Person of the Year: Me...

... and you, and you, and you and yeah, Mom, you too.

Time Magazine's 2006 Person of the Year is the newly empowered, review-writing, blog-posting, photo-taking, video-making prosumer. If the choice seems like a no-brainer to those of us steeped in the heady rhetoric of Web 2.0, let's remember that this is a risk-averse journalistic institution. (In 2001 Time named Rudy Giulilani Man of the Year, bypassing the obvious--if incendiary--choice: Osama bin Laden.) Viewed in this light, Al Gore or Nancy Pelosi would have made for a much safer choice. Time made a gutsy move and should be commended for it.

This hasn't been the general consensus among the blogging punditry. Some reactions were funny. Others were merely annoying. (When did Gawker go from vapid-but-funny to merely vapid?) And some, I thought, were right on target. But all this is besides the point, namely, my own self-aggrandizement. I contributed a spread to the package, an idea-map of sorts to the companies and concepts that make up Web 2.0. (You can read the text here, but the graphic somehow didn't make it online so it won't make much sense.)

I thought I'd lost the giddy elation of seeing my name in print back in college. But I may not be so wizened after all. Working on the package was a ball. Time produces three separate magazines for the POTY issue, only to choose one of them on the very eve of publication. So on Saturday night I sat down to watch a CNN special on the selection process with no more idea than any other viewer of who Time would pick. My chips were on Ahmadinejad. Then at the end of the hour Time managing editor Richard Stengel revealed his choice: Me! Tomorrow I'll go back to being perpetually unimpressed. Today I give way to giddy elation.

Comments

[Shazz]

Congrats Jeff ... now off to purchase a copy of Time! (It's been a while.) You're right, for such a mainstream pub this is actually quite a leap. :-D

[Alan]

Congrats Jeff, the graphics layout looked like some strange universe ready to spiral out of the pages.

Time broke from a format that had become part of the landscape and there must have been some hand wringing as the Sunday night pressure mounted, but they should certainly get kudos for jump-starting citizen awareness.

The words “will not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes” touch at the heart of what’s going down!
Alan.

[Alan]

Innocentive and the Rockefeller Foundation have announced an interesting collaboration, the development of solutions to the challenges facing poor or vulnerable people around the world. Rockefeller will offer rewards for the best solutions. This development has shifted the non-profit sector into focus with an idea that sounds very worth while.

With a market value portfolio of 3.4 Billion for 2005 The Rockefellow Foundation has what most of the other attempts to utilize the crowdsourcing concept lack, very deep pockets.

They have agreed to create a non-profit area on Innocentive’s global network, specifically designed to spur science and technology solutions to pressing development problems. Alan.
http://www.rockfound.org/about_us/press_releases/2006/121406rf_innocent_pr.pdf

[Kara Udziela]

Way to go, Jeff. They were smart to come to you.

[Health News]

I can't believe how much of this I just wasn't aware of. Thank you for bringing more information to this topic for me. I'm truly grateful and really impressed.