The Oscars of Northwest tech: Scenes from the 2016 GeekWire Awards

The energy at the EMP Museum was palpable on Thursday evening as entrepreneurs, engineers, innovators, leaders, and more came together at the GeekWire Awards to recognize the very best of the Pacific Northwest tech community.

Now in its eighth year, this event, presented by Wave Business, just keeps getting bigger and more exciting, with more than 1,000 people joining us on Thursday for an awesome night to celebrate the region’s robust technology industry.

Geeks make me happy — love to hang with my kind. Thank you for invitation to exciting event! @geekwire @johnhcook @toddbishop #gwawards

— Andrea James (@AndreaSJames) May 13, 2016

Massive congrats to all the nominees and winners. Epic community celebration, @geekwire. #gwawards #keepinnovating pic.twitter.com/ZuS4I2b9P9

— Matt Joe (@themattjoe) May 13, 2016

Thanks @geekwire, fun night at #gwawards ! New friends, #HelloKitty & lots of geekiness = heart full. Cheers to the honorees! #seattletech

— Meghan Lockhart (@mlockhart) May 13, 2016

So much fun at the #gwawards tonight. The Seattle tech community is ??!Thank you @geekwire! #tagboard pic.twitter.com/l258B5ql2J

— Downtown Matt Brown (@mattbrown7) May 13, 2016

After collecting more than 45,000 votes — nearly double the tally from last year — we had the pleasure of naming winners in 13 geeky categories ranging from Startup of the Year to App of the Year. You can see all the winners and finalists here.

Before the awards presentation kicked off, attendees enjoyed tasty food, cold drinks, and great networking throughout the EMP Museum, which opened up the its awesome Hello Kitty and Indie Video Game Revolution exhibits.

As folks arrived at the EMP Museum, we had a chance to chat with a few on the Avanade Orange Carpet, asking folks about their favorite technologies, political views, and much more.

Attendees also had fun at the Moz photo booth — see all the pictures from Usnaps here.

VIP attendees had a chance to enjoy a special lounge hosted by Wave Business Solutions:

As the awards ceremony began, we showed off an inspiring video from our friends at Killer Infographics on the giant Sky Church big screen.

You can check out more reaction from our guests on Twitter. Rover.com had the Tweet of the Night:

When you find out your CEO just won CEO of the Year at the #GWAwards. pic.twitter.com/8lshok3j5z

— Rover.com (@RoverDotCom) May 13, 2016

A big thanks to our GeekWire Awards sponsors for making the event possible: Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, Wave Business, OfferUp, Knoll, First Tech Federal Credit Union, Kibble & Prentice, EY, Avanade, UPS, Nuance, Moz,Salesforce, Tourism Victoria, MyWorkNinja, Fastly, Indeed, Code Fellows,Whitepages and RealSelf.

And here are some more photos from the night — another big thanks to Eric Tra and Kevin Lisota for snapping these awesome pictures.