Speakers

Herman Chinery-Hesse (Softtribe)

Herman is a software engineer by profession.19 years ago he co-founded the SOFTtribe limited, one of the leading software houses in West Africa.

He holds a number of directorships and is an Assessor of the Commercial Court, Ghana. He has won a number of personal awards including Outstanding Ghanaian Professional from the GPA Awards (UK), as well as the Distinguished Alumnus Award from the Texas State Alumni Association and Texas State University-San Marcos (USA)-the first and currently only African recipient of the award.

Herman has also been a resource person and visiting speaker at the Wharton Business School, Harvard Business Schools, Cambridge University, the University of Ghana, and the TEDGlobal Conference in Arusha, Tanzania, amongst others.

The BBC describes Mr Chinery-Hesse as Africa's Bill Gates.

In his own words, "if Africa misses the current global IT boat there may never again be an opportunity for rapid wealth creation on the continent".

Josh Spear (Undercurrent)

As one of the youngest and most influential marketing strategists in the world, Josh is sought out for his intelligent, no-holds-barred insight on everything from design to authenticity and 'word-of-mouth.' His own blog, joshspear.com, uses a network of writers across the globe to unearth trends in art, design, mobile and the future of digital media itself.

Josh's New York-based consultancy applies a digital worldview to the challenges and ambitions of complex corporate organisations. It creates strategies for deeper, lasting online relationships - including new models to measure performance in emerging environments. As well as advising some of the world's biggest brands, it also works as a think-tank on the influence of technology on all aspects of human behaviour.

A hugely engaging conference speaker, Josh's presentations set out new ways for organisations to harness the internet. He analyses what it is that makes certain things catch on, and explains how to position products and services to capitalise on fast-moving trends. And with a billion people online at any one moment, he shows how to get the attention of the digital generation.

Josh is frequently featured in Time Magazine and The New York Times. For several years he has been an active participant and keynote speaker at the World Economic Forum in Davos, where he was formally nominated a Young Global Leader.

Find Josh on Twitter @joshspear (Hover over the link to the left for more options)

Adam DuVander (Programmableweb)

Adam DuVander is the author of Map Scripting 101 and Executive Editor of ProgrammableWeb, the leading resource for open Web API news and information. DuVander is also an active contributor to the open source mapping library, Mapstraction. Previously he wrote for WebMonkey, Wired.com's web developer resource.

Find Adam on Twitter @adamd (Hover over the link to the left for more options)

Cennydd Bowles (Clearleft)

Cennydd Bowles is a user experience designer and writer based in Brighton, UK.

His book Undercover User Experience Design, written with colleague James Box, has been acclaimed as "a must have for your bookshelf". He writes a popular blog and contributes regularly to influential publications including A List Apart, Johnny Holland and .net magazine.

At Clearleft (Design Agency of the Year 2009), Cennydd advises clients including Samsung, The Open University, JustGiving, Gumtree and WWF on the benefits of putting users first. He also shapes the design and strategy of Clearleft's famous Silverback usability testing suite and pioneering web fonts application, Fontdeck.

A leading figure in the British user experience community, Cennydd co-founded the UX London and UXCampLondon conferences and is an active mentor of British user experience talent. He speaks at design and UX conferences across the globe, and his thoughts on design have been quoted in publications as diverse as Design Week and the Abu Dhabi National newspaper.

Find Cennydd on Twitter @cennydd (Hover over the link to the left for more options)

Jonathan Gosier (metaLayer)

Jonathan Gosier is a designer, software developer, lover of data science and the co-founder of metaLayer.com which aims to change how you analyze content by offering products for atomizing and visualizing data.

From 2009 to 2011 he served as Director of Product for SwiftRiver at Ushahidi working on an open-source platform for drawing insight from real-time communication during crisis events. The SwiftRiver project was awarded the 2011 Knight News Challenge award for its potential to improve the data journalism and news gathering process.

