Johann du Toit

Johann du Toit

Helsinki, Uusimaa, Finland
995 followers 500+ connections

About

Johann is a trailblazing South African engineer recognized globally. From crafting microchip readers to architecting high-traffic news platforms, his expertise is vast. As the pioneering Google Developer Expert for Cloud in Africa, he’s among ~1000 individuals chosen worldwide by Google to disseminate Cloud knowledge.

Beyond technical mastery, Johann is a beacon for African startups via Launchpad, guiding them to fuse technology with market solutions. His Midas touch is evident as the co-founder and CTO of Passmarked, a vanguard pushing for an improved web. Simultaneously, he helmed IO, a tech innovator addressing Africa’s unique challenges.

His recent contributions include collaborating with Nordic and European stakeholders, notably transitioning the Helsinki Biomedical University’s Computing Cluster to the cloud. His vast portfolio boasts:

* Bitcoin Recovery Service: A digital asset safeguard.
* AI Endeavors: Spearheading AI news platforms and an innovative CRM.
* Microchipping: A blueprint for South Africa’s national microchip database.
* Aurora Alerts: A digital herald for the Northern Lights.
* Loadshedding Planner: An electrical outage navigator.

Further, Johann has amplified machine learning applications, especially during his tenure at a Cyprus-based investment firm. Now, he’s steering digital strategies with HuskyCodes Oy and catalyzing DevOps transformation at OP Bank.

Coupled with tech, Johann is an accredited Design Sprint Master, ITIL, and CBP project manager. A sought-after orator, his anecdotes resonate globally, ensuring others navigate tech terrains with fewer hitches.

Activity

Experience

  • OP Financial Group Graphic

    OP Financial Group

    Helsinki, Uusimaa, Finland

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    Helsinki, Uusimaa, Finland

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    Cyprus

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    Cape Town Area, South Africa

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    Cape Town Area, South Africa

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    Malmesbury

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    Helsinki, Southern Finland, Finland

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    Helsinki, Southern Finland, Finland

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    Helsinki Area, Finland

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    Delaware, USA

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    Helsinki Area, Finland

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    Cyprus

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    Delaware, USA

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    Cape Town Area, South Africa

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    Cape Town

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    Woodstock

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    Somerset-West

Education

  •  Graphic

    -

    Did a degree on the side and intend on continuing this trend, quite enjoy studying the underlying systems/processes and algorithms

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    Activities and Societies: Computer Programming team for national challenge

Licenses & Certifications

  • Microsoft Certified: Azure Fundamentals Graphic

    Microsoft Certified: Azure Fundamentals

    Microsoft

    Issued
    Credential ID 995820294
  • Certified Google Design Sprint Master Graphic

    Certified Google Design Sprint Master

    Google

    Issued
  • Microsoft SQL Server Database Developer

    Microsft

    Issued
  • Microsoft Certified Professional Developer

    Microsoft

    Issued
  • ITIL Foundations V3

    -

    Issued
  • CBP Project Management

    CBP

    Issued
  • Microsoft Certified IT Profesional

    Microsoft

    Issued
  • Google Certified Professional Cloud Developer Graphic

    Google Certified Professional Cloud Developer

    Google

    Issued Expires
    Credential ID 256
  • Google Certified Professional: Cloud Architect Graphic

    Google Certified Professional: Cloud Architect

    Google

    Issued Expires
    Credential ID 000000076
  • Google Certified Professional Data Engineer Graphic

    Google Certified Professional Data Engineer

    Google

    Issued Expires
  • Cisco Certified Network Professional

    Cisco

    Issued Expires
  • Cisco Certified Network Associate

    Cisco

    Issued Expires
  • Oracle Certified Java Developer

    Oracle

Volunteer Experience

  • Web Developer / Administrator

    BTRI (Bull-Terrier Rescue)

    - 4 years 1 month

    Animal Welfare

    Built a Website for a Local Organization that wanted to get online to find users.

    http://www.btri.co.za/

  • Developer

    Google Developer Group - Hack for Good

    - 1 year 7 months

    Science and Technology

    We build products for teams that require solutions that solutions on the Google Cloud could easily do. We get together on a Saturday and hack away on a project. With Google sponsoring snacks and drinks.

