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PC World has just releases a new list of 50 Most Important People on the Web. The people featured in this list have each made a significant contribution to development of the Internet. Notably missing is Bill Gates and that’s likely because of him announing his retirement. It is worth studying these people in greater detail because they are some of the best new business role models alive today. Truly exceptional individuals in most cases. Here’s my favourites:
- Steve Jobs, Apple CEO #2
- Eric Schmidt, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, The Google Guys #1
- Jimmy Wales, founder Wikipedia #5
- Niklas Zennstrom, Janus Frii founders Skype and KaZaa #15
- Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com CEO #24
Today, the person I would like to meet the most is Steve Jobs. However, when I was growing up I admired Bill Gates and followed his every move. The book Accidental Empires by famous industry columnist Robert X Cringely is a brilliant exploration of the early years of the PC industry and highly recommended. The funny thing is that Bill Gates the original poster child for paradodies with a now defunt website available as a book also, The Secret Diary of Bill Gates. More recently Steve Jobs has been the target of a hilarious parady blog: The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs. So would you rather be Steve Jobs or Bill Gates?
In 2003 I met Mikko Hypponen # 43 on the list when I organised a series of IT Security Conferences in Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban. I was contracting to Y3K Group, now ISA and they used to be primary agents for F-Secure in South Africa. So we got to spend some good time together and I learnt a ton from this awesome speaker on how to convey the very complex technical message of anti-virus and Information Security into layman’s terms.
Oh and BTW, how did I find out about this list? My MySpace friend, Tila Tequila #50 sent a Bulletin announcing her position on this awesome list 
So the question remains…how do I make a significant contribution to the development of the Internet, to be listed on such a list? Maybe a 50 Most Important People on the Internet in South Africa is order. Let me know who you think should be on such a list.