Last chance to enter UK IT Industry Awards 2010

Nick Bolton of Vicon collected his award for the Vicon T-Series motion capture cameras, presented by Justin Hayward of sponsor Telnic

The closing date for entries to the UK IT Industry Awards 2010 is imminent. Entries will be accepted up to 5pm on Friday 6 August. You can still finish your entry. For full details go to www.computing.co.uk/awards.

Best New Product Developed in the UK was won last year by Vicon for its T-Series motion capture cameras. Vicon is a leader in motion capture, serving customers in the game, film, life science and engineering sectors and has won awards before.

“We have won an Oscar and an Emmy for our special effects software,” says Vicon’s chief executive Nick Bolton. “But we’re a British engineering firm and we wanted to win accolades here in Blighty, to give our engineering team recognition in their own sphere.”

The T-Series launched in 2008 and is a British technological breakthrough with customers all over the world. It delivers 16 mega-pixel resolution at 120 frames per second, four times that of its closest competitor, translating into the ability to capture smaller objects in larger volumes, and process data 10 times faster.

“All the other entries in our category were software,” says Bolton. “But we can tell some good stories around the product, whether it’s using the camera in cerebral palsy research, to improve the England cricket team’s bowlers or in designing the next generation of computer games. And our excitement about these clearly excited the judges too.”

As the odd one out in its category, the Vicon team attended the awards dinner last November not expecting to win.

“I suppose that’s such a British attitude, but we went with the intention of celebrating the achievement of the engineering team whatever the outcome,” says Bolton.

But Vicon won and immediately put the award to work as a sales tool, proving the excellence they had achieved to their customers, largely in universities and research establishments. In addition, Bolton held an event at the company for the engineering team.

“We got the award out, let everyone look at it and hold it and talk about why we had won it and why it was good to win it,” he says. “It was about giving the engineers recognition among their peers. That really recharged them to achieve greater levels of excellence.”

Since then Vicon has launched Bonita, a VGA motion capture camera for less than a fifth of the price of the Series-10.

“It may not be as impressive in terms of sheer numbers but the beauty of engineering is achieving the goal within the constraints – in this case a smaller package and smaller budget – in an elegant way,” says Bolton.

For a team that believes in what it does, Bolton thinks that entering a competition such as the UK IT Industry Awards is a great way to fire up enthusiasm. “You may think you’re entering for marketing reasons but the internal motivation is much stronger,” he says.

Nor should anyone be daunted by facing the judging panel. “If you love what you do then sharing it with the judges is like going on a date where the girl has to listen to you,” he says.