What's Up with Tech?

Inside The We Love Tech Awards: Real Innovation, Real Impact

• Evan Kirstel

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CES is about to flood every feed with AI demos and wall-sized screens, but the real breakthroughs are quieter: teams turning bold ideas into measurable results. We sat down to unpack how the We Love Tech Awards celebrate that kind of progress—transparent judging, practical innovation, and stories you can actually learn from.

We revisit standout winners who proved utility at scale: TD’s immersive learning programs that used VR and AR to deliver real training outcomes, a playful banking experiment on Roblox that still respected user value, and enterprise CX leaders who applied generative AI to increase satisfaction while cutting handle time. Along the way, we talk about why recognition programs matter when news cycles skew negative, and how celebrating builders can lift morale, validate products, and sharpen a brand’s narrative.

You’ll also get a behind-the-scenes look at our judging model. Thousands of volunteer experts—engineers, PMs, and operators—score entries and share actionable feedback, turning a trophy into a roadmap. We dig into categories spanning AI, cloud, cybersecurity, SaaS, IoT, and leadership, then outline how to craft a winning nomination: define the problem, show the implementation, quantify outcomes, and include the lessons learned. With CES days away and nominations due by late March, there’s time to gather the right metrics and stories that prove your work scales.

Before we sign off, we share a few gear picks for creators tackling noisy events and remote workflows—from minimalist e-ink dashboards that cut phone time to compact wireless mics that make a phone feel like a pocket studio. Ready to spotlight tech that works? Subscribe, share this with a teammate, and leave a review with the one metric you’re proudest of from the past year.

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SPEAKER_01:

Hey everybody, it's that time of the year. It's CES, and that means it's time for the We Love Tech Awards. Russ, how are you?

SPEAKER_00:

I am so good. I'm so excited this year to see what you're going to find at CES and in your travels.

SPEAKER_01:

And uh Merry Christmas, happy holidays, happy Hanukkah, Happy New Year to you and everyone watching and listening. And yes, I'm headed to CES again. It's become the annual pilgrimage and the second annual We Love Tech Awards. Super excited. How would you describe the We Love Tech Awards, uh Russ?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, when we conceived of them, it was really all about enterprise tech and kind of those technologies that are driving kind of consumers and enterprises to do something different. So it's all those kind of unique technologies that are driving kind of us to do new things. And boy, is there a lot that's going to be at CES. I can't imagine the number of AI boosts you are going to see.

SPEAKER_01:

It's going to be AI everywhere all the time. I think AI will then hit reality at CES as we begin to see some of the opportunities, some of the limitations, some of the fails, which will be spectacular. But let's look at last year. We had a really extraordinary list of nominees of innovators, uh, really standouts. Uh in my mind, you know, I'm just looking through the winners, and you know, I'll bring this up here. The website is open for nominations. You can see last year's winners, companies like Clearcom innovating in customer experience, um, making every uh voice telephony call count. Companies like Alorica, you know, Genai implementation and CX, really amazing work. Companies like Call Tower enabling collaboration and communication across the enterprise and in new ways, TD immersive learning for AR and VR with real use cases and killer apps in education, and on and on. So I love how practical uh and the utility of these winners, these are not pie in the sky uh kind of ideas. These are these are real solutions for real enterprise and real world problems. And I think that's the theme, right, Ross, uh of the We Love Tech Awards.

SPEAKER_00:

It absolutely is. These are the cool stories that you hear about, like maybe you hear about, maybe you don't, that are coming out of organizations. The one that stuck out to me was TD that last year, because they were ahead of the game, I think, bringing virtual reality and AI into their bank and into the consumer experience. They actually won two from us. I'm just looking at the list. It was TD Treat Island Tycoon. That was a Roblox platform. So they integrated into Roblox, which I thought was really innovative. And then they had the immersive learning, uh, where they're using VR and AR in all their learning experiences. So, you know, they're actually, you know, doing the work and putting that technology to use, and it's it's clearly paying off.

SPEAKER_01:

So why do these awards matter? Why is it uh more than just a trophy and you know, a fun badge maybe on the blockchain? Um, we're trying to create a bit of a movement here, but what's your perspective?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, my perspective is yeah, I've been doing this for I think 13 or 14 years now is you know, we spend all this time looking at news and reading the news, and a lot of it's not good, and we don't spend enough of our time kind of patting ourselves on the back and looking at all the amazing things we're doing. And so these these awards are really a you know a recognition movement of let's let's pull some of these technologies out, let's pull some of this, you know, real work where consumers and businesses are are making, you know, we're making their lives easier or better. Let's, you know, highlight some of that work. We spent too much of our lives, you know, trying to figure out where our next meal is coming from or if we're going to war. Let's let's uh highlight some of the wins.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, and let's have some fun on social media. These uh awards get a huge visibility with uh my audience and other audiences on YouTube and LinkedIn and Facebook and Instagram and Twitter and X and other platforms. And um, let's talk where the rubber hits the road, the judges. This isn't Evan Kerstell picking his favorite client's favorite products. Uh tell us about the judging process and who are these judges?