In 2009 Jon spoke at TED in Oxford, UK about his company Appfrica and one of their projects which connected rural African villages with the internet through a call center and light infrastructure. The service, in collaboration with non-profit OpenMind, was called QuestionBox and allowed people with no access to the internet to ask questions and get timely, vetted answers.

Jon is also the organizer of the annual Apps4Africa competition which encourages African software developers to develop solutions to local problems. Jon Gosier's work has been profiled by a number of media outlets including the NewYorkTimes, The Economist, GigaOm, Forbes and New Scientist. These articles can be found here.

Find Jonathan on Twitter @jongos (Hover over the link to the left for more options)

James Box (Clearleft)

A self-confessed 'user experience professional', James works for Clearleft in the seaside town of Brighton, England. Part information architect and part interaction designer when he's not building sandcastles on the beach, James crafts websites that are fun and easy to use. In 2010 his first book 'Undercover User Experience Design' (co-authored with colleague Cennydd Bowles) was released to critical acclaim and has been described as a 'a must have for your bookshelf' that teaches how to 'create a culture of UX from the ground up'.

Find James on Twitter @boxman (Hover over the link to the left for more options)

Robert Nyman (Mozilla)

Robert is a Technical Evangelist for Mozilla and is a strong believer in HTML5 and the Open Web. He has been doing web development since 1998, where especially JavaScript has been a love for quite some time. Robert regularly blogs at http://robertnyman.com and tweets as @robertnyman, and he loves to travel and meet people

Find Robert on Twitter @robertnyman (Hover over the link to the left for more options)

Ndubuisi Ekekwe (Johns Hopkins University)

Ndubuisi Ekekwe holds two doctoral and four master's degrees, including a PhD in electrical and computer engineering from the Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore and MBA from University of Calabar, Nigeria, all completed by March 2009. He graduated in August 1998, from FUT Owerri, Nigeria as his class's best student. He founded First Atlantic Semiconductors & Microelectronics Ltd (Fasmicro) - Africa's first integrated circuit design house. Ekekwe is also the Founder of the non-profit African Institution of Technology and a full professor of engineering with Babcock University Nigeria. He last held the title of Banking Executive with Diamond Bank Lagos.

Professor Ekekwe is an inventor - he holds a US Patent on a microchip used in minimally invasive surgical robots and has authored breakthrough papers, including a roadmap on African single currency which he presented in an AU congress. He has spoken at Harvard University, the UN Summit, African Union Congress, Wharton Business School and Brown University amongst others. Ekekwe's book on nanotechnology and microelectronics won IGI Global 2010 "Book of the Year" award. He lives in Boston and was in the team that created the XL sensor inside the iPhone and iPod. He authored Nigeria's Vision 2020 Microelectronics thematic area and is the recipient of more than 17 academic fellowships and scholarships

Steve Watt (Hewlett-Packard)

Steve Watt works on Technology Strategy for Hewlett-Packard. Prior to that he spent 10 years working as a Researcher and Software Architect of Emerging Technologies within IBM Software Strategy.

Steve is an Apache contributor, active in Open Source and chairs the Hadoop & Big Data User Group in Austin, Texas. Prior to working for IBM, Steve spent several years consulting in the Middle East and working for startups in the United States and his native South Africa.

Steve holds 12 US Patents (with 18 Patents Pending) and has published a number of technical books and articles.

Find Steve on Twitter @wattsteve (Hover over the link to the left for more options)

Simone Brunozzi (Amazon)

Amazon Web Services Technology Evangelist for Asia Pacific (APAC)

Simone Brunozzi is a truly passionate technologist, involved in IT and computing since an early age. He joined Amazon.com in March 2008 in the role of Amazon Web Services Technology Evangelist for Europe, to raise awareness about Cloud Computing and help developers build applications. In January 2010 he relocated to Singapore, becoming the first AWS Technology Evangelist for the APAC region.

Since 2008, Simone has been a very popular speaker in Europe, United States, Asia and Oceania, speaking at more than 260 events (and collecting a huge amount of airline miles). Simone is regularly invited as a speaker to major conferences all around the world.

