Tonight at JAXconf 2011, the great journey of the JAX Innovation Awards nomination and voting process came to its conclusion at the Awards ceremony in the Hilton Convention Center, San Jose. After an intensive 3 month program of nominations, judging and community votes, which saw thousands of votes cast, the Awards were presented by judging panel chair, Sebastian Meyen, and Mark Hazell, of organizers S&S Media.

The JAX Innovation Awards recognized and rewarded the excellence and innovation across the Java Ecosystem, with 3 categories determined by community voting.

So, as the famous saying goes, the winners are:

Most Innovative Java Technology – JRebel

Most Innovative Java Company – Red Hat

Top Java Ambassador – Martin Odersky

Jevgeni Kabanov, founder and CTO of Zero Turnaround, the company behind JRebel, expressed his thanks to the communities for nominating and voting for JRebel as Most Innovative Java Technology.

Accepting his award via video link, Top Java Ambassador winner Martin Odersky said, “It is a great honour to be made Top Java Ambassador. I see it as recognition of 16 years of passionate work, first around Java, then around Scala, in which my goal has always been to blend functional programming methods in a smooth way into the Java environment.”





The presenters were joined on stage by Dan Allen, of Red Hat, to accept the Most Innovative Java Company Award.





Additionally, the Jury‘s Special Award goes to Brian Goetz. Sebastian Meyen pronounced the official Jury statement, stressing that Brian Goetz has demonstrated that he will not rest on the laurels of Java’s past success, but will elevate Java to the next level going forward. Brian deserves this award because of the impact of his work, which will ripple far and wide through the community.

The JAX Innovation Awards 2011 were announced back in March and, after a period of community nominations, deliberation by a panel of independent Java experts, and a final round of community voting, we would like to congratulate the winners of each category: JRebel, Red Hat, Martin Odersky and Brian Goetz. We would also like to thank everyone who nominated, voted and took part in the JAX Innovation Awards 2011, and helped to make the Awards such a success.