I got allot of great response from my first list - so here’s some

I don’t care if he gets a ton of press, Robert Scoble’s journey is all our journey. Robert Twittered about the birth of his new son Milan, blogged all the things wrong at Microsoft - while working there - let us all grok the potential of podcasting and vlogging and is now about to embark on a new venture - which I’m sure will rock, despite who his new boss is. I love Robert - he’s one of my favorite people - and a family man I may add. Here he is with his wife Maryam and his first son Patrick.

Hugh MacLeod - what can you say about a gy who’s changed the blogosphere single handedly by using cartoons to express everything and more about an issue - through sarcasm and insights. Hugh rocks. If you don’t know Hugh - just check out his blog and what he’s done for Stormhoek (among others.) Hugh is the future of our world. Wait til he gets motivated! Make sure to read “How to be Creative”. Hugh’s comments on issues is usually the final word (unless I disagree.)

Anina - invented the notion of fashion blogging. She founded a network of fashion blogs called - 360Fashion Network which combines all roles and players of the fashion world into a comprehensive voice of insights and revelations of the trends and issues that drive the fashion world, with an entrepreneurial zeal and chutzpah that only a SuperModel can have. Anina is in China now - where it’s already New Year’s Eve. Wherever she goes - she blazes a path - and looks good while doing it.

Matt Mullenweg - is a young man who has been blazing paths since he first showed up a few years back with an open source blogging platform called Wordpress. He showed up RIGHT at the right time - when Moveable Type was taken out of open source and Perl just seemed so old and stale. So along comes Wordpress and the rest if history. Meanwhile Matt has been leading our industry forward as an open source advocate and his company Automattic - has a coolio CEO, they have a killer service - called Wordpress.com and they just turned down $200M. Everybody loves Matt.

Stowe Boyd - is the kind of guy who’s so fucking smart, that it’s embarrassing. He makes a living being an ‘insultant’ - which is my term for folks who have to tell the dirty truth to corps - whether they like it or not. I’m not sure if Stowe likes the term, but when I think of Stowe - I just imagine this room full of marketing wonks, Knowledge Management idiots and CEO/CIOs taking ‘big gulps‘. Stowe has something to say about - just about everything.  His politics, beliefs and style are more in tune with mine - than most everybody else.

Paolo Valdemarin - is both a close friend, colleague and CEO/blogger of his own company called eVectors. I met Paolo for a second time when I started traveling to Trieste, Italy to work on a digital city there (another story.) Since then Paolo and I have worked on and off on various projects, including our new efforts with RadioOne and some killer new stuff we’ll get out by Q2 next year. In the mean time Paolo’s company eVectors has been on the cutting edge of blogging and CMS tools (being Userland Frontier’s best developers) as well as inventing some coolio tagging and aggregation technology which they called k-collector. Lately Paolo has developed a new kind of direct manipulation CMS called (appropriately enough) ‘Pages’ and has shown what all this can do connected together with an Italian blogger aggregation site called Nova100. Watch for Paolo to step up and get his proper recognition and props - in 2008.

Jemima Kiss - is a writer for the Guardian and a friend. She reminds me of one of these folks who can do anything she wants and is having just too much fun to go be an entrepreneur or work for somebody doing some boring job. So she continues to be on the cutting edge of journalism, combining blogging, our industry and so prolific I can barely keep up with her. She cranks out copy and insights faster than most writers even get their intros done. Its smart cookies like Jemima that give me hope. We certainly need LOTS of Jemimas out there - for things to get better.

Tekriti Software - is made up of three young Indian fellows named Gaurav Bhanagar, and Manish DhingraAshish Kumar - and 60 Indian programmers (shout out to Arvind and Gurpreet!) They are Broadband Mechanics outsourcing partner and a key member of our distributed team around the world. I try to go to India 2-3 times a year to be with them - whether its for a wedding, a launch of a customer’s product or just to stay in sync. These guys all went to school at IIT (though different campuses) and then all went to work for Microsoft in Redmond. That’s where they met and they decided to come home and start Tekriti. We did ourmedia.org and GoingOn together and even a project for Avid - which never saw the light of day! I am blessed for knowing them and having the good luck of working with them. They have their own video distribution platform called Tek Media - and they also do things like B2B travel servcies for customers in the Indian market. Everyone should be as blessed as Broadband Mechanics to have their own Tekriti partners!

Adriana Cronin-Lukas - is a blogging consultant. This time - I won’t use the term ‘insultant’ cause she’s much nicer and coy with her customers. I’ve met Adrianna a number of occasions and her wit, insights and diplomacy just reeks of “I’m gonna do whatever it takes to help these folks out” - kind of an attitude. Clearly we need more like her.

Thomas Vander wal - is one of those guys who keeps our industry interesting. He’s best known as the guy who coined the phrase folksonomy - but I bet he’s getting tired of that notoriety. I bet he thinks of himself as a knowledge management expert, entrepreneur, coolio dude - who’s smart as hell and who flies around the world - spreading the word and keeping it real. To me - he’s another link in the chain of our distributed future - which I rely upon.

All of these folks have changed my world and I thank them for it.

And with that - I bid 2007 adieu.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 31st, 2007 at 5:24 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.