You may be entitled to an award for creative use of Red Hat or JBoss

If your implementation of Red Hat or JBoss was simply brilliant, you may be entitled to official recognition (and other goodies) from Red Hat for it. The company is seeking submissions for its 2011 Red Hat Summit & JBoss Innovation Awards.

I implore you, if your project is good, submit it. I'll be a judge this year and I'm looking forward to reading pages upon pages of project nominations that make me say, "Wow!" (The full list of judges for this year's awards can be found here, middle of the page.)

There are five categories in which your project can win, four of them are outlined below. The fifth category will recognize one winner who has implemented both Red Hat and JBoss solutions. After the judges make our picks, the community will then vote online for the Red Hat Innovator of the Year and the JBoss Innovator of the Year.

Awards will be announced at the awards ceremony at Red Hat Summit and JBoss World May 3-6, 2011 in Boston.

The official categories are (per Red Hat's nomination page):

1.  

   1. Optimized Systems

      Recognition of striking performance, scalability, management and/or usability enhancements delivered with open source solutions

   2. Superior Alternatives

      Recognition of the most successful migration from proprietary solutions to open source alternatives

   3. Extensive Ecosystem

      Recognition of the use of Red Hat or JBoss' expanding partner ecosystem to create innovative architectures based on open source solutions

   4. Carved Out Costs

      Recognition of customers that have leveraged open source solutions to significantly cut costs and extract added value from existing systems

   5. Outstanding Open Source Architecture

      Recognition of the use of Red Hat, JBoss, and partner offerings to create innovative architectures based on open source solutions. (Both JBoss World and Red Hat Summit registrants may compete for this award.)

Need inspiration? Here is the list of last year's winners.

Winners will get the actual award, plus free admission to the Boston Red Hat Summit and JBoss World event, a dinner with other winners and VIPs paid for by Red Hat, access to the VIP lounge during the event, recognition on Red Hat's Web site and other news outlets, including Network World's Open Source Subnet. Plus, you'll also get the satisfaction of a big public pat on the back for a job well done.

Hope to read about your project soon!