@LARGE
Big Night
By Scott Kirsner, Globe Staff, 4/10/2000
I'm not expecting limo-lock in Kendall Square on Wednesday night. Few people don tuxes for the MIT Sloan eBusiness Awards, and low-cut, tattoo-revealing gowns are little in evidence. The after-parties, such as they are, don't attract hordes of paparazzi.
But on the sunny side: Burt Bachrach won't be there, crooning interminably.
MIT's Sloan School of Management created the eBusiness Awards last year to call attention to its new Center for eBusiness, which seeks to ''develop managers who can understand and manage new ways of marketing and doing business in the digital economy.'' The awards and the eBusiness program are also, not insignificantly, a way for Sloan to cozy up to nouveau riche dot-commies (read: potential donors).
The glam factor was decidedly low last year, and there were quite a few empty seats. Many of the invitees must have been unable to tear themselves away from the office.
Both those things should change this year, with better organization and speakers that include Lou Dobbs, chief space case at Space.com, perpetually-glowing Akamai Technologies CEO George Conrades, and Carl Yankowski, the escape artist who deftly bailed out of Reebok last year to take the top job at Palm Computing - just before its IPO.
Below are the finalists for each of the seven categories.
Instead of following the new Wall Street Journal methodology of interrogating the voters to identify likely winners, I used the time-tested Jay Carr method: I guessed. You'll be able to see who won either by watching the live Webcast at www.mitawards.org or visiting the site on Thursday.
And I'll reveal my own score next week.
Web Responsibility Award
[] NetNanny
[X] TRUSTe
[] Verisign
[] iCanBuy
With the Federal Trade Commission investigating how dozens of Web sites collect and use consumer data, and DoubleClick still reeling from a public pounding over its decision to link online activity to individual consumer profiles, TRUSTe seems a shoo-in for this category.
After several years, TRUSTe is finally emerging as the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval when it comes to safeguarding user privacy on the Web. (Recently, they tweaked Concord's MotherNature.com for inappropriately displaying the TRUSTe seal after MotherNature's license with the company had expired.)
International Power Player Award
[X] Softbank
[] NTTdocomo
[] Freeserve
Japan's Softbank family of investment companies has had a stellar record since the early days of the Net. It's backed such companies as Yahoo, E-Loan, E-Trade, and GeoCities.
Softbank runs the biggest Net-focused venture fund in Europe. Softbank Capital Partners, a Newton-based piece of the empire, has done late-stage and post-IPO financing of companies such as Buy.com, PeoplePC, and Webvan. Softbank has a lock on this category.
Rookie of the Year Award
[] Kozmo
[] MobShop
[] MarketSoft
[X] Openratings
[] Handspring
This is a hot category. Akamai took this award last year - a very sharp call by the jurors, and also a bit of a nod to the company's strong MIT connections.
For that same reason, I like Openratings this year. It sprang from the MIT Media Lab, it was a semifinalist in last year's $50K business plan competition, and it's addressing a tough problem - how do you know whether you can trust a seller online? - with some cool technology.
But MobShop (formerly Accompany), a service that aggregates buyer demand, is also a strong contender. That's despite its abominable new name, which makes it sound like an online merchant of Tommy guns, stogies, and fedoras.
Clicks & Mortar Award
[] Gateway
[] Land's End
[] UPS
[X] ClixnMortar
[] Fitlinxx
Here's an odd group of finalists. ClixnMortar, a project of the Simon Property Group, a mall developer, is the most unique.
It's developing hand-held computers that let you compile wish lists and shopping lists in a real-world mall, then either submit them at the mall and have all your purchases tallied in one place, with the products wrapped and waiting, or upload them to the Internet, where you can cajole others to buy them for you.
While Gateway is a solid nominee that has managed to integrate its phone, online, and retail components seamlessly, I think the jurors will give this one to ClixnMortar, mostly out of a sense of pity. The message is this: ''Nice try, you poor, doomed mall developers.''
Global Reach Award
[] Babylon.com
[] eBay
[X] Monster.com
[] Nortel
''This award recognizes innovation at an eBusiness that has leveraged the Internet as a channel for extending global reach,'' the application materials state.
San Jose's eBay has built sites for residents of Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Japan. And wherever eBay goes, markets suddenly bloom for antiques, domain names, broken DVD players, and, of course, signed Britney Spears photos.
But Maynard's Monster.com is in multiple markets, too, reinventing the way employers hire and the way employees troll for better jobs. I'm going to go with the local nominee here.
Disruptive Technology Award
[] Phone.com
[] Avantgo
[] Palm
[] Net2phone
[X] Red Hat
Net2Phone, one of the dominant players in the Internet telephony market, probably deserves to win this category.
It offers domestic long-distance calls for rates as low as one cent a minute. And it presents a real threat to traditional long-distance players - so much so that a consortium that includes AT&T and British Telecom invested $1.4 billion in Net2Phone last month.
But Red Hat, as a representative of the Linux/open source movement, probably will win here, not least because of its eye-popping 1999 IPO. And there's the perception that the Linux operating system presents the most potent threat to Microsoft.
Industry Transformation Award
[X] Healtheon
[] Ventro
[] BuildNet
[] Enron
[] Quicktake
Former Netscape chairman Jim Clark has taken on a huge challenge with Healtheon - improving the quality of health care services while lowering their cost - and I think voters will recognize that. Ventro (formerly Chemdex) and BuildNet, which traffic in other kinds of online, business-to-business marketplaces, could garner a few votes, but I think Jim ''Mr. New New Thing'' Clark's star power will overpower them.
If you e-mail me your picks by midnight tomorrow, I'll mention the top scorers next week.
Scott Kirsner is a Boston writer and a contributing editor at Wired, Fast Company, and Boston Magazine.