Launched in 2000, the annual silicon.com Agenda Setters poll aims to create a who's who of the individuals bossing the tech industry.

silicon.com editor Tony Hallett has been involved in the project every year since its inception.

Here silicon.com's analysis and reports editor Sylvia Carr sits down with Hallett to discuss seven years of Agenda Setters - the major themes, the winners and losers and who will be back next year.

silicon.com: What are some of the major themes you've noticed on the Agenda Setters list over the past seven years?
Hallett: If we go back to 2000, the web and the growth of dot-coms was a big deal. It was a real boom time and that's reflected in the names that are on there. We see entrepreneurs but also the people leading communications companies, especially telcos and even the telecoms equipment makers. Chris Gent, CEO of Vodafone AirTouch, won it - the first British winner. The second British winner was Ashley Highfield, director of new media and technology at the BBC, in 2004.

But then we see a shift to big media.
That's right. Steve Case was the winner from AOL-Time Warner in 2001. He was symbolic of the deal maker and empire builder. Bertelsmann and Vivendi Universal also made the top 10 that year. Then in 2002 Rupert Murdoch won it. He's the only individual who's been an Agenda Setter every single year.

Do new products ever determine a winner?
I believe products were a factor in 2003, when Steve Jobs won due to the success of the iPod and iTunes and the resurgence of Apple - he was a very popular choice.

What about the Asian influence?
We begin to see the rise of China in 2003 with Chinese premier Hu Jintao at number 4. Since then we've seen more and more individuals from Asia on the list. In 2004 you see the rise of the IT services industry, especially some of the offshore providers, the Indian companies in this space such as TCS, Wipro and Infosys. That's a huge trend which continues to this day with a company like Huawei in products.

Who's a typical Agenda Setter?
Niklas Zennström of Skype fame and before that Kazaa satisfies a lot of the classic Agenda Setters criteria - repeatable success, affecting IT on a global basis with something like peer-to-peer, in the most recent case for VoIP, and longevity. He's a young guy who will be coming out with things in years to come, I think.

He debuted on the 2004 list at number 3 - in with a bullet. Then he came in fourth in 2005 and 10th this year.

Has the type of winner changed over the years?
Up until around 2004 we saw lots of CEOs of companies and lots of people who we call 'politicos' - politicians, regulators, heads of standards bodies.

But in 2005 although there were still a number of CEOs from Silicon Valley and around the world, the list started to feel more creator- or inventor-led. And that flows through to this year's picks.

Who are some of these creator/inventor types?
In 2005 we had Ian Foster, an academic and grid pioneer doing cutting-edge work in that area. There was Mark Cuban, an entrepreneur and blogger who's seen as someone who will try different things. There's Adam Curry, the man credited with inventing podcasting. And Bram Cohen, the guy behind BitTorrent, one of the biggest developments in P2P in the past couple of years.

And are these types on the list again this year?
This year they come in under what we now call web 2.0 - the creators of Flickr, Digg and Craigslist make the list. Also the YouTube founders are in the top 10 for user-generated content and at number 7 is Jimmy Wales, the guy behind Wikipedia. So it's become much more about creative types.

And yet Ray Ozzie from Microsoft won it.
Yes it's funny because it's the one year that someone from Microsoft has been the winner. For years Ballmer and Gates almost got there but never did. The closest was Bill Gates at number 2 in 2003.

Ray Ozzie is a much more creative individual from way back in the Lotus Notes days to Groove Networks. Ozzie's only other appearance on the list was way back in 2001 at number 9, when at Groove.

What are some other themes for 2006?
In second place you see a big theme - the next generation - in there because the judges couldn't put their finger on an individual to personify this. But it was felt that millions of kids and young people who are entering the workforce are really changing the tech industry and corporate IT. For them all the web 2.0 stuff is second nature and they are networked wherever they go, often using multiple technologies at the same time.

What do you think of the fact that compared to previous years there are no politicians on this year's list?
Politicians come and go. You may get some who affect change in high-tech over decades but that's quite rare. Quite often someone who has that kind of mandate [to create a high-tech agenda] is moved onto another role in no time.

