With 400 startup applications on board, this Friday Tirana held the fifth edition of the prestigious Albanian ICT Awards.
This jubilee was celebrated with Gala Night where the ICY Awards’ jury announced the eight winners out of 50 pre-selected finalists.
The Hello project, presented by the Solaborate company, won the most prestigious award “ICT Innovation of the year”. The campaign for this project was launched at Kickstarter in July 2016.
Briefly, Hello is a voice-controlled smart-device for video conferencing, wireless screen sharing, live broadcasting, and security surveillance. The device runs on Android and is engineered with an array of four smart microphones, a 4K video sensor and quad-core processor. It also features a built-in accelerometer and tilting & 130° lenses of vision.
The second most prestigious award, “ICT Mobility of the year” was given to Albi Zhulali from Softmogul, a company that provides a platform for managing hotels.
“I believe our country has a chance to make up for lost time by encouraging innovation and technology”, said Niko Peleshi, the Deputy Prime Minister of Albania, during the event.
“Through its five years, this event has written many success stories. We as a government are happy to promote such events, and we also encourage local investors to take more interest in this technology startups”.
“In six years, the Albanian ICT Awards has become a platform for the transformation of the IT sector in Albania,” said Mirlinda Karçanaj, president of the jury, Top Chanel reported.
The competition for these awards started on January 27. Since, the jury reviewed over 106 qualified our of 400 applications in total from Albania, Kosovo and Macedonia.
Here is the list of winners:
1. ICT Innovation of the year: Labinot and Mimoza Bytyqi (Hello)
2. ICT Mobility of the year: Albi Zhulali (Softmogul)
3. ICT Academic of the year: Prof. Dr. Lule Ahmedi
4. Cyber Security Project: Drinor Selmanaj & Cyber Security Professional: Rio Sherri
5. Woman in ICT: Blerta Thaçi (Girls Coding Kosova)
6. ICT Diploma of the year: Albana Roçi (Iris Recognition)
7. ICT rising star of the year: Loran Pllana, Raesa Nikshiqi and Penda Smajlaj (from jCoders academy)
8. ICT Public service of the year: The Office of Real Estate Registration in Albania for the full digitalization of 51 services & the Kosovo Agency for Medical products and devices with the “Baranatari” project.
Special Recognition was acknowledged to Martin Mytaberi, Open Data Kosovo, Prof. Dr. Agni Dika, Samir Maliqi, Jasir Idriz, Innovation Hub Tirana, Altin Petre, Visar Jasiqi, Enkelejd Zotaj dhe Mentar Mahmudi.
About the Albanian ICT Awards
Albanian ICT Awards is a unique nationwide contest of character and dedication, which aims to identify, reward and promote distinguished professionals, successful business leaders, innovators, academics and enthusiastic young people in the field of ICT. The reward system of this event is realized through a fair and rigorous selection by a jury of prominent figures from the ICT community, based on specific ethical and professional criteria of evaluation.