SPEAKER_00:

So the judges are remarkable, in my opinion. These are all volunteer experts who are from all over the world. Um, and if you go to our judging panel, you can see them online. Uh, they're really extraordinary because they're they're from all walks of life. Um, most of them are you know engineers and product managers and all sorts of different roles inside of America's great companies, the world's great companies, and all leading technology companies. And so they volunteer their time uh to get kind of a sneak preview of what's cool and what's coming out and the different ways people are using tech. And so we really value our judges. There's you know, thousands of them now that score these nominations. And so it's it's a real kind of good way to get kind of uh, you know, a good sense of what's really out there that's really cool and really working.

SPEAKER_01:

Really cool is fun, and I love really cool, but it's really working. I I like that part. I mean, these are companies that are innovating in a real way with AI. The it's I love as much as I love funny cat videos and making them with AI, this is more than that. It's leveraging AI for digital health, for digital therapeutics, for health tech, for you know, innovation and education and learning and productivity, uh, covering you know, AI and cloud and cybersecurity and SaaS and IoT. Um and so those are sort of the unsung heroes in my book, particularly it shows like CES, where the latest 95-inch uh OLED televisions get all the all the all the attention. There are a lot of great, particularly startups and innovators who get very little attention, and we like to give them that.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I remember hearing about the back boosts at CES, all the little tables that were pretty amazing where you'd find some cool stuff. I look I look forward to seeing your work there. Yeah, we've you know, the We Love Tech Awards goes across all categories. That's what I like about it is like you mentioned, you know, we've got we've got all the AI and ML and cloud computing and SaaS and all that stuff, but we also have kind of that leadership model. So if you're leading in tech and some philanthropic and community type categories. So, you know, it spans the whole gamut.

SPEAKER_01:

And what do you get from these? Do you get a trophy like you got in the in the fourth grade for participation, fourth place in the karate tournament? Or do you actually get real something valid, uh tangible that you can use for PR and promotion and um recognition?

SPEAKER_00:

You get an entire package. So it's it's the whole thing. If you're selected as a winner, uh first and foremost, you do get a trophy. You also get an awesome, as you mentioned earlier, a blockchain certificate. This can go on your website, on your LinkedIn profile, always back and validated through the blockchain to where it came from, so you know it's valid. But more than that, you get all the PR and publicity. We give you lots of tools to market the award, market your win. Um all over social media, public relations, we'll do that as well. And you mentioned your show. And then the most valuable feedback, the thing I think we give is all the feedback from the judges. And so if you're a product person or a founder or you're developing product, these guys are giving you really great feedback. Um, and I think that's almost the most valuable thing if I'm developing new products.

SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely. And talk about the world of awards and um this whole this whole category. Um, some are dubious and skeptical about these sort of uh awards for good reason, right? There's a lot of pay-to-play in the industry, there's a lot of fluff and hype. But you've been doing this for a long time. Talk about this this category and why awards are can be meaningful.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, yeah, there's just like in life, you know, there's good doctors and bad doctors and good lawyers and bad lawyers, uh, good cooks and bad cooks. Uh, there are good programs and bad programs. And, you know, sometimes the motivation isn't there. Uh, you know, the motivation is money or something else. And so, you know, the real critical kind of component of our program that's different is the judging model. You know, we're using a very transparent process. You can go see who the judges are, you'll know how many scored, you'll get all their feedback. You won't know exactly which judge George judged your nomination because we don't want you going to their house and knocking on their door or anything. Uh, but you get all that feedback. And so it's a very transparent and open process. We called it the crowdsource judge program. So that's the way we do it. There's other models out there. I think this is the fairest of them all, uh, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_01:

