our story

who we are

ii was birthed in 2011, right here in Tauranga, New Zealand, not too far from it’s current location in Ohauiti, after Chris and Shalom got back from visiting Cambodia and Thailand.

During their visit to Thailand, Chris and Shalom were shocked to find societies overwhelmingly disenfranchised (deprived of rights or privileges). They were saddened that the lives of so many millions of people could be made better with the technology and ideation already existing in our world, but kept from these people due to a focused greed on profit at all costs. As a result, Chris and Shalom decided to scale their passion for providing instant infrastructure, or cutting edge software solutions and AI, to community groups in a way that would enable them to maximise their impact on these communities in our world. Their focus is first within the Bay of Plenty, because this is our local. But, having coined the phrase; local everywhere, the goal is that the solutions we engineer in the Bay, will have a far reaching impact to include communities around the globe.

In order to maximise our impact across community groups, we work closely with the world’s largest multibillion dollar tech companies, national/regional and local governments, large national companies, some small businesses and the local and international not-for-profit organisations of varying size that we are so passionate about.

introducing

the ii team

Chris McClimans "Hippie Hacker"
Chief Executive Hippie hh(at)ii(dot)coop

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Chris McClimans is first and foremost a visionary. Chris envisions a world where everyone shares their knowledge base as well as their skills and resources. In our world of tech, this happens through open source.

Chris is able to transform systems, structures and even culture by applying his very unique skill sets in software engineering and AI to your business or community group.

Chris has a knack for helping groups identify and isolate challenges to efficiency and progress. He then works alongside you to leverage and transform those previous challenges for the good of your group. This often looks like significant profit increases for large, global entities. And it looks like consistent progress, access to resources and increased quality of life for community groups.

Chris founded ii Limited in Tauranga, New Zealand in 2011, after arrived here in 2010 as part of his global wanderings. Before that, Chris worked primarily out of his VW camper van whilst traveling through his home country, the United States.

Despite his hippie lifestyle and demeanour, Chris' current client list boasts the worlds largest tech companies. Some of his more notable former clients, during his camper van days, include FedEx and Nordstrom.

Now married with two children, Chris now keeps his camper van on a shelf in small lego replica form. When he's not traveling internationally to speak to industry leaders about how ii cutting edge technology directly impacts them, you can find Chris on a couple of acres in Tauranga, either in the adjacent ii offices or checking in on the kumara and tomatoes in the garden.

Brenda Peel
Office Manager - brenda(at)ii dot)coop

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If you'd like to get in touch with ii, Brenda is your first point of contact.

At ii, Brenda Peel seamlessly manages and coordinates all things from start to finish. There is nothing too big for Brenda to conquer. And she does it all with a smile.

Before moving to New Zealand with her husband and two dogs, Brenda worked as a Publisher Relationship Manager and Digital Project Coordinator in Cape Town, South Africa.

She enjoys experimenting with new recipes (curry, anyone?) and enjoying all that New Zealand has to offer.

Zach Mandeville
Developer - zach(at)ii(dot)coop

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Zach had a rich and varied career on his path to ii. He originally worked as a barber, before joining a small tech company (MerchantOS) started by a few of his favourite customers, where he worked as a support hero and training coordinator.

He journeyed with the company through an acquisition by Lightspeed POS, and moved to a new role of sales engineering. He later became the product manager for Lightspeed's suite of analytic tools, and worked closely with an external development team building the product (Crank Logic), before they were acquired by Looker.

After this acquisition, Zach was ready for a change, wanting to work more directly with the code and with a company more aligned with his values. This led him to study software development with Enspiral and begin his work with ii.

Stephen Heywood
Developer - stephen(at)ii(dot)coop

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Stephen Heywood is a cloud-native advocate that brings together 20 years of exploring open source technologies with an extensive set of skills from various industries.

From tertiary education (12 years); corporate IT (5 years) and the electricity sector (8 years), each has provided him with a wealth of information and a long history of industry certifications.

To unwind, Stephen enjoys an eclectic range of hobbies, from architecture, podcasts, movies while learning about different programming languages.

You can reach him on kubernetes slack, @heyste_nz or via email, Stephen (at) ii (dot) coop.

Caleb Woodbine
Developer - caleb(at)ii(dot)coop

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Caleb is driven by community, he loves the collaboration of individuals and teams - especially through Open Source software.

He was introduced to Open source as a child, booting a live CD of Knoppix to play a game.
Later, after getting a Raspberry Pi and a book on the C programming language, he became more interested in writing software, eventually releasing his own software to the wild and contributing to the vast open source ecosystem.
While volunteering at Safe Surfer, a company building tools for internet safety, he was introduced to Chris and began to work with ii, building tools to support open infrastructure

When he's not at the keyboard, Caleb is either making music or food.

See what he's up to at blog(dot)calebwoodbine(dot)com or @bobymcbobs on various places.

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