These are not the only four companies, there are also other much better and more deserving companies, which did not get fair chance.

What matters to me as a conference attendee is that these are four outstanding companies that deserve to be on stage.

And they do. I can’t wait to see them.

I am disappointed that you find this so hard to understand that publicly counted votes going into a *MAGIC* filter and out comes the winners is not equal to a fair democratic vote. There is no justification that can fix this.

Let me summarize your reply and your blog post for everyone “We suddenly decided that the voting system was broken so we decided to pick the winners ourselves”. Please think about this for a second, I know you are trying very hard to justify what you did but it does not make any sense.

Also public threats are a really a terrible way to address a concerned community that is trying to address their concerns on your blog. And yes “I just want to reiterate that this is a program we ARE NOT required to have” does sound like a threat so on top of subverting the vote you are trying to stifle decent.

You live in a democracy you should really understand how important perception and trust is towards having a fair vote”

We’re not going to run another vote. They voting in the system is fine, it just doesn’t have any defenses against scripting. The fact is that we have not filtered legitimate votes. We have filtered votes that our web experts tell us are being generated by scripts. I’m not saying any of the finalists are doing this but it seems there are some overzealous fans out there trying to run up the voting and that’s unfortunate. That’s not in the spirit of this program.

The voting is fair and will stand.

Steve

If we decide to hold this program next year we will require that all votes be tied to a registered email account and verified to eliminate any potential for fraud.

In its second year, this program has been able to kick off a lot of goodwill by showcasing the great enterprise 2.0 innovation, creativity and company prowess across the industry.

As a conference we put a lot of effort into our marketing and PR thus all the companies participating in Launch Pad benefit from the behind-the-scenes effort the team puts into promoting the event, the special programs, and highlighting individual and organizational members of our community.

But let’s not forget that this is not marketed as a popularity contest. We ask people to vote on the basis of what is the best idea, the strongest company, the newest innovation that our marketplace is launching.

We recognized that the system was not perfect, but it was what we had to work with this time around. And when we began noticing some issues with the voting, we informed participants that we’d screen the votes against a filter that we deemed fair and appropriate.

We used a filter to de-dupe ALL duplicate IPs based on range and time-stamp (to prevent fraud) - and applied the SAME filter across ALL elite nine companies.

We then accepted the top 4 companies with the highest average vote (on a scale of 1 to 5) - and resulted in our winners.

Please note that Launch Pad is not selling a product or a service. We are not biased toward who the winners are. We are simply a platform to showcase ideas, and an arena for folks to discover.

We hear your rumblings and accusations, but I just want to reiterate that this is a program we ARE NOT required to have. Myself, Stowe Boyd, our GM Steve Wylie and our team have dedicated many many resources to making this program come to life over the course of the last month and we’re disappointed at this feedback.

We congratulate ALL the participating companies for their diligence and strength in an economy that’s been as trying as 2009 and wish the greatest success to all the members of our ever-growing enterprise 2.0 community.

Thank you,
~ Janetti Chon
Community Manager
Enterprise 2.0 Conference