Find Simone on Twitter @simon (Hover over the link to the left for more options)

Peter Tejler (Embassy of Sweden)

Peter Tejler was appointed Ambassador of Sweden to The Republic of South Africa and took up his position in September 2008. His diplomatic career includes postings in Prague, Damascus and Bonn and he has previously served as Deputy Director for Central and East European Affairs (Political) at the MFA in Stockholm.

His academic awards include an MA from the Universities of Uppsala and Lund and he has translated numerous works from Czech into Swedish. He speaks English, German and Czech and understands French.

Gareth Knight (Tech4Africa)

Gareth is a technology entrepreneur. Educated as a zoologist, he is a veteran of two dot com bubbles in London, one acquisition, and runs Technovated, which has recently "pivoted" into an ecommerce play, and is backed by respected investors in London and South Africa.

Gareth is also the founder of TECH4AFRICA.

Previously, Gareth served in London as Director of Product Management for MyHeritage.com, a global family genealogy company based in Tel Aviv.

Before joining MyHeritage, Gareth landed seed funding from London's top early stage investors to co-found Kindo.com, a global family social network with an international team spread around the world. He then led the Product team in London to roll out a localised version of Kindo in 17 languages within 6 months, as well as an aggressive search engine campaign, both of which resulted in users from circa 220 countries and an enviable growth rate.

Kindo was voted one of the top 3 most promising Internet companies in the UK for 2008, and was acquired by MyHeritage in August that year.

In 2010 Gareth was named one of South Africa's "Young South Africans You have to take to lunch" by the Mail & Guardian newspaper, and in 2009 was one of "Men of Influence - 35 South Africans Under 35" by GQ magazine.

Find Gareth on Twitter @oneafrikan (Hover over the link to the left for more options)

Dave Sevenoaks (Spaaza)

Dave Sevenoaks is from South Africa but currently lives in Amsterdam, The Netherlands where he is the Co-founder and CEO of Spaaza, a start-up that helps shoppers find products they are looking for in local shops.

Before Spaaza Dave was the Director of Product Management for GyPSii, a pioneering location based service and social network. Dave oversaw global product strategy for the company's mobile plications and websites and most recently was the architect of a groundbreaking Customer Relationship and Loyalty Management platform for local businesses in China which has since been adopted by Sina Weibo - one of the world's largest social networking services.

Prior to working at GyPSii Dave founded the online division of the UK publishing company Atalink where he built a multidisciplinary online media business which was one of the early adopters of open source Content Management technology in the UK.

Dave likes to think he has a 'healthy' obsession for technology. His interest in all things digital was likely nurtured by all nighters playing Mario and Zelda on his Nintendo NES and then fully ingrained with all nighters chatting on ICQ and navigating crappy web pages on a dial up modem in his parents house in Parkhurst, Johannesburg. These days he spends most of his time obsessing over mobile technology and how it is changing the local business space.

Find Dave on Twitter @dave7oaks (Hover over the link to the left for more options)

Nic Haralambous (Motribe)

Nicholas Haralambous is a qualified journalist and media maniac who quickly moved away from print media, through online and in to mobile media production and management. He has worked in "dead-tree" media with the Sunday Times and Financial Mail.

His new media experience includes working as the head of the mobile division at Mail & Guardian, the GM of the Zoopy.com Gauteng office and Product Manager of Vodacom SA's mobile social networking division.

Nic is one of the co-founders of Motribe and takes on the roll of Chief Ninja of Operations and Business development.

Find Nic on Twitter @nicharry (Hover over the link to the left for more options)

David Emanuel (iGoals)

David is a serial entrepreneur, based out of San Francisco and is the founder of two start ups, iGoals and most recently eLert. Consultant and advisor here in San Francisco and locally based start ups in South Africa looking to deploy internationally, get connected into the Silicon Valley network and help raise funding. Executive Producer for one of South Africa's best selling books made movie, "Spud the Movie". For 10 years was involved with Key Group as Sales Director based in Gauteng and KZN. Originally a Visual Basic coder in the Financial sector in the UK but primarily now focused on business development and a passion for disruptive technology with meaningful use.

