Mobile, Web and Mapping solutions
Integrity and customer satisfaction at our core
Focus on requirement, team input, innovation & reliability
Rob Fisher
Rob Fisher
Chairman
Favourite Pastime Bass Fishing
Favourite Movie Glimmer Man
Favourite Destination Commores
A bit about Rob Rob Fisher heads up a South African IT company at the cutting edge of mobile services. Meet the man at the helm.

Fisher is a tall fellow with a beard and a big, warm smile. He lives in his dream house on a hill in a very green suburb in Durban, a city on South Africa’s east coast. He once worked as a bank clerk, a job he hated. Gratefully he is no longer in the employ of the bank. Instead, he is the Managing Director of Always Active Technologies, a business he founded with Loet de Swart in 2001. It’s a good thing Rob didn’t stay at the bank.
If he had it’s unlikely that he would have developed the grooviest office routine south of the equator. If you are in Rob Fisher’s office at around 10am you will be treated to thick, delicious slices of hot peanut butter toast and jug size mugs of filter coffee. Slurping over a simple feast like that is a great equalizer. Think about it: if you’re all prissy about getting peanut butter on your face, that would be telling, wouldn’t it?
The tradition harkens back to the days when Rob started his first company in his TV room at home “I used to eat peanut butter toast at 10:00 every morning and the staff started to grow and I couldn’t eat my toast in front of them so they used to get a slice or two as well. Ten years later the peanut butter toast is part of the package… decent coffee is critical to the well being of the staff and the company.”

Rob was born in Salisbury, then Rhodesia. He went to school at Beachwood Boys High in Durban North and has a Graduate School of Marketing diploma. Rob is 51-years-old, is married to Anthea and they have two daughters, Mandy (19) and Kelsey (16). His favourite pastime was tennis... he has now discovered Bass Fishing or hunting Mr Bucket Mouth as he calls it. At night when he’s pushing ZZZs he pits himself against Kevin Van Dam in a fish off and Anna Kournikova on the tennis court, although never at the same time.

When Rob was a clerk at the bank he got mightily irritated having to use log books to calculate discounting Bills. He doesn’t have flashbacks or anything, but he does remember this much: “There was a calculator in the office, but because it got different answers to the log books, I wasn’t allowed to use it.”

Rob stuck it out in corporate life for 16 years. Then he went on his own as Neptune Software, selling PC hardware and software. It was a fortuitous move. Rob had an inkling that the online world was coming. Within a year he was selling US Robotics modems like hot cakes. He became a founder member of Le Club Internet (one of the first Internet Service Providers in Africa). Le Club was bought about four years later by ITI Holdings and subsequently bought and re-branded as Storm Internet. Rob spent a year with the Storm Group helping with the transition. Rob made some money in the gold rush days of the Internet. He bought a beautiful house and took his family on fabulous overseas holidays. At the start of 2000 Rob’s life was fantastic. Then near disaster struck when his wife and daughters were involved in a horrific head on collusion with a drunk motorist.

The family almost lost Mandy. For a heart-wrenching insight into how it affected the Fishers, read www.mandy.co.za

Rob says that resigning from his stable corporate job, with salary, company car and prestige, to follow a dream in IT was his most defining professional experience.
But, the accident was life changing. “Having lived through something like this really changes a person and I no longer sweat the small stuff and my priorities have changed substantially.” Rob counts the values instilled by his late father as the guiding principles of his life. “Spiritually I have only started to look for the meaning of life and things spiritual since the accident. I’m a babe in the woods spiritually.
“The meaning of life changes the older a person gets and the more experience gained by living… traumatic experiences like car accidents and the loss of loved ones have a profound effect on people. For me the meaning of life is spending the precious time we have in our earth bound body as meaningfully as possible. It’s really hard to balance ones drive to excellence, that has been bred into us by media, with taking time to enjoy family and friends and actually making a meaningful difference to other people’s lives.
“We need to take care of our hearts, bodies and our souls.”
At the helm of AAT, Rob employs 13 people and their company boasts a client base of 1000 companies and individuals. He says the highlight of his working day would be “having an empty email in-box…but it hasn’t happened yet!” He gets a thrill when products see the light of day, growing from vision through to development.

“My all favourite time in the office is meeting with the technical team to give them an idea and seeing a beta version a few days later. I really do enjoy the freedom to chart the business into the future without having to deal with any corporate Dr No’s. “It’s also great checking the bank statement and not seeing an overdraft.” There’s no small amount of satisfaction about being in the black.

The last five years have seen a lot of product development and not too much in the way of profits. But Rob knew it would be that way. “I went out on my own because the last company that I worked for didn’t like the idea of a development arm that it had to pour money into for future revenue. “I did.” Little wonder then that Rob’s favourite song is also the one his dad loved: Frank Sinatra’s “I did it My Way”. He drives an Audi Quattro 2.7 bi-turbo and his best movie is Glimmer Man. “It’s one of Steven Segal’s three good movies (his latest are awful) and the line where he tells the chap that steak would be good for the bruise on his face is a classic. (The chap answers ‘what Bruise?’ and Steven gives him a bruise). “There are other classics like ‘Go ahead... make my day’ that rank right up there… and then there is the Sound of Music that is also at the top.”