Publications

Projects

  • Hushtache

    Config management with built-in encryption that allow developers to store app secrets encrypted in the same repo. Secrets are encrypted using AES that has the key protected using a generated private key of each user.

    Along with simple storing and retrieving secret, the tool allows rendering directly to any templates given. Examples of these might include Google App Engine's app.yaml, where the environment variables are populated from the secret store.

    See project
  • Prescribe

    - Present

    Site dedicated to crawling online retailers and universities such as Unisa to match prescribed books, give listings with direct links and help users find the cheapest prices for the books. Idea is to work in numerous other sites such as Gumtree and more.

    See project
  • Mastering Google App Engine

    Developing web applications that serve millions of users is no easy task, as it involves a number of configurations and administrative tasks for the underlying software and hardware stack. This whole configuration requires not only expertise, but also a fair amount of time as well. Time that could have been spent on actual application functionality.

    Google App Engine allows you develop highly scalable web applications or backends for mobile applications without worrying about the system…

    Developing web applications that serve millions of users is no easy task, as it involves a number of configurations and administrative tasks for the underlying software and hardware stack. This whole configuration requires not only expertise, but also a fair amount of time as well. Time that could have been spent on actual application functionality.

    Google App Engine allows you develop highly scalable web applications or backends for mobile applications without worrying about the system administration plumbing or hardware provisioning issues. Just focus writing on your business logic, the meat of the application, and let Google's powerful infrastructure scale it to thousands of requests per second and millions of users without any effort on your part.

    This book takes you from explaining how scalable applications work to designing and developing robust scalable web applications of your own, utilizing services available on Google App Engine.

    Starting with a walkthrough of scalability is and how scalable web applications work, this book introduces you to the environment under which your applications exist on Google App Engine. Next, you will learn about Google's datastore, which is a massively scalable distributed NoSQL solution built on top of BigTable. You will examine the BigTable concepts and operations in detail and reveal how it is used to build Google datastore. Armed with this knowledge, you will then advance towards how to best model your data and query that along with transactions. To augment the powerful distributed dataset, you will deep dive into search functionality offered on Google App Engine. With the search and storage sorted out, you will get a look into performing long running tasks in the background using Google App Engine task queues along with sending and receiving emails. You will also examine the memcache to boost web application performance, image processing for common image manipulation tasks.

    Other creators
    See project
  • Loadshed.org

    Receive a SMS every morning if any of your areas are scheduled for loadshedding, and only if any of your areas will be affected. The service will also update with a SMS during the day if the stage changes.

    See project
  • Interactive Loadshedding Map

    Like a lot of folks who want to prepare themselves fro the looming power cuts, Google developer and Cape Town resident Johann du Toit headed over to his local municipality’s site to look up load shedding schedules. And like a lot of folks who do that he discovered that finding the information he wanted was… not easy. So to help those who follow in his footsteps, he’s built an interactive map fellow Capetonians so that they can look up affected areas and times and figure out what localised…

    Like a lot of folks who want to prepare themselves fro the looming power cuts, Google developer and Cape Town resident Johann du Toit headed over to his local municipality’s site to look up load shedding schedules. And like a lot of folks who do that he discovered that finding the information he wanted was… not easy. So to help those who follow in his footsteps, he’s built an interactive map fellow Capetonians so that they can look up affected areas and times and figure out what localised warnings mean for them.

    Was featured on a few blog posts with the best being http://www.htxt.co.za/2014/06/13/load-shedding-in-cape-town-an-interactive-map-of-where-and-when/ for me.

    Also got coverage on local radio stations:

    soundcloud.com/johann-du-toit/johann-du-toit-smile-fm-904fm-thu-082102-to-082822

    and on tv:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qjjMBBg3Wc&feature=youtu.be

    See project
  • Twify

    My latest project that makes local simple to use custom built network routers talk to the app on App Engine. Should be ready in a few months. Using G+ for social hotspots.

    See project
  • HelloBreeder

    The website allows users to add complaints or compliments about breeders. This then allows users to view the rating of the breeder they are buying and allow them to make a smart choice. The site has seen several victories with bad breeders even being called out and banned. Using Ads from Google

    See project
  • IdentiChip

    After building GetMeKnown I saw a real need for a unified search engine for Microchip providers. Where one search engine would search all microchips providers and be able to provide law enforcement and the providers logs from where and when searches took place. I built this and won a award from the Google Apps Cloud Challenge 2012. The site had some interest from local government and created a API for developers.