Find David on Twitter @davidemanuel (Hover over the link to the left for more options)

Vincent Maher (Motribe)

Vincent Maher is the co-founder of Motribe, a mobile community platform. Previously he was the portfolio manager for social media and the commercial manager for mobile advertising at Vodacom, the strategist at the Mail & Guardian Online and creator of Amatomu.com, the South African blog aggregator and analytics system. Before that he was director of the New Media Lab (which he helped create in 1996) at the Rhodes University School of Journalism & Media Studies, the managing director of Digital Commerce, technical director of Bitr8 and a multimedia director at VWV Interactive. He has worked in the online media industry since 1996, has presented papers at many international conferences and specialises in building large-scale social applications. At some point during the chaos he also helped found Slip Skateboards, one of South Africa's underground skate brands.

Find Vincent on Twitter @vincent_maher (Hover over the link to the left for more options)

Barry Devlin (9sight Consulting)

Dr. Barry Devlin is a founder of the data warehousing industry and among the foremost authorities worldwide on business intelligence (BI) and beyond. He is a widely respected consultant, lecturer and author of "Data Warehouse--from Architecture to Implementation". Barry has 30 years of experience in the IT industry, previously with IBM, as an architect, consultant, manager and software evangelist.

As founder and principal of 9sight Consulting, Barry provides strategic consulting and thought-leadership to buyers and vendors of BI solutions. He is a regular contributer to BeyeNETWORK, Focus, O'Reilly Radar and an associate editor of TDWI's Journal of Business Intelligence. Living in Cape Town, South Africa, he travels regularly to Europe.

Barry is currently developing a new architectural model for fully consistent business support--from informational to operational and collaborative--Business Integrated Insight (BI2).

Find Barry on Twitter @BarryDevlin (Hover over the link to the left for more options)

Rian van der Merwe (kalahari.net)

Rian van der Merwe chose a career path in Product Management and User Experience Design, and is currently the head of Product Management & Design at South African online retailer kalahari.net.

After completing degrees in Engineering and Information Science in South Africa, he moved to Australia to complete a Ph.D in Internet Marketing. From there he moved to California to pursue a girl (yep, they eventually got married).

He spent the next 6 years working in Silicon Valley: first at market research firm Survey.com, followed by 4.5 years in eBay's User Experience Design group. His last position at eBay was as Senior Manager of Product Strategy, where his responsibilities included leading a team of strategists who worked with various parts of the organisation to develop and guide product roadmaps and requirements that meet user needs.

He then joined South African startup Yola.com in San Francisco as a Senior Product Manager, where he was responsible for the product vision, strategy, design, and development of a variety of areas of the Yola user experience. In March 2010, his family moved back to South Africa permanently where he established and grew the Product and User Experience teams at Yola's Cape Town office. In December 2010 he moved to head up the Product team at Kalahari.

He is passionate about user experience design and software development, and excited about the great opportunities ahead in the South African Internet space.

Find Rian on Twitter @rianvdm (Hover over the link to the left for more options)

Gavin Symanowitz (GetAGreatBoss.com)

Gavin Symanowitz, an actuary, headed up Strategic Product Innovation for Investments at FNB for over 5 years. He won the prestigious Innovator of the Year award in 2008, and subsequently left the bank to found a number of revolutionary web-based businesses. One of these, GetAGreatBoss.com and spin-off FeedbackRocket, was recognized as one of the 10 Most Promising Digital Innovations world-wide in 2009, by Netexplorateur, an international organization set up under the auspices of the French Government Ministry for the Digital Economy. The company reached the finals of SeedCamp, Europe's premier tech start-up competition, and was also internationally recognized as a finalist in The Economist Disruptive Innovation Challenge.

