(Radio Iowa) – Voting is now underway for the Iowa Association of Business and Industry’s second annual “Coolest Thing Made in Iowa” competition. A-B-I spokesperson Kelsey O’Connor says anyone can vote. “It’s designed to really highlight Iowa’s dynamic manufacturing industry,” she says. O’Connor says they had 70 nominations in the first year, and the only item not eligible this year is last year’s winner.

“Everything else is still eligible to be nominated. So just because it didn’t make it last year doesn’t mean it can’t compete again. So we encourage people to re nominate those same products,” she says. O’Connor says as a native of North Carolina she learned a lot about Iowa in the first year, as did the native Iowans she works with. “I got lots of comments of ‘I didn’t know that was made here or in my backyard. In my community.’ There were things like a NASCAR wheel, that was surprising, the custom built pipe organs out of Dobson That was exciting to learn more about them, as well, wine, we saw beer, just a variety of products,” O’Connor says.

O’Connor its’ easy to nominate an Iowa-made product. “If you go to coolest thing, I-A dot-com, you’ll see a nominated product button on the top right corner, and that’s where you go. It’s a fairly easy process. We try to make sure it stays as simple as possible. You just need a product description, a company contact, and a logo and a picture of the product,” she says. They’ll take nominations through April 18th, and then will confirm the products are made here.

“All confirmed nominees will be listed on the website, and you can go in and pick up to four of your favorite items to cast your vote and hoping that they make the top 16. So from the top 16, we’ll go to top eight, top four, and the winner is announced at A-B-I is taking care of business conference, June 11th,” O’Conor says.

A baler from Vermeer Manufacturing was the winner of the first year of the contest.