By the way, Rob recently passed a psychometric test that world leaders and top businessmen do on-line. A key question in the test was: Who do you think is more beautiful: Paris Hilton or Julie Andrews? Rob said Julie Andrews. Go boy!

Rob lives in a suburb called Everton on two-acre plot in an area where people still keep horses. It’s also five degrees cooler than in the sweaty port city of Durban.

Here’s a sample of a question and answer session with Rob:

Q - What is the best thing about the IT industry in South Africa?

A - It doesn’t matter what industry one is in South Africa right now… if you offer real customer service, a dash of vision and a dollop of risk you can make a comfortable living and enjoy yourself while you are doing it.

Q - What is the worst thing about the IT industry in South Africa?

A - Telkom’s (the telecommunications provider) monopoly… it is killing opportunities we could have in the world market! Q - If you were the minister of telecommunications in South Africa, what would be your top five priorities?

A - Scrap monopolies of any kind! Utilize all the undersea cable and satellite links to connect SA to the rest of the world. Build technology laboratories in all major centres to train talented youngsters, to give them a home for their talents and put them in their own business if they are they are that way inclined. Embrace WiMAX. Start a real export division for SA technologies.

Q - If you become as famous as Steve Jobs and as rich as Bill Gates tomorrow, will you still serve peanut butter toast?

A - Absolutely! It’s part of my no cholesterol diet now and I will always stick to the values that have worked for me… and peanut butter toast is one of them! Maybe the crockery would improve a little!

Q - What is your vision for AAT?

A - This is a lot harder these days… seeing the vision…but I guess it can be summed up with living on the bleeding edge of technology, having fun, and growing the staff. Making some serious money in the long run would be the cherry on the top. After five years of development our products are now getting out of the LAB and into the real world, which is a really good thing.

Q - What is your favourite gadget & why?

A - My IMATE Phone. It’s a little PC for the odd times I’m away from either my work or home PC and allows me to check our critical web sites and do email on the run. The DSTV PVR (satellite TV recorder) is also high on the list.

Q - Please describe what you think the world will look like in the next decade because of innovation in IT.

A - Oh my word… we are going to have connectivity free zones where we can hide away from the world of always on. There will be a revolution where people finally realise that being connected 24-7 is damaging to the “meaning of life” and it will be socially acceptable to turn your phone off if mowing the lawn or sleeping. I have started leaving my IMATE in the house for an hour or two when mowing the lawn and the world hasn’t come to an end… so I will try and switch it off once a week at night and see if I can manage.

Portable personal devices with massive storage capabilities and high quality screens so we can take our 20 year collection of music and movies wherever we go as well as all the documents and spreadsheets we have ever created. It will plug into our home, work and car docking port for synchronization. Of course having broadband connectivity and VOIP built in is standard.

The next decade will be almost too mind blowing to imagine. It’s going to depend on tools that are developed to cater for the huge information proliferation. The shotgun approach of trying to be all things to all people will change to very niche markets catering for very specific tastes. There will be a proliferation of digital entertainment channels TV, audio and games catering to niche markets. The days of broad entertainment channels will be over in 10 years.

Q - What is the significance of AAT, based in Durban, South Africa, being contracted to do work for Scotland Yard and Heathrow Airport?

A - Its really significant. We have technologies built in SA from the ground up that have a market in the rest of the world and we should have government help to promote this valuable resource to the rest of the planet for the good of the nation!

Q - What is your favourite spot on earth?

A - My home and the tropical islands that we have visited. While the most stunning diving was in the Maldives the best family holiday was the Comoros. The best place and the most interesting for me is Mauritius because the people are just such a wonderful group of people and I guess that’s where “no problem” was invented. I also enjoy finding a quiet spot on Inanda dam and hunting Mr Bucket Mouth.

Q - Where would you still like to travel to?

A - We had booked a tour of Europe when the accident put pay to that. I really would like to start in the UK and travel east through all the countries and end up in the Far East.

Q - Do you dance to music by the Village People?

A - Not if I can help it… there are a million other groups from the 60’s and 70’s that I would rather boogie to!

Q - If you had to have lunch with Robert Mugabe, what would you eat and what would you talk about?

A - I’m not sure I could actually eat with him. He is everything that is really evil about the human race. I’m not sure I could last more than five minutes without reaching over and squeezing the life out of him.

Now if I could have lunch with Madiba (Nelson Mandela) that would be a whole different ball game. Every time I see Madiba, or hear him speak, the emotions run so deep. The world is most certainly a better place having had that calibre of human being on the planet. I would have a smoked chicken salad and I would talk to him about the meaning of life.

Rob has been with AAT since August 2001.
© Copyright 2012 Always Active Technologies Legal | SiteMap | memberships: MMA | WASPA | Microsoft | Durban Chamber