Gavin is a Thought Leader on the South African Innovation Network, and has been a regular finalist in numerous international open innovation competitions. He received the Strategic Leader in HR Award at the World HRD Congress in India in 2011.

In 2005, Gavin obtained a PhD in Mathematical Statistics. He lectured formally at Wits University, and continues to lecture MBA students on an informal basis.

Gavin is passionate about innovation and how it can change the world for the better.

Find Gavin on Twitter @gavs (Hover over the link to the left for more options)

Gareth Ochse (iSign)

Gareth Ochse (@garethochse) is an web/mobile entrepreneur with a background in Venture Capital and finance. Gareth is founder of iSign.co.za (online contract signature, document storage & reminders). iSign was a global Seedcamp finalist in 2010 and is South Africa's leading e-Signatures provider - helping customers do more deals faster and saving months of time, tons of paper and thousands of Rands for customers each day. Gareth also runs an intense 1-day course on fundraising and capital structures for entrepreneurs, based on his experiences as an entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and deal- maker. This highly successful course has been described as 'the most valuable day in my life' by several attendees.

Find Gareth on Twitter @garethochse (Hover over the link to the left for more options)

Patrick Kayton (Cognician)

Patrick is the co-founder of Cognician, an app and platform that gets your staff thinking above their experience level by getting them to question like experts. Together with his brother, Barry, Patrick founded the instructional design agency, Bright Sparks, where the pair developed a range of methodologies and techniques over a ten year period for putting ideas into people's heads. Cognician represents the best of everything the two have learned about how to make ideas stick so that they change the attitudes and behaviour of the user.

Find Patrick on Twitter @patrickkayton (Hover over the link to the left for more options)

Gustav Praekelt (Praekelt Digital)

Gustav Praekelt is the managing director of Praekelt Digital. After completing his B.Sc. in Computer Science and Philosophy, he co-founded one of the first digital interactive studios in Africa and was its technical director for 10 years. His belief in the power of mobile phones to transform Africa inspired him to establish the Praekelt Foundation in 2006. A passionate advocate of the idea that technology should be available to all Gustav is a frequent speaker at a variety of international conferences including Tech4Africa.

Find Gustav on Twitter @gustavp (Hover over the link to the left for more options)

Stephan Ekbergh (TravelStart)

Stephan Ekbergh is a former professional DJ and seasoned travel industry veteran. A solid entrepreneur and visionary by heart, he has worked and invested in a number of travel companies and digital media businesses.

In 1997 he founded Mr Jet, Scandinavia's first transactional online travel company, before launching the TravelStart portfolio in 1999 - a business he later successfully expanded internationally. In 2006 Travelstart South Africa was launched, as the country's first online travel agency and current market leaders.

In early 2010 Ekbergh sold the entire European arm of his business and in the nearest future will focus on emerging markets. Ekbergh's passion is to contribute to establishing e-commerce in Africa and the Middle East, a continent he feels in many ways has been neglected by other major players.

Ekbergh is a regular speaker on the travel industry circuit and writes his own blog, Epic Business Life and Love Stories. He lives in Cape Town with his wife and four children since 2005.

Find Stephan on Twitter @Ekbergh (Hover over the link to the left for more options)

Jason Xenopoulos (Native)

Jason is the CEO of Native, Africa's largest independent Digital Agency.

In 1993 Jason graduated from NYU with an honors degree in Film and Television.

In 1994, Jason founded VWV Interactive, which grew to be one of South Africa's leading web development companies. From 1998 - 2000 Jason held the position of CEO at Metropolis, a JSE-listed Internet company.

In 2001, Jason directed his first feature film, Promised Land, which went on to win several international awards. Jason has also directed a host of award-winning TV commercials for local and international brands.

From 2004 to 2007, Jason held the position of ECD at Y&R South Africa. In 2008, Jason co-founded 2.0 Media, where he served as Chief Creative Officer.

