Ground-breaking projects wowed record-breaking crowds at this year's ninth annual iSchool Capstone event. The standing-room-only student showcase drew an audience of more than 500, including high-tech and i-commerce industry professionals scouting the next best ideas in the information field. "There were all sorts of new and creative ways to solve problems that I had never even thought about," says Henry Berg, an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the UW's Center for Commercialization and one of the lead judges at the 2011 Capstones.

Berg's five-member panel awarded the $1,000 Commercial Potential Award to a clever media-sharing application called "Qlick," developed by a team from the iSchool's Bachelor of Science in Informatics program. Team members were inspired by deep -- and clandestine - investigation at college parties, where they often witnessed one person juggling their friends' half-dozen cameras to catch a group shot. Same image, six takes. "We saw that as a redundancy in documentation," says Qlick team member Gavin Elster.

The new Qlick app allows party-goers to post a photo in real time on a shared event wall and add instantaneous comments, videos, and background music to the image. It turns capturing an event into a community experience. "We chose the name because it evoked social cliques, using the 'q', and also the 'click' of a camera, taking a photo," says Elster.

Judges liked the possibilities. "We felt Qlick was right in line with what is developing in the market right now," says Berg, a veteran of the Microsoft Corporation, Vulcan Inc., and A3 Alliance. "It was something you could make into a real product in a real company, and it was a good match for the tech talent in Seattle."

The winner of the $1,500 Social Impact Award, Shilpa Allimatti, also addressed issues of redundancy with her time- and labor-saving "Electronic Whiteboard Project." The Masters of Science in Information Management (MSIM) student took a hard look at the outdated, manual-input whiteboard system for tracking patients, attending staff, and beds at the UW Medical Center. The duplicated data entry system, open to a mismatch of information, was resulting in a "waste of precious patient care time," she concluded.

Allimatti developed a sophisticated application, soon to be implemented in select units at the medical center, that automatically synchronizes information when hospital charts are updated. "With the new system, large-screen LCD monitors are constantly refreshing with patient data, safety alerts, RN association, and other information," she says.

Judges saw promising, immediate outcomes for the project. "Removing the possibility of errors or misinformation that could lead to patient harm impressed us. We could really see this having a direct impact on saving lives," says Batya Friedman, professor in the iSchool, adjunct professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, and lead judge for the Social Impact Award.

The Capstones are the culminating project for graduating students in the Informatics, MSIM and Master of Library and Information Science (MLIS) programs. Students are required to identify a problem that addresses real information challenges faced by the public, non-profit, or private sectors. Many work one-on-one with companies in developing their projects.

"The Capstones give students an opportunity to think about the real world, to go out and understand what needs to be done, to frame a question that needs to be answered, and then take action," says Friedman. "That's a huge skill and one that's not often taught - especially in the undergraduate experience."

This year's June 2 event packed a crowd of more than 500 into a new venue at the UW Tower. The evening kicked off with students introducing their 67 projects in a fast-forward, 30-second "Information Overload" presentation. In quick order, the audience learned about everything from new iPhone apps and web-based library collection tools to streamlined data management systems, including a Business Intelligence plan for the Global Partnerships microfinance institution that won honorable mention for Social Impact Award.

The audience included representatives from leading corporations such as Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, T-Mobile, The Boeing Company, and presenting sponsor Intelius, many of them working the room offering cards and counsel and collaborative opportunities to students. "They came to check out what students were doing. Were these people they wanted to hire? Were these ideas they want to capitalize on?" says Marie Potter, the iSchool academic adviser who coordinated the 2011 Capstone event.

Audience members had their own chance to vote. Top "Audience Choice" awards for poster presentations included a Firefox extension that keeps plug-ins in browsers up to date; an iPhone app that allows Henry Art Gallery visitors to deeply engage with exhibits; a mobile app that gives visitors to the Seattle Center information on the past, present, and future of sites throughout the campus; and an Electronic Visual Scorecard that automates collection of manufacturing floor metrics and key performance indicators for Fluke's Service Tools Factory.

The top winners say they were surprised to grab an award in such a competitive environment. "This year, it was a larger field and the quality of projects was extremely good - absolutely brilliant," said Allimatti, creator of the Electronic Whiteboard.

Elster, from the Qlick team, said they were "blown away when we were given the award for Commercial Potential. We just couldn't believe it. People had really latched onto the idea."

Potential industry employers at the 2011 Capstone event were already out of luck with these top contenders. Every Informatics student on the Qlick team had already been hired away, including Elster, who is working as a web developer for the UW's Office of Research Information Services.

Allimatti is working full-time as a Cerner Senior Analyst doing IT work at Virginia Mason Medical Center.

She wouldn't be where she is, doing what she does, without the iSchool, she says. "I came from a very technical background. What the iSchool gave me was an understanding of how to work with people -- an understanding of how the people perspective fits with the technology parts of nuts and bolts systems."

Information about next year's Capstone event can be found at: www.ischool.uw.edu/capstone