Mike Maney

Author: Mike

  • The immeasurable power of saying yes

    The immeasurable power of saying yes

    I stumbled on an interview with actor Jon Hamm that perfectly encapsulates the power of saying yes has on opening opportunities in your life and why not everything can or should be measured.

    “Mostly I drive [my agents] crazy because I say yes to everything, you know? I’m always showing up for people’s podcasts or what have you,” Hamm continued. “But that’s what I like doing. I like engaging with the people that I work with and I’ve had some tremendous, fun experiences doing that. And things like that turn into other things. And, you know, those are the kinds of things you can’t measure.”

  • Write like a human

    Write like a human

    Saw a great LinkedIn post by Joe Brockmeier about being more human in corporate writing. It’s something I’ve told execs throughout my career: Just be human. It’s that simple.

    • Use words that are part of your own dictionary, not a corporate thesaurus.
    • Tempted to use an acronym? Don’t.
    • Excited? Pleased? Dismayed? Don’t tell me; show me. Words are meant to be colorful. Paint me a picture with them.
    • Don’t want to swear, but still want to show emotion? Drop a heckuva instead of a helluva into your press release quote.
    • For the love of Hemingway, tell stories. We ain’t buying ink anymore, folks. Spin the yarns. Humans love stories. We have since we were listening to them by the fire inside caves.
    • Got bad news to talk about? Before you put a finger to keyboard, put yourself in the shoes of the person you are writing to. Sympathy and empathy are your friends.
    • Writing some form of corporate announcement (or anything, for that matter)? Write it so someone not in your industry understands what you are talking about in the first paragraph.

    Let your human flag fly!

  • Ho, ho, ho

    Ho, ho, ho

    One of the greatest joys in life is bringing joy to other people’s lives…like my uncle Bill does as Santa (caught a glimpse of him in this news segment).

  • Photos in the wild

    Photos in the wild

    It’s always a blast seeing images I’ve created used to help tell stories in the media. Like this one I captured during the abortion rights rally in Doylestown, Pa., that was used by PBS/NPR.

    And this one from last year’s Bucks County Classic used by the Bucks County Herald.

  • The function of education

    The function of education

  • Piano Man

    Piano Man

    It was 9 o’clock on a Saturday with The Entertainer himself, Billy Joel, performing his 125th sold out, one-night-a-month concert at New York City’s iconic Madison Square Garden.

  • Rally for Abortion Justice

    Rally for Abortion Justice

    Images from today’s Rally for Abortion Justice in Doylestown, Pa.

  • Culmination of Years of Hard Work: The Senior Recital

    Culmination of Years of Hard Work: The Senior Recital

    Years of language classes. Countless lessons. Endless rehearsals. All culminating in an hour long solo performance at Temple University’s Rock Hall in Philadelphia. So proud of the passion and commitment Allison put in over the past four years to get there.

  • Where the Big Ideas Are

    Where the Big Ideas Are

    https://twitter.com/thatpolymathguy/status/1519269355292291072?s=21&t=btwRAD78qZnuARfnOhVCUg
  • The Industry Finally Caught Up to My Career

    The Industry Finally Caught Up to My Career

    In a bit of professional news, I am excited to announce that I have accepted a role with Akamai to lead global cloud and developer communications — the core of Akamai’s new Compute business following its acquisition of Linode.

    The combination of Akamai and Linode sits at the sweet spot of much of what I’ve done throughout my career. Marrying Linode’s experience in cloud computing with Akamai’s leadership in scale and security creates the world’s most distributed compute platform – from cloud to edge. As someone who has been around several industry inflection points, it feels like we are at the cusp of another.

    I’m immensely proud of the work my team did at Linode. We built a communications function from the ground up, scaled it smartly and efficiently, and established a new category that the industry now embraces. We now have the opportunity to do it better, to do it bigger. 

    Stay tuned for more as I kickoff this next chapter.