You've mentioned there are fewer Silicon Valley CEOs on the list than previously but even some who made it are not the usual names. What do you make of this?
We're seeing a changing of the guard. In past years Scott McNealy was on the list. Now it's the new Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz, although low down on the list in the 40s he represents the new generation.

Where a few years ago you'd have Larry Ellison from Oracle figure prominently, it's from a different company but you see the handing on of the baton to someone like Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce.com, who appears not for the first time. So you see the move from packaged applications to on-demand and software as a service.

Open source or 'open source thinking' is an issue addressed each year, though with different people. Who do you think personifies this concept?
We tend to think of Linus Torvalds as being the big flag carrier for open source, which he has been in some years though not this time around.

In 2003 we had an interesting winner - Sir John Sulston (at number 39) who helped decode the human genome. The judges really liked him because of his approach - it seems half the world seems to be trying to patent everything and the other half is trying to say 'no'. He very much said, 'open this up, it's for the common good'. They didn't want to make money every time someone wanted to use that information.

There's a sense even Bob Young's Lulu.com comes from 'open source thinking'. And Jimmy Wales' Wikipedia certainly represents a collaborative model.

Rupert Murdoch is the one person who's been on the list all seven years. Is he the epitome of an Agenda Setter?
One of the criteria for being an Agenda Setters is longevity - and so is Murdoch going to be around as much as these guys in their 20s and 30s? He's probably going to be around for a while still.

We've seen him finally get together an internet strategy, after a failed attempt in the late 90s. The panel seems to think he's central in terms of things like going in and buying MySpace. And arguably most other big media companies haven't got their act together as much as News Corp.

Who are the prominent IT users on the list?
In 2004 Richard Granger came in at number 6 - the highest ranking for a user on the poll. He made it for the NHS IT project which is seen as one of the biggest if not the biggest IT projects in the world.

On the user side this year a slightly left field choice was the BT CTO Matt Bross, for building the 21CN which other telcos and analysts all over the world will be watching and possibly copying or improving on. It's interesting the panel chose him and not the CEO of BT or BT Global Services.

Looking back, were there any Agenda Setters choices which were particularly good or particularly bad?
In 2002 we had a choice which was pretty prescient - someone who went on to change not only the tech world but the business world - Eliot Spitzer, the attorney general of NY, at number 13. He went on to crack down on certain practices on Wall Street and recently the insurance industry. His agenda was very much about regulation.

There have been a few calls where people thought a company was so important that it didn't matter who gets the post. But this poll is about individuals. In 2001 we had 'the future BT CEO' at 32 because Sir Peter Bonfield had announced he would step down but Ben Verwaayen hadn't been appointed yet.

It's not about a single role - there are very few companies or governments where a seat at the table simply bestows upon you that status. It is about the individuals who can take the role on and deliver again and again - and always be reinventing themselves and the organisations they work for.

Are there any names you'd expect to see on future Agenda Setters lists?
Marc Andreessen. In 2001 he was number 38. He was a boy wonder for tech in his 20s. He's doing other things now but they're just not so prominent. I'd expect him to come back and do things again.

Linus Torvalds. He's snuggling up with his Linux kernel now - but he'll be back and I'm sure he'll be a voice for that movement still.

I'd put Niklas Zennström in this category too.

What about Sir Tim Berners-Lee?

With the big inventions it's tough. Berners-Lee is now working on the next version of the web. And at MIT he's in as good an organisation as he was in Geneva when he worked on the world wide web. So the idea that he could come up with something big again, something as big as the web - you know, it's hard to follow up inventing the wheel. So anyone who would vote on him based on what he did in the past is taking a pretty long punt.

It's often the people who make good solid improvements year on year who I think could be top of this poll or near the top. That one big invention may change the world but it's not part of the criteria for Agenda Setters.

Is it inevitable that the list is in some part about recognising past achievement?
It's about a track record which indicates future achievements. It's not just based on what they have done. But rather, 'OK, they've done this. Are they going to be setting an agenda in the future?'.