OC 50, the Business Journal’s annual who’s who of business and beyond in Orange County, continued its subtle evolution for 2010.
The section, which starts on page 27, is the Business Journal’s annual profile of the most influential people here. It includes key businesspeople plus academics, politicians and others who impact business here.
Familiar faces dominate: Irvine Company’s Donald Bren, Broadcom Corp.’s Henry Samueli, businessman George Argyros and Emulex Corp.’s Paul Folino among them.
As always, there are newcomers.
Some are upstarts—Vizio Inc.’s William Wang and Volcom Inc.’s Richard “Wooly” Woolcott. Others are new to posts long represented on OC 50, as with Disneyland’s George Kalogridis and Gary Schoenfeld of Pacific Sunwear of California Inc.
For others the stars seemed to align (county Supervisor John Moorlach, turnaround guy Ken Campbell of Standard Pacific Corp.).
With each newcomer, others departed OC 50. Some left key positions here. For others, it just wasn’t their year. Some from previous years now are honorable mentions.
Our selections admittedly are subjective. But this year’s group includes all the names you’d expect. There actually are 63 members this year, including joint entries. There are 52 honorable mentions.
Members are selected and screened in a variety of ways: company size, community involvement, political activity and significance within their own industry.
A note on the writing style of OC 50: It’s what’s called telegraph style, which Forbes uses for its annual Forbes 400.
The sentences are choppy and truncated, with most articles and some verbs dropped. With 50 entries, the goal is to provide quick-yet-detailed looks at the most influential here.
Some longtime readers may notice a small change in the entries. We’ve dropped the middle names and birthdates.
In past years, those details were fun for readers and some in OC 50. But for the thinned skinned, trying to get their information was like pulling teeth, leaving us to find out on our own, when we could.
The result was a mix of entries with full details and a few without. So, for consistency, fairness and out of concerns for privacy, we’ve gone with names with just middle initials and ages alone.