That's fantastic. And um, we're doing this the We Love Tech Awards. Uh, I encourage everyone to go to the website, uh, which we had up a moment ago, we love tech awards.com. Um, beyond that, if you're a brand or a category leader, um, what kind of award programs do you create uh with within those those clients that you work with? How does it work if maybe I'm a uh blue chip, you know, well-known uh brand and I'm looking to reward employees, maybe customers, partners, etc.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Well, it's it's all in here. You know, and and I always talk about people, you know, think about what you're trying to do with an award. Are you trying to elevate your brand? Are you trying to kind of validate your product or are you rewarding your people? And there's categories for all of that. If you're elevating your brand, you're gonna go in for, you know, a company of the year or an organization of the year or something like that, some some category like that, or fastest growing. You know, there's lots of programs like that. That those kind of elevate your brand. They make your, you know, you bigger. And then then think about, you know, maybe you need to validate your product, maybe you're looking for that third-party validation. This is a great tool to do that. You have, you know, 2,000 judges looking at your product, going, yeah, it's pretty good, or no, it's not, and giving you feedback. So those are pretty cool. The most impactful to me are the people awards. Um, we've seen us, we've seen a stark uh you know decline over the last few years of people awards, and it's really it's kind of um it's disheartening a little bit because we're we're forgetting why we do this a little bit. You know, we do this to reward ourselves and you know, to have a living. And so uh I encourage more people to do people awards. These are real assets for employees, and uh it's a great tool in your tool bag if you're building a company and and trying to drive satisfaction.

SPEAKER_01:

Fantastic. So let's go through some of the key milestones. We love tech awards kicking off at CES in uh you know a short number of days. Uh, can't believe it's under two weeks away. Um, so chance to meet me, chance to meet the team. Uh, happy to stop by your booth and check out what you're doing, albeit the media days pre-event as well as the full CES event itself. And then what happens, Russ? What's next in this process?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, so everybody needs to hit the website, as you said. There's you can pull it up again. We've got the kind of nomination process. The easiest thing to do is go to the website. Uh, nominations are due in March, so you've got plenty of time. Usually it takes a few weeks to get these together and approved through your organization. But um, easiest thing is go to the website, go ahead and download the nomination guide. This nomination guide has basically all the rules, all the categories, everything you need to know about the program is in that. Um, then you're gonna select the right category. Do do your due diligence on kind of what are the things you want to highlight, your company, your product, your people, and what category are you gonna nominate in? Are you AI, philanthropy, et cetera? Then go to all your product teams, your sales teams, your customer service team, look for the stories. Um, gather all that information together, look for the great outcomes, look for those amazing stories with lots of percentage gains, right? That's what our judges love is they love to see percentage gains and money gains. And then go ahead and come over back to the site and complete the nomination form. It's pretty easy. We give you a tool to kind of write it all up ahead of time, and you're just gonna submit it online again before March 27th. So everything's uh here on the website from the nomination guide all the way through to the nomination itself. Fantastic.

SPEAKER_01:

Um, and just a final question here for you personally. What's your favorite piece of tech, gadget, enterprise tech app of the year? What what is Russ really uh grateful for from Santa this year that's really changed your uh life business in a meaningful way?

SPEAKER_00:

I I am gonna tell you about the nerdiest non-nerdy thing ever, which is uh a uh a friend of mine uh told me about terminal T R M N L. And it is a little device that uh is an e-reader and it gets you out of your head and it displays all the information you need to know by looking at your phone without showing it on your phone. So you're not picking up your phone all the time. So it integrates with everything, integrates with your website, integrates with your calendars, and it just is a little e-reader that sits there and tells you how many, you know, what do you have coming up on your calendar, what the weather's like in your next vacation destination, how many emails you sent yesterday, whatever you want. So terminal T-R-M-N-L. I love that.

SPEAKER_01:

I'm gonna buy one of those for myself. That sounds like a must needed gift. I would say little device I'm just unpacking here. And again, these guys are not a sponsor, but these uh these mics from DJI that allow noise canceling and multi-party mixing and streaming uh uh of multiple people in person at an event like CES. I mean, these are a lifesaver. I basically have a TV production studio in my pocket, uh, between my phone, my mics. Uh DJI might even be banned now in the US. I don't know. They're not a sponsor, they're not a client. So we'll find out. But amazing technology in any case. There are many different manufacturers. And um, yeah, these are the kind of products that are kind of pro Sumer, right? They're for professionally I use them. I'm a I'm a consumer and a user as well. And it it makes basically having a TV production studio in your pocket possible, or a podcast studio in your pocket.

SPEAKER_00:

So it's it is so incredible what we can do at home now, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01:

It's amazing at home, at CES, out in the world. Well, thanks so much, Russ. Thanks everyone for listening, watching. Uh happy Hanukkah, happy Christmas, Merry Christmas, happy new year, Kwanzaa, whatever you're celebrating. Uh, you know, really enjoy it, and we'll see you in Las Vegas at CES. Thanks, everyone. Thanks, Russ. Thanks, Evan.