  • Food4Pets

    E-Commerce Website and System for future projects. The site itself was built for Animal Products

    See project
  • GetMeKnown

    The first paperless solution to Microchipping in South-Africa. The site started small but is currently one of the four national databases and growing by a few hundred records every day. I both developed and maintain it. Using Google Maps / Charts in the backend.

    See project
  • Curriculum Vitae

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    Curriculum Vitae is a service to provide a Way for Users to have a Resume online and generate professional resumes in one click without the need to know anything about CV. While at the same time give recruiters the ability to search candidates based on that information.

    Created by one developer who was updating his CV one day and found that the entire process was just too much work. So he had a Idea.

    The Idea ? Allow Users to Maintain a Single Repository of Data for CV's
    Sounds…

    Curriculum Vitae is a service to provide a Way for Users to have a Resume online and generate professional resumes in one click without the need to know anything about CV. While at the same time give recruiters the ability to search candidates based on that information.

    Created by one developer who was updating his CV one day and found that the entire process was just too much work. So he had a Idea.

    The Idea ? Allow Users to Maintain a Single Repository of Data for CV's
    Sounds weird but thats it. By giving users one location where they can manage and update their information it gives provides a lot of functionality and integration possibilities.

    Recruiting Company A decides they want to find their perfect candidate. In the past they used to have a couple of options like posting a job on various sites and hoping a candidate find the post or paying to browse users online and hoping they will respond.

    Now we gave them 2 new ways of looking for Candidate. Both of which are free till they find their candidate. One Solution is to Filter for Candidates on the Site and look for the perfect one that will fit the requirements. Or do a Job Post and filter using that Job Post or wait for candidates to find the Job Post based on their profile and apply for the Job.

    Stills sounds like a solution for this exists ? Take this example:

    See project
  • AtomCert

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    Makes managing SSL certificates. By having a system that handles most of the load for the key generation and ordering in the backend. With a easy and efficient UI that won't fight you.

    See project
  • Cape Commuters

    Using App Engine I attempted to make a better way to view train / bus schedules in Cape Town. Also providing a API to developers. Built on AppEngine and using Cloud SQL along with Google Maps.

    See project

Honors & Awards

  • Semi Finalist in the Google AfricaConnected Initiative

    Google

    My website http://www.curriculumvitae.co.za/ got named one of the innovate sites in Africa and was featured in various articles:

    -> http://www.ybl.co.za/google-names-africas-top-20-innovators-using-internet-to-change-lives/
    -> http://www.humanipo.com/news/39707/kenya-sa-strongly-represented-in-africa-connected-semi-final/
    -> http://www.htxt.co.za/2014/02/06/six-south-africans-make-googles-africa-connected-semi-finals/
    ->…

    My website http://www.curriculumvitae.co.za/ got named one of the innovate sites in Africa and was featured in various articles:

    -> http://www.ybl.co.za/google-names-africas-top-20-innovators-using-internet-to-change-lives/
    -> http://www.humanipo.com/news/39707/kenya-sa-strongly-represented-in-africa-connected-semi-final/
    -> http://www.htxt.co.za/2014/02/06/six-south-africans-make-googles-africa-connected-semi-finals/
    -> http://www.bizcommunity.com/Article/410/16/109354.html

  • Was a finalist for the Google Cloud Developer Challenge 2013

    Google

    Submitted my application which was aimed at making the train and bus schedules more friendly and providing a set of API's for developers to use the data - http://gcdc2013-capecommuters.appspot.com/

  • Won the ScaleConf App Engine Hackathon 2013

    Google

    Made modifications to a App Engine App and won a Nexus 4.

  • Google Apps 2012 Developer Challenge Finalist

    Google

    Made www.identichip.org and was a finalist for the final prize of $20,000. Won a Netbook.

Languages

  • English

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  • Afrikaans

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  • Dutch

    Elementary proficiency

Organizations

  • Google Developer Group - Cape Town

    Assisting Organizer

    - Present

    Helping in a unofficial capacity to organize the group and events.

  • NodeJS Cape Town

    Organizer

    - Present

    I'm currently running the NodeJS Cape Town Meetup. The group has a ton of exciting events that I source, arrange and host. View more at http://www.meetup.com/nodecpt/

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