#5 Chris Messina

Chris Messina, also fondly known as Factory Joe, is an open source and open standards advocate, a former employ at identity company Vidoop and before that he was co-founder of maketing agency Citizen Agency, which was an internet consultancy that specialized in developing community-centric strategies around product research, design, development and marketing. He is currently working for Google as an Open Web Advocate formerly he was at Firefox. He was the long time developer advocate who invented the hashtag way back in 2007, years before it became the de-facto method for marking and tracking trending topics on the popular social network.

#4 Tim O'Reilly

Tim O'Reilly is the founder of O’ Reilly Media Company and a supporter of the free software and open source movements. He defines his company not as a book or online publisher, nor as a conference producer (though the company does all three), but as a technology transfer company, "changing the world by spreading the knowledge of innovators."

The Programmers will be familiar with Tim, for his line of tech-focused textbooks and how to do manuals. The activist and publisher also heads up some of the industry's most well-respected tech conferences, including Foo Camp and the Web 2.0 Summit. He publishes the DIY bible Make Magazine. In addition to his publishing and conferencing work, O'Reilly has been a long-time open source activist and advocate of patent reform.