Mike Maney

Category: AI & Technology

  • Two Brain-Pounding Conferences: Defrag + Monktoberfest

    Defrag 2011It’s now just under two weeks until the 5th annual Defrag. No tech conference gets me more excited. Defrag is held each November on the outskirts of Denver, bringing 300 of the technology industry’s smartest thinkers together for a unique and intense mix of keynotes and hallway interaction. This will be my fourth Defrag and I suspect this one will make my brain hurt just as much as the previous ones. Agendas honestly don’t get any better than the ones that hatch from organizer Eric Norlin’s sun-soaked head.

    Alcatel-Lucent is one of the lead sponsors of Defrag and we have some special surprises in store for this year’s anniversary edition (we are also the Community Underwriter of Eric’s other kickass conference centered around APIs and cloud computing, Gluecon). The conference is nearly sold-out (Eric is capping attendees at 325), so if you can make it out to Denver, let me know and I’ll see what I can do to get some of that sweet sponsor discount moving your way.

    Keeping to the cool conference theme, I also attended a great Defrag precursor the other week: Monktoberfest. How do you top a conference that began with a simple tweet:

    Monktoberfest: The tweet that started it all

     

     

     

     

     

    Check out Stephen’s post on the official background story.

    As the name implies, yes, there was beer involved. Good beer. Very, very good beer. And lobster rolls. Can’t believe I almost forgot about the lobster rolls. But the food and beer were secondary to the content the gang at Redmonk pulled together for the 150 or so attendees. It was a killer lineup of speakers exploring “how technology is impacting the way we socialize and how the way we socialize is influencing the way we build and use technology.” The exclusive conference was high on brains and low on douchebags, something not terribly common in conferences focused on social. Monktoberfest is without a doubt on my must-attend for 2012 (provided my liver recovers in time).

  • Theoretically Speaking: Google vs Microsoft

    I’ve got a hunch that this week’s Google+ news is the first volley in a tectonic shift for the tech industry. While conventional wisdom puts the battle between Google and Facebook for control of the so-called social graph, the real battle is fermenting between Google and Microsoft.

    In one corner:

    • GoogleApps (docs, video, email, cal)
    • Search
    • Google+

    In the other corner:

    Microsoft has been slow — if not outright absent — in the present day war among everyday consumers…outflanked by the speed, agility and popularity of Google and Facebook. Yet it still remains a force to be reckoned (arguments aside about how it obtained that force). It’s Office suite is still king and increasingly becoming more Google-like. It has done a nice job of staying alive, if not thriving in search. Hotmail still has, last I heard, a huge following. And the purchase of Skype was thought by many to be a shrewd move to enhance its enterprise business (although it looks like enterprise may not have been the primary or sole reason for the acquisition). Microsoft is slowly, if not stealthily, encroaching on Google’s hallowed turf.

    Google, despite a slew of missteps (which happens when a company refuses to let a product make a transition from engineering to marketing), has used its apps products to encroach on Microsoft’s stranglehold. Not so much from functionality, but as a tool to cause people to question whether they need traditional software…Redmond’s bread and butter. And, now, with Google+, it has the ability to thwart Microsoft’s plans for Skype.

    Except Microsoft has that hidden and oft-forgotten ace up its sleeve: Its investment in Facebook (and Facebook’s hatred of all things G). Skype + Facebook — if the rumor pans out next week — puts Microsoft and Google on equal footing. In fact, I’d go so far to say that given the consumerization of IT and Microsoft’s embedded position in the enterprise, it could put Microsoft back into the tech driver’s seat.

    If my hunch plays out, we’ve got ourselves an unbelievable dogfight coming in the tech industry. And when it happens — when two behemoths push themselves to out do and out innovate each other — you and I win.

  • The Blur(con)ing of Human Computer Interaction

    blurcon

    I’ve never made any excuses for being a big fan and supporter of the conferences organized by Eric and Kim Norlin (and their dedicated group of pool hustlers family and friends who make the events run smoothly). I still have a brainache from my first Defrag. And Alcatel-Lucent (my employer) is putting serious weight behind Gluecon this year, a conference that has become *the* must-attend gathering for developers working with the APIs and the cloud.

    This year Eric and Kim also introduced a new conference. It’s called Blurcon. And I am highly bummed I’m not going to make it (crazy travel schedule). What is Blurcon? Let’s let Eric describe it in his own words:

    …we stand on the verge of a major revolution in the models of Human Computer Interaction (HCI). A revolution that will fly right past academic and into a world of retail, medical, gaming, military, public event, sporting, personal and marketing applications. From multi-touch to motion capture to spatial operating environments, over the next 10 years, everything we know about HCI will change.

