It’s time to vote for the top innovation bloggers of 2011 over at Innovation Excellence. The list of nominees is fantastic – and a great indicator of the growing community of people that are passionate about innovation.

You can vote by leaving a comment on the voting page, or by sending a tweet to @ixchat with your nominee’s name in it. And there are prizes! So vote now.

It’s depressing, but it looks like the guys that actively campaign to get votes this will probably be at the top again this year. However, there are lots of great people on the list that might get overlooked – here are a few recommendations of people that you might want to consider:

Deb Mills-Scofield: Deb is involved in innovation consulting and VC work, among a range of other things, which gives her blog great practical insight. Her recent post Status Quophiles and Quophobes is an excellent place to start.

Helen Walters: Helen has written about innovation and design for a wide range of publications. Her tumblr blog is great example of how to use that format well. Start by checking out the post on the web and serendipity.

Melba Kurman: Melba’s area of expertise is getting knowledge out of universities and into the world – a critical innovation issue. Her recent post on the best US universities for technology transfer gives an idea of what she regularly talks about.

Kay Plantes: Kay specializes in business model innovation, which is an area of increasing importance. Her great post about how Dow Corning disrupted itself is a good example of what she writes about.

Nilofer Merchant: Nilofer is awesome. She writes about a wide range of topics, and every post is incisive and insightful. Start with Are You Standing Out Today to see what I mean.

There are plenty of great choices – go vote now!