The 2023 Cabling Innovators Awards program is now open for submissions. Now in their ninth year, the awards celebrate innovation throughout the value chain of the information and communications technology (ICT) industry. We at Cabling Installation & Maintenance welcome the submission of products, projects, and programs related to ICT systems into the 2023 Cabling Innovators Awards. We’ll hand out awards at a yet-to-be-determined time and location during the BICSI 2023 Fall Conference and Exhibition, which is taking place September 10-14 at Caesars Forum in Las Vegas, NV.
While newly introduced products are common entrants, the Cabling Innovators Awards is not exclusively for or about new products. We also encourage entries that describe case histories and application stories, as well as entries that describe value-added programs.
In 2022, for example, Wesco’s Utility Grade Infrastructure program earned platinum-level honors—the highest level awarded in the Cabling Innovators Awards—thanks to the extent to which it impressed our judges. And a case study about the cabling and network deployment for the city of Kawachinagano, Japan’s school district also earned platinum-level recognition.
There is a fee associated with submitting an entry; the fee varies based on whether or not the applicant is a BICSI member. Organizations that submit multiple entries receive a discount on each entry after the first.
Once the submission deadline has passed, our panel of ICT expert judges will review each entry and determine which will receive Silver, Gold, and Platinum level awards. We characterize each award level as follows.
- Silver awards go to innovations that demonstrate not just incremental improvement, but marked improvement over previous methods, approaches, or products/systems.
- Gold awards represent an excellent innovation with clear benefits, that makes a substantial improvement over previous methods, approaches, or products/systems.
- Platinum awards recognize a superb innovation, characterized by a groundbreaking approach to meeting a need, or a new level of performance or efficiency.
Because innovation can be achieved in a number of ways through various methods, we try to recognize the full gamut of achievements through the Cabling Innovators Awards program. To that end, we’ve established the following guidelines and encourage any person or organization to consider entering the awards if you have an offering that displays any of the following characteristics.
- Innovative approach to project, application, or product design and implementation
- Value to the user, measured by qualities such as ROI, loss prevention, business-efficiency gains, or other qualities
- Sustainability, characterized by overall eco-friendliness, long-term value, lifecycle cost-effectiveness, or other measures
- Meeting a defined need as a well-conceived, well-executed initiative that fully meets specific user requirements
- Collaboration, which can include communication and cooperation throughout the value chain through which the product or system is procured or deployed
- Impact, which can be identified by describing the difference the project, application, or project made on the professionals involved, on the productivity of its ultimate users, and/or on society as a whole
- Any other characteristic you identify. The program exists to honor the innovations and beyond-the-norm thinking of professionals like you.
You can find complete information on the 2023 Cabling Innovators Awards program, including information on submitting entries, here.