    Take a look at the agenda for day one. If you can get to the Orlando area in February and you’d like to stretch the gray matter in your head to the point of breaking, get yourself registered for Blurcon.

  • Apple vs Microsoft: The battle for customers

    I posted this to a comment thread earlier this morning, but thought it was worth sharing (for both of you who actually follow what I post here at ManeyDigital):

    Apple build products for our kids; Microsoft/Dell build products for their parents and grandparents. Easy math to see why Apple is doing so well: they sell to a growing customer base instead of a declining customer base.

    My comment was in response to a question posed by a colleague wondering how it is that Apple sold a million iPads in 28 days.

  • A Personalized Google TV Station

    Smokey and the Bandit

    A status update that included a link to a clip of the movie “Smokey and the Bandit” by my friend and Phi Tau fraternity brother, Sam Ceresi, sparked an idea this morning: create a television channel that does a 24×7 loop of the following movies:

    Maybe a play for Netflix or Comcast or DirecTV? I don’t know the technical limitations, but it seems to me they already have quite an inventory of spectacularly useless channels already in their lineup. What’s one or a couple million more?  Would it be possible to give everyone their own personal channel — like Google does with email. Hmmm, doesn’t Google already own YouTube? If they could figure out a way to compensate the studios — and either create their own or buy their way into an existing network — this could be an interesting play for them.

    Think it would could fly? Would there be enough demand? What would you pay? And, most important, what five movies would you loop on your personal Google TV channel?

  • Developers, APIs and Landslide Victories

    It’s getting to be that time of year when pundits start making predictions about the hot technologies on tap for 2010. My favorite so far is less a prediction and more a reality that is happening right now. Mashable’s Peter Cashmore points out that Foursquare is the next Twitter-like social technology to break out, however I think his definition of the application programming interface (API) and its role in Twitter’s (and, eventually, Foursquare’s) meteoric success is even more insightful:

    “This week Foursquare debuted the singular piece that launched Twitter into the stratosphere: an API. This application programming interface allows third-party developers to build anything they desire on top of Foursquare’s location-based social network.

    It’s been shown time and again that once these ecosystems gain momentum, potential competitors face an arduous task. From Flickr to Google Maps to Twitter and beyond, it’s clear that early critical mass — having enough users and applications to make a service invaluable — sets the stage for a landslide victory.”

  • Defrag 2009: Day .5

    It was arrival day for one of the tech industry’s most brain-straining conferences, Defrag 2009, in Denver. Lots of catching up with old friends like Graeme Thickins and meeting new ones like PostRank CTO/founder Ilya Grigorik. Here’s a quick shot from our table at the John Minnihan/Freepository-sponsored pre-conference dinner hanging with Infectious Greed’s Paul Kedrosky, Foundry Group’s Brad Feld, and the man himself, Robert Scoble.

  • Is Technology Killing the Experience of the Experience?

    I make no pains to hide that I am a proponent of the always on culture. I believe technology is less a shackle and more a liberating tool that frees people from archaic views on time and place relative to work (not to mention the positive effects technology has on the environment and economy via reduced commuting and office air/heating costs).

    That said, this post by TechCrunch’s Paul Carr challenges the always on, always connected lives many of us today live:

    “And yet this real-time mentality – pictures/tweets or it didn’t happen – continues to seep into every aspect of our lives, both personally and professionally. Whereas once we might attend a conference to watch the speakers and perhaps learn something, today our priority is to live blog it – to ensure our followers know we’re on the inside; first with whatever news might be broken. And it’s not just journalists doing the live-blogging, but anyone with a laptop and a wifi connection.”

    I agree with Carr on many points of the post. Technology that allows us to stream our lives should come with a governor that forces us to put down our devices and experience the experience. Yet, not everyone is lifestreaming with the intent of ego; some, like my friend Graeme Thickins, do so to help others learn and — here’s that word again — experience what they are experiencing by — one more time — breaking down the barriers of time and place.

    Where do you fall on the always on spectrum? Let’s hear it in the comments.

  • Defining the cloud

    I didn’t find this book at Amazon…but I very well could have.  “War and Peace” would have nothing on the size and weight of a book attempting to definitively answer the question: “What is cloud computing?”

  • Meat Clouds and Serverhuggers

    About a week ago, I posted my roster of The 2008 Cloud Computing All-Stars (I’ll be updating this shortly with new players and possibly a poll). Botchagalupe followed it up this week with his inaugural 2008 Cloudies Awards. My favorite category is his Best New Cloudy Terms (of which his top two for 2008 are Meat Cloud and Serverhuggers). Watch for Appistry (Disclosure: They are a client) to make a run at next year’s Cloudies based on what they are doing to help enterprises cloud-enable their applications.

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