"Magnify the glory of your Motherland!" - this is the slogan of the Person of the Year award that became international this year. This blue ribbon accolade has been established to promote unity and understanding between the public, business and the state.

The Person of the Year International Award ceremony is a landmark event. All the more so as it is by right held as the most prestigious and authoritative award of a variety of similar projects. Numerous politicians and businessmen, journalists and lawyers, cultural figures and bankers from contemporary Russia gathered under the vaulted ceiling of the Kremlin's Patriarshy Chambers, where many hierarchs of the Orthodox Church had been witnessed… The Expert Council was to pick out winners for 37 categories.

"I am here to remind you that winners of the Grand Prix of the Person of the Year award will be nominated for the Glory of Russia Order , which has been entered the state register of orders," host Svyatoslav Belza addressed the audience. Then he went on to invite onto the stage special guests chosen to present the trophies, "persons of this last year" as he defined them, including, with some pleasure we might add, Petr Godlevsky, General Director of Izvestia Newspaper Office. Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Zhukov and First Deputy Mayor of Moscow Vladimir Resin, TV journalist Vladimir Solovyov and Leonid Reyman, Minister of Information Technology and Communications were favored in various categories.

Nikolai Senkevich, Chairman of the Board of Directors of NTV TV Company won a special prize in the category of Industry Leader. "I believe that this award is not something that I personally deserve, but an accomplishment for the whole team of our employees, creative, united and dedicated to their work," Nikolai Senkevich told Izvestia. "This honorary accolade is all the more enjoyable as the past year was far from being the easiest one for us." Along with Mr Senkevich, Dmitry Samokhin, General Director of NTV Plus, was awarded the "Top Manager of the Year" title in the Business sphere.

The Person of the Year is someone who represents an important trend in the country's development and contributes to defining Russia's future. Notably, this year witnessed the first Grand Prix granted for the "Active implementation of innovative technologies in Russia's social and economic development process" to Leonid Reyman, Russia's Information Technology and Communications Minister. Indeed, no one can ever challenge the importance of the information technology sphere to the contemporary world. As Leonid Reyman himself noted in his acceptance speech, he regards this award as primarily an assessment of the performance of all those who work in Russia's communications industry, scientists, and participants in the information technology market. For instance, Yury Zhuravlyov, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, in his congratulatory address to the prizewinner, stressed that: "It is symbolic that the most important of Russia's trophies has been given to a person who has contributed so much to the development of information technology in our country. The progress that the information technology and communications industry is making under your guidance now are steps towards Russia's high-tech future. I have no doubt whatever that some time the efforts that you are exerting today will be well received." President of IT Co. Tagir Yapparov congratulated the Minister, adding that it was due to the prizewinner's productive ideas, persistence and loyalty to the open market principles that the information technology and communications industry has become an example of a transparent and competitive environment for the rest of Russia, which is a necessary first step in business development.

Incidentally, next day, following the awards ceremony, Leonid Reyman went to Nizhny Novgorod to take part in the State Council meeting presided over by the Russian President which met to consider the issues of information technology industry development and its position in the national economy.