Patricia Dlamini: E Cape’s digital doyenne
East London’s Patricia Dlamini found herself in technology partly due to chance and partly for what she calls a “change of scenery”. Now executive manager of the Eastern Cape IT Initiative (ECiti), Dlamini says the province’s biggest challenges are retaining graduates, getting its people connected and making youngsters
Bernie Fanaroff: star of the SKA show
When Bernie Fanaroff graduated in physics from the University of the Witwatersrand, he went to his department head and said he would like to be a cosmologist. “I was always interested in the universe but I was never very practical, so I never built a telescope or looked at the stars or anything,” he said
Inside Knott-Craig’s world of avatars
Avatars, warriors, wizards, whizz-kids, mavericks and dreamers. They could all be characters in a fantasy game played with gunships and lasers on a mobile device. But they are actually the descriptions given to employees at Alan Knott-Craig’s World of Avatar, the Stellenbosch-based cellular, social media and
Saki Missaikos: IS’s Greek geek
When I sit down with Saki Missaikos, the new Internet Solutions (IS) MD, at the canteen at Dimension Data’s sprawling campus in Bryanston, north of Sandton, he immediately takes a shine to my new Samsung Galaxy S3 smartphone. He confesses that he’s moved almost wholesale to Apple
Steven Cohen, reluctant millionaire
With an untucked shirt and a casual gait, Steven Cohen doesn’t look like the MD of one of SA’s most successful software companies. Softline Pastel was co-founded by Ivan Epstein and Alan Osrin in 1988 – with Cohen, then a young entrepreneur, joining the pair 22 years ago. As I’m sitting with
FBI: Didata’s gentle giant
At 7ft tall, Mayan Mathen is easy to spot in a crowd. It also means strangers find him a bit of a novelty and he says he’s often asked to be in pictures with tourists, rather than take pictures of them, when he’s travelling. Mathen does a great deal of travel in his role as chief technology officer
‘Mr Siemens’ races in for another go
Brazilian-born Pete da Silva spent the first 20 years of his working life at the Southern African subsidiary of German industrial and telecommunications giant Siemens, climbing the corporate ladder from trainee technician when he started to group CEO when he resigned in 2007 to pursue his passion for motorsport. Now, after a nearly
Steve Song: connectivity crusader and cartographer
When he isn’t talking at technology conferences and seminars, or travelling to them, 49-year-old Steve Song lives and works in Durbanville near Cape Town. He’s perhaps best known for his map of the various submarine cables that have landed in Africa in recent years, and for his passionate advocacy of the use of television white-spaces
Steven Levy’s different kind of rock ‘n roll
Steven Levy was not interested in technology when he growing up. Rather, he was into music in a big way. Coming of age in the 1960s, he wanted to be a music critic because they were almost like rock stars themselves. But the times were, unfortunately, a-changin’
Nathaniel Borenstein: more stein than bore
Twenty years ago, on 11 March 1992, Nathaniel Borenstein sent the world’s first e-mail attachment. Although it created little excitement beyond the small group of people involved with the project, today Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions technology (Mime, for short) is used an estimated trillion times a day
Archie Makuwa: 
David H: 
Megan Firth: 
Davebee: