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The four finalists were described in my post Innovator Showdown is Friday at RootsTech 2015. Each contestant gave a five-minute presentation, followed by questions and answers from the five judges. The judges awarded these prizes:
The first place winner, StoryWorth, received $10,000.
The second place winner was ArgusSearch, which received $7,000.
The third place winner was GenMarketplace, which received $3,000.
The attendees in the Hall at RootsTech, plus anyone else watching the RootsTech livestreaming online, could vote for one of the contestants using an Instant Message. The People's Choice winner was also StoryWorth, who received an additional $5,000.
The StoryWorth project description is:
"Each week, we mail our storytellers a question about their life. All they have to do is reply with a story, either by email or by phone. We save their story on www.storyworth.com, and privately share it with their family members. The submission page is at http://bit.ly/rt15icsw."
Congratulations to the winners for their awards, and a big thank you to all 51 entrepreneurs who entered the Innovator Challenge contest.
Who did I vote for? I voted for ArgusSearch, because it had the most useful (to me) new technology that would have a significant impact on genealogical research in the near future. I can see one of the genealogical industry companies buying this technology to integrate into their search engines.
The URL for this post is: http://www.geneamusings.com/2015/02/innovator-showdown-winner-is-storyworth.html
Copyright (c) 2015, Randall J. Seaver
3 comments:
I also voted for ArgusSearch. If the technology is on the level (ability to read handwritten records, and permit searching and indexing them), then one can only be dumbfounded how any of the others defeated it.
Argussearch was my favorite. I thought they would have won for sure.
I also voted for ArgusSearch. I am grateful for the hard work put in by FamilySearch indexers, but if we have a method to search handwritten documents, why not use it? Even if the handwriting recognition isn't perfect, imagine being able to search a document for any word or phrase in the document, whether it had been indexed or not.
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