FIRST WORD: Taking The Prize

Jack Rogers, Editor in Chief, Business Facilities

From the March/April 2012 issue

When we planned this issue, we reserved the cover for a timely feature on the hot-growth digital media sector. We also set aside a healthy number of pages for our new Economic Development Awards.

Well, it turns out we just couldn’t keep an award off the cover—as the issue headed to press, one of the digital media shops profiled in our cover story snagged an Academy Award for Best Animated Short. We congratulate the folks at Shreveport, LA-based Moonbot Studios for their meteoric rise from start-up to stardom.

Moonbot’s Oscar has plenty of company on these pages as we unveil our first annual package of awards honoring the economic development agencies who have consistently established and executed the best practices in our industry.

Every year, Business Facilities bestows its top honors for Economic Development Deal of the Year and State of the Year. We also put our imprimatur on the leading states and metros in our annual Rankings Report, the most comprehensive set of rankings you can find.

Now we turn our spotlight on the organizations whose efforts create the development success stories that fill our magazine every month. The worthy finalists in all of our awards categories made our task of picking the winners a lot harder than we thought it would be, a credit to them all.

And so, without further ado, it’s time to raise the curtain, open the envelopes and start the applause.

 

Jack Rogers

Editor in Chief
jrogers@groupc.com