No. 2 The next generation,

Last year's position: Not placed

Why? Raising the bar for the rest of us

Kids, eh. Who would have thought that challenging for the coveted top spot in this year's poll would be the millions - rather than the standard individual (heh, we bent the rules) - who are only just entering the workforce or are perhaps still in school?

Much as the Agenda Setters panellists were told to stick to the one person, the debate again and again came back to a generation which is, in their words, "more networked", "more open" and even "more fickle" than those that have come before.

These young people - 'the next generation' - were in equal parts criticised for their haphazard approach to security (take note, network admins around the world) and praised for their self-reliance in all things tech.

The picture painted was of a generation comfortable not just with old issues of hardware and software but in all aspects of what we now know as web 2.0 - social networking, blogging, DIY wireless, feeds of everything (often via RSS), gaming and peer-to-peer sharing - whether over the internet or huddled around laptops in a dorm room.

As one panellist said: "We've got a new generation of 'Xbox kids' who know more than the IT department… the IT department will have to live up to their expectations, not the other way around."

Many in the workforce today have had to make adjustments over the years to the introduction of email, the web, IM - even the fax and desktop phone going back. The next generation has grown up with all of it. It's as fundamental to their - and the tech industry's - future as simple literacy and numeracy.