SAIL's FKP innovation awards, the PDF
I’m glad to see that Sail has posted a PDF of this year’s Freeman K. Pittman awards (downloadable from this page). In honor of former Technical Editor Pittman, every December four of us choose what we think are the most innovative, exciting products recently introduced in the category we cover. I take it quite seriously. Regular Panbo readers won’t be too surprised to learn that I singled out Garmin’s 376C with XM Weather, Navman’s 3380 autopilot, Uniden’s UM625C VHF, Navionics’s Platinum charts, and Si-Tex’s AIS receiver (which I qualified as a contrarian choice due to its poor build quality). What did I miss, or better yet, what brand new product should be on my candidate list for the Feb., 2007, awards?
I think that it's important to focus on both innovation, and proven / available. Proven doesn't have to mean it's been on the market for three years, but it does mean that there is more than a press release and a prototype. Should customers buy the products that are implicitly recommended, or merely watch them for another year and wait for PS to do a real review of them?
Are the Pittman awards going to companies with the best PR agency, or to actual products? I believe that if the product is not generally available, and you haven't actually used a production version, then it doesn't deserve an award until next year. Perhaps you could have a category for products "to watch".
It's dramatically easier to be innovative with a press release or prototype than with a product that is on the retailers shelves with a three year warranty.
I don't think the objective is to turn the readership into beta testers.