The March 2012 NJTC Venture Conference, held recently in Somerset, was dominated by young technology companies, although some life sciences firms were in the room.

New Jersey tech startups took home many honors at the conference, where a number of companies reported they made excellent connections with the venture community. Several angels and VCs told NJTechWeekly.com it was one of the best events at which to find good N.J. companies to fund. The award winners:

• DocView Solutions of Cherry Hill was named best marketing/e-commerce company. The firm’s tablet- and smartphone-based system uses predictive modeling and data analysis to notify a clinician proactively when a patient’s health baseline is changing, thus preventing many hospital readmissions.
• Newark-based Allweb Technologies was best information technology company. The firm has a cloud-based identity- and password-management system that uses fingerprint matching and two-step user authentication.
• ATC Labs, also of Newark, took home the best communications company award for its technology that can increase bandwidth utilization via compression and processing technology.
• The best advanced materials/nano company was Natcore Technology of Red Bank. The small, publicly traded firm is developing a black silicon solar technology that will increase solar cell output.  
• Veracity, a Glen Rock designer and developer of transmission, stage and display products for network video and surveillance applications, won best electronics company.
• Voted both the people’s choice and the company most likely to succeed was SpeechTrans (Lyndhurst), the instant translation firm that offers both apps and landline over-the-phone capabilities.
• The best healthcare/IT company was SpectraMD of Princeton, whose intelligent solution aggregates and analyzes data for more cost-effective and better healthcare outcomes. 

 This year’s program included the usual expo and five-minute pitches along with a luncheon panel discussion, but it added a new twist. Companies were asked to make one-minute elevator pitches in the morning as well as to give longer presentations and answer questions later.

According to one angel we spoke with, the one-minute pitches were an excellent way for the funding community to quickly figure out which companies interested them so they could find them on the floor and devote greater attention to them.

However, some entrepreneurs we spoke to worried such short pitches would discourage people from finding them at the longer presentations. Indeed, at some points the longer presentations were discouragingly sparsely attended, as one presenter noted.