(Co-authored by: Louise Peacock)
Presented by the Computer Society of SA (CSSA), the ITWeb Personality and Visionary awards seek to bring to the forefront, the individual who has made the most positive impact on the information and communications technology industry over the past year.
Two main categories feature: The Personality of the Year Award and the Visionary CIO award. We’re proud to announce that this year, our very own esteemed leaders, Rob Stokes and Craig Raw, have been nominated. Rob Stokes has been honoured in the Personality of the Year category and Craig the Visionary CIO category.
Rob Stokes – IT Personality Nominee
- Rob is the Founder and CEO of Quirk, Africa’s largest full service online marketing agency established in 1999 and now South Africa’s 4th biggest advertising agency according to Ad Review.
- He was recognised in the Mail & Guardian's Top 300 Young South African's in the Technology category in 2009.
- Later that year, the Bookmark Awards presented him with the award for the Greatest Individual Contribution to Online Media and Marketing.
- Rob is also Chairman of the Silicon Cape Initiative, an organisation created to promote tech entrepreneurship in the Western Cape and beyond. He recently joined the Young President’s Organisation (YPO) a well-regarded, global network of chief executives.
- Rob is a born educator. He has pioneered change in the industry through his thought leadership. Rob co-authored the Quirk textbook - eMarketing : the essential guide to online marketing. This book was intended to improve industry standards by educating marketing students and professionals. Licensed under the Creative Comments, students can download this textbook for free. It is currently used by over 400 universities and learning institutions around the world.
Craig Raw – Visionary CIO Nominee
- Craig Raw is founder and CTO at Quirk, Africa’s fourth largest full service online marketing agency established in 1999 and now South Africa’s 4th biggest advertising agency according to Ad Review.
- Craig developed SearchStatus Firefox in 2004 and shares it with over 1 million industry specialist users. That number still grows at 15000 users a month.
- Inventor of BrandsEye, the Online Reputation Management software that Craig launched in 2006, is now the market leader in SA, handling approximately 27 million new mentions every week.
- Craig continues to introduce modern frameworks and tools to create enterprise level software efficiently at Quirk. He introduced an agile development stack using a combination of Java based software including: Grails, Groovy and deployment methodology using Platform as a Service and continuous integration tools.
- He is also a regular contributor to open source software, contributing to projects including the Apache James email server and Webwork framework in the past. In addition to SearchStatus, he actively maintains several Grails plugins on the Grails.org portal.
Rob and Craig have tirelessly contributed to the growth of our industry, and for that, they deserve to be recognised.
