You will probably have seen this already, but as there are only a couple hours left of 2006 I thought it's appropriate to blog this here too. TIME magazine has again chosen the person of the year, and for 2006, it is YOU!!!

"To be sure, there are individuals we could blame for the many painful and disturbing things that happened in 2006. The conflict in Iraq only got bloodier and more entrenched. A vicious skirmish erupted between Israel and Lebanon. A war dragged on in Sudan. A tin-pot dictator in North Korea got the Bomb, and the President of Iran wants to go nuclear too. Meanwhile nobody fixed global warming, and Sony didn't make enough PlayStation3s.

"But look at 2006 through a different lens and you'll see another story, one that isn't about conflict or great men. It's a story about community and collaboration on a scale never seen before. It's about the cosmic compendium of knowledge Wikipedia and the million-channel people's network YouTube and the online metropolis MySpace. It's about the many wresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing and how that will not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes."

So it is not You you, but it is all of us. Sure, it may also be that the 1,6 billion sale of YOU-tube had some impact on this, but still, it's a significant event. Time acknowledged that 2006 marks the year when we started to take over. Instead of choosing some strong man or women superstar, Time chose the collective of the Internet and the technology branded as 2.0. I think this calls for celebration and a question: Now that we are here what should we do in 2007?

I've always believed that the world will change greatly because of phenomenons like the Internet and Open Source and everything else along these lines, like Wikipedia etc... It may not always seem like that when we struggle against "old establishment" in debates on software patents and DMCA-like legislation, but I do believe that in small steps we are going towards the better all the time. So, here's to wishing for an even happier year 2007!

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Fittingly with Time's choice, I read yesterday in a Finnish paper's sport pages about another phenomenon that is exactly about this. In the online voting for the NHL All-stars game, there is a black horse running for the defender spot of the Western Conference team: Rory Fitzpatrick of Vancouver Canucks. And who is this guy? Stats say he has played for 10 years, 234 games, scored 9 goals and 19 assists, and the +/- statistics are at, -46 although this year seems to be his best so far at +2.

The idea according to VoteForRory.com is to have an online campaing to vote for a rather average (by NHL standards) defender, representative of all the average defenders that play in the NHL, representative of you and me so to speak, to play with the greates stars.

The vote ends on January 2nd, and as of this writing Rory still needs some votes to make it. YOU could help.