Over 200 executives from some of Silicon Valley’s best known companies attended the Irish Technology Leadership Group-Silicon Valley Awards 2008 where Dublin, Ireland-based ChangingWorlds won the top honor, receiving the 2008 ITLG-Irish Times Innovation Award.

In their first year, the ITLG-Silicon Valley Awards are part of a program initiated to spur Irish technology companies to expand into the US and to encourage investment in Ireland from Silicon Valley’s leading corporations. The event was held at the Schwab Center in Stanford University, with sponsorship from the Irish Times, Irish America Magazine, Invest Northern Ireland, and others.

Senior executives from throughout Silicon Valley turned out for the event representing companies such as Cisco Systems, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Palm, Tesla Motors, Apple and many more.

The ITLG-Irish Times 2008 Innovation Award was presented to ChangingWorlds for the company’s impressive customer successes, product strategy, management team and outstanding intellectual property portfolio. Based in Dublin and founded in 1999, ChangingWorlds provides mobile data personalization and mobile Internet products to a customer base that already includes over 50 mobile operators worldwide such as Vodafone, O2, the TeliaSonera Group, T-Mobile Austria, Celcom Malaysia and CSL Hong Kong. Based on advanced artificial intelligence technology, ChangingWorlds’ ClixSmart(TM) Intelligent Portal platform offers a personalized content discovery solution that enhances content relevance and optimizes the user experience of the mobile Internet.

Also receiving special recognition on the night were Intel Chairman, Dr. Craig Barrett, and Ireland’s Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Micheal Martin. Both were judged by the ITLG to have made significant contributions to the extraordinary growth of the high-tech industry in Ireland over the past decade. The awards also coincided with the 15th anniversary of the production of the “first Irish microprocessor”, which was assembled on an Intel production line in County Kildare, Ireland in the spring of 1993.

Commenting on the evening, ITLG Chairman John Hartnett said: “This is truly a great day for recognizing so many great technologists and technology companies in Ireland and we are pleased to have been able to be part of it. We are also looking forward to further initiatives over the course of 2008 to deepen the links that exist between Ireland and Silicon Valley, both of which can benefit from continued interaction and investment.”