IT Awards: Geek of the Year

Alan Ramaley, thePlatform, Seattle
Employees in Washington: 130

While you can watch almost any TV program on the internet today, Alan Ramaley of thePlatform thinks about how to get them there. The CTO of the online video management and publishing company oversees all product offerings that help customers like The Associated Press, CNBC, PBS and Fox Sports Network publish their sizable video libraries for digital streaming.

Ramaley spent seven years as a program manager at Microsoft, then joined fellow alumni Andrew Olson and Rahul Sonnad and former Adobe executive (now CEO) Ian Blaine to cofound the company in 2000. In 2006, thePlatform was acquired by Comcast.

Ramaleys latest achievement is the development of mpx, an automated system that helps publishers deliver video to a dizzying range of devices, from desktop computers to mobile phones and the iPad. In addition to smoothing the technical complexities, mpx helps producers to integrate publishing with social media like Twitter and monetize those properties effectively through advertising or pay-per-view models.

[Second Place]
Brian Bershad, Google, Seattle
Employees in WA: 800-plus

Even though Brian Bershad no longer teaches computer science at the University of Washington, he remains an affiliate faculty member and a booster of the schools students. As engineering director of Google Seattle, he has hired many of the universitys graduates. Bershad is no stranger to the private sector, having cofounded virtualization startup Illumita (now Skytap) while a professor at UW until 2007. Under his leadership, Google Seattle has worked closely with other Google operations to help develop such high-profile products as Google Talk, Google Maps and the Chrome browser.