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I just noticed that ITWeb is holding their IT personality of the year awards. And you’ll never guess who has made the shortlist of ten. That’s right, the blogosphere’s very own Vincent Maher.

If you look closely you’ll see a very, very cheesy photo of the man himself in the nominee’s list.
But in spite of this he could possibly be the stangest and most likeable character on that list.

The ITWeb has classified the criteria for an IT personality as:

A person who has been successful in building a highly-respected IT organisation or business.

A person who has made a major contribution to the IT profession over a number of years.

A person who has made a significant technical or academic contribution to the IT industry.

An IT professional who has aided the development needs of the community.

Now I know that many of us bloggers out there have felt the impact of Mr. Maher’s developments in recent times. Sites like Amatomu, Amagama and Thoughtleader have been at the forefront of online development lately. Maher is behind them all.

It looks to me that he is the only serious blogger on the list but the competition is tight. He is fighting CEOs, MDs, OpenSource pundits and others so he might just need our support.

The complete list is:

Hamilton Ratshefola, CEO of Cornastone Consulting
James Grcic, MD, Computer Storage Services Africa
Melusi Zwane, MD of Melusi Training & Development
Mirriam Zwane, co-owner and director of Praxis Computing
Dr Ntsika Msimang, head of the Meraka Institute’s Open Source Centre, Soweto
Phuthuma Nhleko, CEO, MTN Group
Pfungwa Serima, MD of Microsoft South Africa
Stephen Smith, founder of the Papillon Foundation
Vincent Maher, strategist, Mail & Guardian Online
Viola Manuel, executive director of the Cape IT Initiative (CITI)

The entire process works as follows:

Out of dozens of nominations received from ITWeb readers and members of the Computer Society of SA, the judges have short-listed 10 candidates, all of whom have made outstanding achievements in their careers and significant contributions to the South African IT industry.

Based on the criteria and public votes, the judges will now select five finalists. These five will be announced on ITWeb by Friday 5 October.

I recently produced This Podcast with Vince. Wherein we discussed a variety of things ranging from bloggers dying, facebook fakes and Mr. Eric Edelstein.

In the Flamebaiting podcasting where Vince and I try to get as much hype around the podcast as possible (and shamelessly so) we discussed a recent post by Eric (I will not be linking to the masterbaiter as he doesn’t need it). This post was unreadable, illogical and very confusing in general.

In the podcast we complimented Eric to begin with. He did not make mention of this in his commentary of the podcast. He chose to pick at all and only the negative things that we said about him. Negative honesty that was there for all to see.

There is more however. Vince and I know that people aren’t going to be happy with us most of the time if they are mentioned on Flamebait. But Eric seems to think that he needed a rebuttle argument which was subsequently more confusticating than the original post that me Flamed.

Since then Colin, Gregor (who Eric misinterpreted I feel), Vince, Wezzo and now I have responded. None of these comments were read by Eric apparently as he just keeps digging them holes.

Eric, take a second to read the comments on your blog. This is a very important tip as most bloggers know that content is in fact king. Pictures of yourself and Robert Scoble will not make you more popular, they will not drive traffic and it often does not pay to be cool by association.

Yes, I have just mentioned Robert Scoble, why I hear you ask? Well Eric has a pic from Wikipedia on his flickr photostream on his blog of Scoble. I thought flickr photostreams were meant to be of photos you have taken, or feature you? Nevermind plagiarism issues which are evident (a quick quote from Eric: “I am TOTALLY against anything illegal”), this is just a bit wierd. Compare THIS photo from Eric and THIS photo from Wikipedia.

I have said it before on the podcast and will say it again here, Eric is doing some great things in SA for the online community. He just can’t seem to maintain a safe balance on the blogosphere between good work and self obsessive blog posts. Listen to your readers, read your comments and let the good content on your site drive hits your way. Linkbaiting is cool to a point but do it openly. Don’t facebook people behind smoke screens on your blog and then do the opposite of what you have blogged about.

If you like David Bullards idea of crowdsourcing then tell us that, let him know and do it openly.

In my opinion Eric has simply missed the point completely. Not everything is about SEO. Not everyone actually cares and not everyone is trying to make a gazillion bucks from a podcast/website/blog/idea/concept. In spite of Eric trying to drive the conversation towards topics he actually understands, we all still know what we are talking about and don’t need lessons.

Go enjoy your MOET Eric, and contact me if you want to talk sometime.

Last point: To his credit, Eric is definitely a MASTERBAITER as I have now blogged about is post and many people have commented on his blog. He is good at baiting, flaming and linking and is most definitely a masterbaiter in my books.

Chatting to good ol’ Mr. Stopforth today he slyly slipped in a request for me to speak at the upcoming 27 Dinner this month. I delayed, and “ummed” and “ahhed” and then hastily accepted the offer before Mike took it away!

I am exceptionally excited to be speaking and a little bit overwhelmed (there are some serious online persona’s that attend the dinner). I will be talking about my website SA Rocks. This is a great opportunity for me to give the site some exposure and get some much needed feedback about the site. In 7 minutes I have to try my absolute hardest not to make a tit out of myself in front of the genii attending.

Vincent expressly asked me not to make myself look like a hero. I am not quite sure what this means but rest assured I will not be attending the dinner in a superman suite (I think).

I hope to see you all there, places are limited and filling up fast.

Vincent Maher seems to have a new addiction (not smoking, that’s an old one) and its name is Swarm. The MG swarm is a real time representation of what the viewers of mg.photos are looking at.

Now at first glance to those who aren’t really sure of the significance of this swarm it could seem like a bunch of pretty circles rolling around a black page. It’s not. It is an incredible way to view the happenings of the site without staring at blank stats and words and numbers.

So without further ado:

There a other swarms out there I know, but this one is local and local is lekker. Not only is this swarm lekker cause it’s local, but because it flies around the page like a manically depressed dope smoker on crack-cocaine. The activity/speed of the swarm circles seems to be dependent on the amount of activity surrounding the image or set of photos (I stand to be corrected here, Vince you will probably be the one to correct me!!).

Anyways, whether I am wrong or right about the MG Swarm, I think it rocks and in fact, it rocks my little socks off!