Agenda Setters 2007

The Agenda Setters rankings always throw a few curve balls. New groups emerge, others fade from sight. Tony Hallett looks at who's there this year and why mega names such as Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer failed to make the cut.

As ever, those occupying the top 10 places of this year's Agenda Setters list show great power and influence across several high-tech areas. Of course there are some new names, but there are also exclusions that some readers will find baffling.

It's a fair guess that the judges' decision not to vote in Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer or last year's winner Ray Ozzie will raise a few eyebrows. Microsoft is still represented in the Top 50 - identity supremo Kim Cameron at 33 - but those bigwigs at the very top of the Redmond tree are dismissed, despite all they control and the sway they exert.

Certain names seem to make it every year now. Steve Jobs, Eric Schmidt, Niklas Zennström, Rupert Murdoch, Ashley Highfield - they have all been at or nearly at the top in past years, though it still holds true that no one person has ever topped the Agenda Setters poll twice.

Steve Jobs and Eric Schmidt - a lone Google name, for a change - have come close but the ascendancy of Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, in with a bullet at the top, put paid to that.

A debutante at 8 highlights one trend for 2007 that is very much about inclusion. Diane Greene of VMware is not only leading one of the big tech success stories of the past few years - where success means several things - but is also leading the charge of women up the Agenda Setters 50.

Last year eBay CEO Meg Whitman led the female representation at 13, whereas this year there are three women in the top 15 alone, with Whitman down 14 places at 27.

The Guardian's Emily Bell comes in at 13, for the way she is pioneering online. Ian Brown, panellist and research fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute, said she has "been the most effective at not just putting a newspaper online but also changing the whole context - putting in podcasts, videocasts - and actually also on a wider scale really very effectively building the world's first global newspaper".

EU commissioner Viviane Reding is at 10. One panellist said: "She could revolutionise the cost of mobile roaming."

However, politicians, policy-makers and others who in the past this report has dubbed politicos are losers on this year's poll. Reding is the only one in this category, which in past years has included presidents, prime ministers, heads of communications watchdogs around the world and a host of others.

The panel's view was that too often an elected or appointed politico soon moves on to an area that doesn't really touch tech. So much for longevity.

And while the rise of the social networkers and bloggers (covered here and here) are major themes this year, a group who only occasionally makes Agenda Setter polls but is well-represented this time are those we call the money men.

These folks are usually venture capitalists rather than those who would say their main occupation is private equity, though PE's effects on the tech sector got some airplay in the panel debate.

They might not top any single panellist's voting but the names to look out for are: Michael Moritz at 24, Daniel Rimer at 32 and Vinod Khosla at 34. Some would even include Michael Arrington at 35 - who occupies a kind of hybrid role of blogger, entrepreneur and investor.

Between them they account for the backing of some of the biggest names in technology and the internet - names that occupy a good number of other slots on this year's list and probably know the value of this 'man behind the man' role.

Also better represented than usual - and written about here - are several individuals on the user side of the tech equation but surprise omissions, besides Gates and Ballmer, must surely be those running some of the biggest companies in tech and comms.

Whether that's the CEO of countless telecoms providers - though the bosses of Vodafone and NTT DoCoMo do sometimes get a look in - or big Silicon Valley names, the Agenda Setters 07 list again shows that the panel puts more stock in the individual than the office he or she holds.