City of Alexandria, Virginia
Office of the City Manager
Alexandria City Hall
301 King Street, Suite 3500
Alexandria, Virginia 22314-3211
www.alexandriava.gov
Telephone: 703.838.4300
Fax : 703.838.6343

Alexandria Technology Achievement Award


NEWS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
DATE: February 8, 2001

CONTACT:
Eric Dobson, Alexandria Economic Development Partnership, Inc.
(703) 739-3820;
Barbara Lord, Alexandria Chamber of Commerce
(703) 549-1000; extension 210
Kendel Taylor, City of Alexandria
(703) 838-4780

Four Local Firms Named as Finalists
For Alexandria Technology Achievement Award

Alexandria Mayor Kerry J. Donley and Technology Achievement Award Committee Chairman Mark McLindon today announced the four Alexandria businesses selected as finalists for the 5th Annual Alexandria Technology Achievement Award.

The winner of the Technology Achievement Award will be announced during Technology Achievement Week in Alexandria, March 12-16. The award will be presented at a luncheon at 12:00 noon on Friday, March 16, at the Hilton Alexandria at Mark Center at 5000 Seminary Road, Alexandria. The luncheon honoring the award winner and the finalists will highlight Alexandria Technology Achievement Week, showcasing advancements in technology by Alexandria-based businesses.

A panel of four judges representing the technology industry selected the four finalists from among 29 Alexandria firms nominated for the award. The finalists are: AB Floyd Enterprises, Inc., Carney Interactive, Inc., Digital Paper Corp., Segue Technologies, Inc. (Note to editors: the chief executive officers of the four firms and a summary of the firms’ technological achievements are listed below.)
In addition, the judges also voted to give special recognition to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children for its state of the art, multilingual web site to find missing children and to prevent child victimization.

The judges evaluated each nomination on the basis of technological achievement and its impact on the business, its industry, and/or the City of Alexandria. The judging panel consisted of Patrick O’Brien, Director of the Alexandria Public Libraries; James O’Sullivan of Morgan Stanley Dean Witter; former Council Member Lois Walker; and James Reiter of BB&T Corporation.

Alexandria Technology Achievement Week and the Alexandria Technology Achievement Award are sponsored cooperatively by the City of Alexandria, the Alexandria Chamber of Commerce, and the Alexandria Economic Development Partnership, Inc. The award originated in 1997 with the Ad Hoc Task Force on Information and Communication Technologies, which has been succeeded by the Commission on Information Technology. The Commission is comprised of members of the Alexandria City School Board, the Chamber of Commerce, the Library Board, City telecommunications providers, citizens and members of City Council, Del Pepper and Joyce Woodson. Alexandria is at the center of Northern Virginia’s fast growing technology industry. Currently, more than 400 technology firms employ nearly 12,000 workers in Alexandria.

The events of Technology Achievement Week include:
  • On Tuesday evening, March 13, City Council will honor the finalists with a proclamation at its 7:30 p.m. legislative session. A reception for the finalists will be held at 6:45 p.m. in the Vola Lawson Lobby. Wednesday morning, beginning at 11:30 a.m., the Education Partnership is hosting a School Bus Tour to
  • Maury Elementary School to visit the 5th Grade Technology Initiative and to the Challenger Center for Space Science Education (last year’s special recognition recipient) where students from the Minnie Howard 9th Grade Center will present a simulated "Voyage to Mars.
  • On Thursday morning, March 15, the Alexandria Chamber of Commerce will recognize the finalists at a Networking Breakfast at the Alexandria Hilton at Mark Center beginning at 8:00 a.m. (registration begins at 7:30 a.m.). The Chief Executive Officers of each company will speak briefly about their technological achievements.
  • The winner of the Alexandria Technology Achievement Award will be announced at a luncheon on Friday, March 16, at 12:00 noon, at the Alexandria Hilton at Mark Center. In addition to the award presentation, an economic development video highlighting the technological achievements of the honored firms and the advantages offered by Alexandria as a location for technology companies will be shown.

Finalist Firms

AB Floyd Enterprises, Inc. Aaron B. Floyd, President/CEO
Press Contact: Candace Floyd (703) 998-7722
Provides solutions in systems integration, software, and network engineering, and information systems security. AB Floyd provides affordable and effective technical solutions to both government and commercial clients. They teamed with IBM to help the United Negro College Fund determine the technology needs at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). Following the on-site needs analysis, AB Floyd and IBM obtained and installed fiber optic cable, hubs, routers, switches, servers and desk top units at 39 campuses. Installation was followed by extensive training of faculty and students.

Carney Interactive, Inc. John S. Carney, President/CEO
Press Contact: David Sawczuk (703) 836-2400, x257
Combines leading-edge internet technologies with instructional design, digital artistry and software engineering to create the most effective custom e-Learning solutions for corporate and government clients. Carney has designed and developed learning and training materials in the areas of sales, healthcare, information security, financial services, hazardous material handling, telecommunication, product knowledge and space science education for 5th through 8th graders.

Digital Paper Corporation John C. Cronin, Chairman and CEOPress Contact: Amy Sheridan (703) 740-1114
Digital Paper’s docQuestTM family of solutions simplifies the way companies do business by allowing complex technical documents (e.g., engineering drawings) to be sent quickly and securely over the Internet rather than printed and shipped. The patent-pending DirectSightTM technology reduces the size of document images to small 50kb packets enabling efficient transmission and viewing over internal networks and the Internet. With Digital Paper’s solutions, companies see a significant cost-savings and a streamlining of the procurement process.

Segue Technologies, Inc. Michael Dyke, President
Press Contact: Michael Dyke (703) -549-8033
Designed and manufactured Sentinel Police Information Management System (PIMS), a seamless incident management and mobile data application that enables law enforcement agencies to create a virtual mobile office for the police officer in the field via TCP/IP enabled communications platforms. Sentinel PIMS allows rapid integration with other technologies including Computer-Aided Dispatch, Geographic Information Systems, jail management and booking systems, mobile data networks and agency operational databases. Segue is now testing face recognition capability and completed a prototype for a speech recognition system.

Special Recognition Recipient
National Center for Missing and Exploited Children Ernie Allen, President
Press Contact: Tina Schwartz (703) 837-6251
Created a partnership with Computer Associates and Sun Microsystems to develop a state-of-the-art, multilingual web site to find missing children and to prevent child victimization. Missingkids.com includes a CyberTipline created to report suspicious Internet activity involving child sexual exploitation. Currently twelve foreign law enforcement agencies are participating in this project with another five planning to join in 2001. The website averages 2.9 million hits daily.
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