepreneur, Mentor, Funder, Champion, Organizer, Tech Provider, Service Provider.
  3. Some nominees were ranked because of their heavy involvement in one category, while others were listed for various levels of involvement in several categories.
  4. As an example, Chris Schultz could fall under all seven categories because of his involvement in creating & selling his own company, mentoring with Launch Pad Ignition, funding start-ups with Voodoo Ventures, championing for the New Orleans tech scene at SXSW, organizing TribeCon, providing tech development through Flatstack and providing a service to the community through Launch Pad.
  5. The Sponsors were solicited separately from the judging process. Other than myself, Judges were not aware of sponsorship commitments and sponsors were not aware of the nominees or the contents of the list until the release yesterday evening.

Summary

I hope we answered some of the lingering questions about the list. If you were expecting other names on the list, make sure you participate by nominating people next year. If you are interested in being a judge in the future, send us a note via the Contact page.

Thanks to everyone who participated this year by nominating, judging, attending the event, and telling your friends!