In 2010, Jason ranked in the Top 5 Most Highly Awarded directors at the 2010 Loerie Awards Festival where he won Campaign Gold and Silver awards.

Sebastien Lacour (Powertime)

Sebastien holds a Bsc in Chemical Engineering from Toulouse University (France), an Msc in Process Control from Natal University, and an MBA from the University of Cape Town.

He has been involved in the energy sector for over 8 years. Starting his career as a Process engineer at Saint Gobain, a leading industrial group, he developed energy efficient concepts for their operations and contributed to design and implement the group energy strategy. Moving to Cape Town in 2009 he participated in a number of entrepreneurial ventures in West Africa and then joined Energy Intelligence, a dynamic solutions driven company focused on integrating BI solutions to enhance energy performance management for business and residential customers.

Sebastien is Managing Director at Powertime, a division of Energy Intelligence and the leading Prepaid Electricity mobile merchant in South Africa. Powertime, which in 2010 received the award for best mobile application at the Mobile Web in Africa Conference, has a unique value proposition to offer the 7 million Prepaid Electricity users in South Africa the convenience of buying electricity on their mobile, whilst providing useful information on their energy usage and smart ways to contribute to more efficient use.

Married to a South African national and passionate about innovation and customer service, Sebastien strives to contribute to creating a more sustainable energy sector in South Africa.

Luke McKend (Google)

Luke Mckend joined Google South Africa as Country Manager on 1 November 2010. Originally from South Africa, Luke has been with Google since 2006, working as an Industry Head in Google's London office. In the UK he was responsible for managing a wide variety of businesses across the classified, property, restaurant, education, dating and job sectors.

Prior to joining Google, Mckend was the Commercial Director of a startup tech company iGrasp which grew rapidly, being recognised as one of the fastest growing tech companies in the UK in 2005. He also worked with some of the UK's largest brands defining their approach to digital media while he was at TMP Worldwide, at the time one of the UK's largest recruitment advertising firms.

He finished his schooling at Fish Hoek High, and went on to complete his university education at Stellenbosch. He has returned to South Africa with his partner and 5 year old daughter

Brett St Clair (Google)

Brett has been working in mobile media and mobile marketing and advertising for 15 years all over the globe - engineering, implementing and selling mobile operator infrastructure from London to Mongolia.
After a decade in London, Brett headed back home to Johannesburg, to start his own mobile media agency. Brett now uses his extensive experience in the South African and African mobile media market heading up Mobile Ad sales for Google South Africa. Brett been has passionately involved in the Mobile Monday Johannesburg Council for the past year, where he helps bring industry minds together to explore innovation. Brett's passions are family, freedom, the frenetic buzz of developing mobile technology, fine humour and occasionally a round or two of golf.

Nic Dawes (The Mail & Guardian )

Nic Dawes has been Editor in Chief of the Mail & Guardian since 2009. He joined as associate editor in 2004 from ThisDay newspaper, combining roles as an investigative and political reporter with editing duties and the running of the paper's Cape Town bureau. He was part of the team that broke the story linking police chief Jackie Selebi to the underworld networks surrounding Brett Kebble, and has also contributed extensive news and analysis on politics and economic policy. He is an adept cyclist, renowned cook, and has been hailed as one of the media industry's shining lights.

Find Nic on Twitter @NicDawes (Hover over the link to the left for more options)

Styli Charalambous (iMaverick)

After being expelled from the halls of finance houses for possessing an inkling of wit, this budding entrepreneur spends his days bird watching and writing subtle, yet moving social commentary pieces for South Africa's bastion of journalism excellence (that's The Daily Maverick, in case you were wondering).

Having escaped the Port Elizabeth mis-education system, Charalambous now resides in Joburg and can often be spotted quality-control testing the water in many of the city's watering holes.

