Vincent Maher

Vincent John Maher (born 28 January 1975) is the Head of Digital Enablement at Multichoice. Prior to joining Multichoice Maher was the Chief Innovation Officer at Kagiso Media and the Chief Product Officer at Mxit, the mobile social network. Maher joined Mxit in October 2012 when the company acquired mobile community startup Motribe Mobile Networks, of which Maher was the CTO and co-founder. Previously he was the portfolio manager for social media at Vodacom, a South African mobile telecommunications operator. Previously he was the strategist at the Mail & Guardian Online, in Johannesburg, South Africa and the co-founder of the political blog Thought Leader and blog aggregator Amatomu.com. After obtaining a B. Journ degree from Rhodes University, Maher started his career in 1997 at VWV Interactive, the then leading South African web development company. He pioneered use of several technologies on the South African web, including early versions of Macromedia Flash (then FutureSplash).During his tenure at VWV, Maher was a co-founder of Slime.co.za, a local take on "The Onion", which won Cool Site of the Day, and made several press and television appearances including a regular slot on a local breakfast TV show. After leaving VWV in 1999, Maher went on to found Digital Commerce with South African Venture Capitalist, Marthinus Strydom, a dedicated Macromedia ColdFusion development house, which landed several large contracts in its four years, and was a primary driver for the use of ColdFusion in South Africa. During this period, Maher also contributed articles to the Lifestyle supplement of the Sunday Times newspaper, and several other Websites and print publications. For six weeks he was the host of a TV insert on The Breakfast Club on SABC3 covering new web sites and digital culture. In early 2004, Maher returned to Grahamstown as the director of the New Media Lab, part of the Journalism School at Rhodes University. He has recently been instrumental in the debate and