Charles Oertel (BSc HONS)

Vision

My aim is to provide South Africans with sensible, affordable and effective information technology. I use my own business and technology experience to provide IT solutions to startup businesses with value that does not sink the business case.

I use Open Source technologies because they will help grow our economy and turn South Africa into a producer of IT rather than a consumer of proprietary technologies developed elsewhere.

I am a business leader and entrepreneur with a strong technology and business background, experienced in a variety of disciplines from hardware assembly to executive management through my career as a scientist, management consultant, founder of an internet startup, development manager and CIO and director of inthebag (PTY) LTD.
While some of the roles I have filled require strong leadership, communication and negotiation skills, and strategic and creative thinking, many have involved sitting in the server room integrating incompatible systems - from IBM S36 to Intel, from Shopping Carts to Credit-Card clearing systems.

I am an active member of the local Open Source community – I volunteer to install computer labs in previously disadvantaged schools (an initiative currently enjoying support from Pick 'n Pay). I am currently developing the next version of the Freedom Toaster under sponsorship from the Shuttleworth Foundation.

As a project manager and team leader I am open, honest, realistic and dedicated. My teams are run sustainably, ecologically and end up being high-performing teams that are greater than the sum of their members. This management style does not suit everybody – especially people with hidden agendas.

Qualifications

Various certificates and courses:

• Linux Professionals Institute Certified Linux Administrator Level 1 (2005)
• Faculty for the OO Analysis and Design course at Andersen Consulting
• Andersen Consulting training in Business Analysis and Design, Delivering Client Value and Architecting Business Change
• E&Y CounterHack Internet Security Training
• Maximum Entropy Inference at RAU
• Geographic Information Systems
• Client/Server architecture
• Competent Toastmaster
• Mountain Leadership
• Presentation skills
• NLP Master Practitioner
• Surf Lifesaving of SA Surf Proficiency Award
• Navy Diver training
• Fire-fighting and First Aid
• Life Insurance

Awards:

• ObjectActive Conference's Innovative Use of Java Award for a web-based credit card encryption system (1999)
• ISM Gold Medal for Mathematical Sciences at Wits in 1987
• Silver medal in the Scottburgh to Brighton long-board race (1983)
• Best Actor, Sportsman of the year and all-round achiever of the year in my matric year (1981)

University of the WitwatersRand (1987):

B.Sc. Honours (cum laude) [Applied Mathematics & Theoretical Physics]

Work Experience

(In chronological order)

I spent 10 years at Andersen Consulting, helping customers develop large systems using structured methodologies and standards. When the internet emerged, I was the head of "Emerging Technologies" at Andersen, and became intimately involved in internet technology.

In 1997 I started my own internet business selling Protea seeds. This business had zero startup costs, and from day one was more profitable than Amazon.com. It has since grown to the point where it sells protea seeds to Kirstenbosch Gardens. My experience with this business and the technology led to my being head-hunted by inthebag to be their CIO and a director in 2000.

In 2001 I was introduced to linux on the CounterHack Security Training course I attended. I converted my business to run only linux and started contributing to the open source community by volunteering to install linux computer labs at disadvantaged schools as part of the Shuttleworth Foundation's tuXlabs project.

Now I train volunteers and perform contract work for the Shuttleworth Foundation on various training, management and programming assignments (for e.g. The Freedom Toaster).

Since then I have been growing my own businesses:

• FineBushPeople.co.za sells protea seeds internationally,
• FineBushPeople.net (now morphing into Honey Badger IT Services) builds and runs websites and business systems for small to medium businesses, with design and development, hosting, site administration, shopping carts, credit card payment mechanisms and transaction clearing.