Over the weekend, Lake Pleasant, outside George in the Western Cape, hosted the most prestigious group of IT professionals yet seen gathered in SA for a single event.
The President`s IT Taskforce, announced in February, attracted HP CEO Carly Fiorina, SAP AG CEO Hasso Plattner, South African multi-millionaire Mark Shuttleworth, as well as executive vice presidents and managers from Oracle, Nokia, Teledesic, Cisco, Ericsson, Sun, IBM, Vivendi, Alcatel, Siemens, Berkley University and other IT organisations.
The elite team met with South African president Thabo Mbeki and his ministers to hammer out solutions for the IT problems facing SA and Africa, hoping to bridge the digital divide growing between the dark continent and First World nations.
Fiorina, rated as America`s most powerful woman by Fortune Magazine three years in a row, attracted a who`s-who contingent of local IT personalities to Fancourt in George (purportedly owned by Plattner). These included Leo Baxter of MB Technology Holdings, Annette van der Laan of CS Holdings, Sello Rasethaba of the government`s IT arm SITA, Karl Socikwa of Transtel, Paul Edwards of Johnnic, and various other key HP customers.
Two of HP`s executive VPs, Gary Fazzino and Doug McGowan, timed their visits to SA to coincide with the task force.
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