ITWeb | IT Personality of the year 2007 | iT Personality of the year 2007

	Section editor: Ranka Jovanovic Fri, 12 March 2010

Vinny Lingham, CEO of SynthaSite

Vinny Lingham is the CEO of SynthaSite, a web start-up that provides free website publishing and hosting services. In a period of eight months he has managed to increase SynthaSite�s user base from 10 000 to 400 000 and succeed in getting $5 million in funding for the company.

He is also the founder of global search marketing company, incuBeta, and its subsidiary, Clicks2Customers. In 2006, incuBeta won the SA Top Technology Company award and in the same year, Lingham was selected the Top Young IT Entrepreneur in Africa.

Clicks2Customers has offices in Cape Town, the US and UK and generates over $100 million per annum in client revenue. It has a propriety platform around SEM, is integrated in Yahoo, MSN & Google and works closely with many performance marketing networks. The company has been awarded the Horizon award for Innovation from CJ in 2004, the Leadership in Innovation award and the Global Vision award in 2006

Lingham promotes social awareness in his companies and has given numerous speeches and written articles on successful entrepreneurship and raising capital for business. He believes that being socially aware is one of the key criteria for a company's success. Over the past five years he has also been involved in training over a hundred people across SA in an initiative to create more jobs in the local economy.

PREVIOUS WINNERS

IT Personality

Hamilton Ratshefola
(2007)

Anthony Fitzhenry
(2006)

Ntsundeni Madzunya (2005)

Mthunzi Mdwaba
(2004)

Dali Mpofu
(2003)

Benjamin Mophatlane (2002)

ICT Leadership

Dr Sebiletso Mokone-Matabane
(2006)

Professor Basie von Solms (2005)

Ken Jarvis
(2004)

Alewyn Burger
(2003)

Andile Ngcaba
(2002)

ICT Social Responsibility Award

Kobus van Wyk
(2005)

The panel of judges - IT Personality of the year

Adrian Schofield, president of the CSSA

Dr Helena Barnard, Gordon Institute of Business Science

Martyn Moseki, managing director ConsultingWeb

Hamilton Ratshefola, 2007 IT Personality of the year winner

Neville Willemse, head of Consulting, Gartner Africa

The panel of judges - ICT Visionary of the year

Moira de Roche, immediate past president of CSSA

Mthunzi Mdwaba, executive chairman, Torque-IT South Africa

Anthony Fitzhenry, CEO of Axiz

Ranka Jovanovic, ITWeb Editorial director

Tony Parry, executive director of the CSSA

Nominations and judging

Nominations were open to the public through ITWebs Web site until 5 September.

Nominations must include a detailed motivation, stating clearly why the nominee should be considered for the award.

Based on the nominations received from the public and through the CSSA, the panel of judges will compile a shortlist of 10 nominees for the IT Personality Award and 5 nominees for the ICT Visonary award. These shortlists will be announced on ITWeb on Monday 29 September and will be opened for public voting until Sunday 6 October.

By Wednesday 8 October, based on the criteria and public votes, the judges will select five IT Personality and three ICT Visionary finalists.

The judges will interview the five finalists between 9 and 17 October.

The IT Personality of the Year will be announced on Wednesday 5 November at the CSSA Presidents banquet.

Banquet details

Date: Wednesday 5 November 2008
Venue: Montecasino Ballroom
Time: 18:30 for 19:00 start
RSVP: Lerina Nel Lerina@cssa.org.za
Tel: +27 11 315 1319
Dress code: Black tie, traditional
**Silver Banquet sponsor**