ITtoolbox, the online community enabling professional IT knowledge sharing, today announced the winners of the 2006 IT Community Choice Awards, an annual program hosted by ITtoolbox on behalf of the global IT community. This year's Awards offered the ITtoolbox community the opportunity to nominate and vote for their favorite community members, blogs, groups, and wiki entries from among more than two million IT and business professionals and 1.2 million pages of community-generated content.
"The IT Community Choice Awards provide an opportunity for ITtoolbox members to recognize peers whose participation has been particularly valuable and insightful to them, said Dan Morrison, co-founder and CEO of ITtoolbox. "The Awards serve to not only identify professionals who are making an impact, but also to provide the community-at-large with a deeper view of the wealth of knowledge sharing and professional camaraderie that is taking place at ITtoolbox.
This year the community selected their favorite community member, with the honor bestowed on George P. Alexander, Jr., a software engineer, popular blog author, and regular discussion group participant. A new category this year, the award gives members the opportunity to honor the individual who best exemplifies the spirit of the ITtoolbox community through their regular participation and productive exchange of experiences and ideas. George publishes a blog titled "The Programming Life: Experiences in Development, as well as a journal.
"It's pretty amazing to be recognized by this professional community given the number of IT veterans who participate, said George P. Alexander. "It's an honor to have the opportunity to share my experience and thoughts with my peers and to know that so many members can relate to what I have to say.
The IT Community Choice Awards are representative of the high level of participation by ITtoolbox community members, who capitalize on a range of communication tools such as blogs, discussion groups, a wiki, and a professional network, sharing first-hand experiences to stay current, plan and manage projects, solve problems, and enhance their careers. The ITtoolbox Blogs program, which launched in 2003, has 310 bloggers and has experienced a 145% increase in unique visitors in the last year. ITtoolbox hosts more than 700 discussion groups that process over 85 million e-mails each month on a wide range of technical and business topics. The wiki program, which kicked off in 2005, now has more than 3,000 experience-based IT definitions and How-Tos. All of this is tied together through a professional networking platform that allows members to choose who they communicate with and which IT topics they follow.
Winners of this year's IT Community Choice Awards are:
-- Community Member of the YearGeorge P. Alexander Jr., Software Engineer -- Best Blog"A Day in the Life of an Information Security Investigator" By Security Monkey, Information Security Investigator -- Best New Blog"Confessions of an IT Hitman" By Dratz, Information Architect -- Best Blog Entry"I'm a Stolen Laptop! Return Me!" By Security Monkey, Information Security Investigator -- Blog IronmanJames Kendrick, Mobile Tech Expert -- Best GroupDB2-L, objective technical discussions on the DB2 relational management database system -- Group ChampionRalph Wilson, Senior Programmer Analyst -- Group IronmanKalman Toth (SQLUSA), Database, Data Warehouse, and Business Intelligence Architect -- Best Wiki EntryTopic: Business Intelligence -- Wiki IronmanVincent McBurney, Consultant and Solution Architect
More information about the IT Community Choice Awards, including the winners' professional profiles and details on the winning blogs, groups, and wiki entries, is available at http://www.ITtoolbox.com/it-community-choice-awards.
About ITtoolbox
ITtoolbox is an online community, enabling peers to share professional knowledge about information technology. Since 1998, ITtoolbox has helped professionals make IT decisions and stay current in the rapidly changing technology market through peer collaboration. The ITtoolbox platform incorporates a professional network, blogs, discussion groups and a wiki, facilitating targeted community interaction in which IT advertisers can participate through a proprietary contextual matching system. This combination of community and advertising value has made ITtoolbox a leading destination for professionals and a leader in online advertising, performing for more than 700 clients, including Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, Dell and HP. For more information visit www.ittoolbox.com.