Find Styli on Twitter @stylichara (Hover over the link to the left for more options)

Vinny Lingham (Yola.com)

Vinny is the CEO of San Francisco based startup, Yola.com. Yola (previously known as SynthaSite) was established in 2007 and raised $25m in funding and currently has over 2m users worldwide. Vinny is the recipient of numerous awards, including Top Young ICT Entrepreneur in Africa (2006) & was also a finalist for Men's Health Best Man (2009) & ICT Personality of the Year in South Africa (2008). He also previously founded Clicks2Customers, which also won the Top Technology Company award in South Africa in 2006, for it's revolutionary search engine marketing software and services - servicing world-class clients such as Walmart.

Find Vinny on Twitter @VinnyLingham (Hover over the link to the left for more options)

Stephen Grootes (Daily Maverick)

Stephen Grootes, senior political reporter for Primedia's Eyewitness News, and one of the main political writers for The Daily Maverick website, and the imaverick iPad newspaper, spends his days watching our politicians and is known to all of the major players.

Having attended all of the key political conferences of our recent past, he is known for his coverage of the major political court cases of the last few years.

Grootes has been at eyewitness news for almost ten years, prior to which he worked in radio news in London, and was the editor of the Asian community's Sunrise Radio.

Find Stephen on Twitter @stephengrootes (Hover over the link to the left for more options)

Craig Rodney (Cerebra)

An ambitious entrepreneur and part-time haberdasher, Craig Rodney founded Emerging Media in 2002. Craig's dynamic approach and creative problem solving style catapulted the company into the realms of success when Craig saddled a few blue-chip clients and projects, the likes of which include the launch of Mark Shuttleworth's Ubuntu Linux, and the launch of Google in South Africa.

In 2010, Craig became managing director of Cerebra after the successful merger with South Africa's most prolific social media agency. The merger lead to the formation of a communication powerhouse; a full-service communication agency with a focus on both traditional and social media. Craig's wide area of interest and subtle passion for all things tech makes him an invaluable leader to the Cerebra team where he provides service with a smile to clients such as Vodacom, Samsung, Symantec, Toyota, KFC and PWC.

An innovator, a creative, a mad man, Craig is known to embrace his inner lunatic and encourages his staff to do the same, but not in that prison movie kind of way. Craig embraces new ideas and his thinking sets him apart from the pack. He is not averse to risk, in fact, Craig doesn't ask "What if you do?" he prefers to ask, "What if you don't?" It's the fear of not doing, not trying, not being crazy that drives him.

Aki Anastasiou (Radio 702)

Aki Anastasiou is the host of Talk Radio 702's weekly tech show Technobyte. He also discusses gadgets and tech on 94.7 Highveld Stereo. He is a guest tech columnist for the Sunday Independent and other publications and is one of South Africa's most followed people on Twitter for tech and interesting information. Aki is a self proclaimed Greek Geek, gadgeteer and shares a passion for technology at his talks about social networking and the future of technology. He is a regular guest speaker for many corporates and a sought after Master of Ceremonies at Technology and other Conferences across South Africa. His passion for technology and keeping abreast of the latest tech trends takes him to various electronic shows around the world. Aki's aim is to make technology easier to understand for everyone.

Find Aki on Twitter @AkiAnastasiou (Hover over the link to the left for more options)

Toby Shapshak (Stuff)

Toby's career in journalism has spanned breaking news, investigative reporting, covering politics, sport and technology, to running two online newspapers, editing a national newspaper's sport and technology sections at the same time and editing a men's magazine. Toby is the editor of Stuff, the South African edition of the world's largestselling gadget magazine. He writes a column for The Times newspaper and is also a contributing editor for Business Day's Wanted magazine. He regularly appears on eNews and various radio stations, including Talk Radio 702, to discuss technology trends. In 2009 Shapshak was named in GQ's top 30 men in media and the Mail & Guardian's 300 influential young South Africans. GQ said he "has become the most high-profile technology journalist in the country" while the M&G wrote: "Toby Shapshak is all things tech...he reigns supreme as the major talking head for everything and anything tech."

Find Toby on Twitter @shapshak (Hover over the link to the left for more options)