Mar 17, 2022

How TechPoint Hosted A Virtual ‘Best of Tech’ Awards Judging Experience

TechPoint, a growth accelerator for Indiana’s tech ecosystem, has been conducting the Mira Awards, a program to honor the best of tech in Indiana, and its accompanying judging process for 23 years now. However, the COVID-19 pandemic interrupted a well-oiled operation.

The two-day, in-person live judging process went virtual for the first time in 2021. The in-person event required the entire TechPoint team, the 52 judges and more than 100 nominees to travel from across Indiana to one location.

However, the virtual experience didn’t require traveling and took fewer TechPoint staff to execute. After noticing the ease of hosting the judging virtually, TechPoint used Filo to host for the second year in 2022.

Green Rooms & Lounges

TechPoint needed to inform 52 judges and 125 nominees. Judges and nominees each had individual Rooms. Each Room contained:

  • Zoom Tile for meetings
  • Resource Tile with links to helpful documents
  • Eventbrite embedded for gala ticket purchases
  • And a Google Form to collect poll responses.
A look at the Judges Lounge--one of the Rooms in the Filo campus.

Concise Floors

The judging event took place over two days, each day having its own Floor. Keeping things straightforward for all, TechPoint used Zoom Tiles named after each award category to make it simple for nominees and judges to jump straight into where they needed to be at their designated times. If someone happened to jump in too early, a Waiting Room was enabled in Zoom.

Judges and Nominees in the category Zoom meetings.

The Results

TechPoint arranged for nearly 200 tech pros across the state of Indiana to be in one single virtual space to find winners of the 12 award categories. Virtual Mira Awards judging is an excellent example of people collaborating for one common goal in different locations.

Thanks, TechPoint, for trusting Filo with such a meaningful event!