I had the pleasure of shooting the wedding ceremony of two very special people: Shannon and Tyler — or, as they are now properly called, Mr. and Mrs. Morgan. The wedding and reception were held at the White Meadow Lake Country Club in northern New Jersey.
These are a few of the images I captured throughout the day.
Earlier this afternoon news broke that former Bloomberg and BusinessWeek tech reporter Jack Clark joined OpenAI to lead community outreach, policy, communications and strategy.
A lot of folks will look at this move as yet another reporter jumping ship for the cushy life of a high powered, gate keeping flack. They might be right. Who doesn’t want a little extra cheddar lining the pockets of their cargo shorts?
But then I see OpenAI’s mission:
OpenAI is a non-profit artificial intelligence research company. Our goal is to advance digital intelligence in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole, unconstrained by a need to generate financial return.
And it gets me thinking: Smart people want not only to do exciting, meaningful work that matters, they want to do it inside organizations that matter, too. Organizations that tackle problems of humanity, not convenience. Organizations that seek a human return, not solely a financial one.
It’s not like you have to look very far or listen too closely to recognize the pervasive sky-is-falling mood that has engulfed the globe. But our world is not all doom and gloom. There remains a metric ton of good on this big blue marble spinning through the cosmos. You don’t even have to dig deep to find it.
I recently posted this question to my social networks:
If you could work for any organization — not because of what you’d do, but because of what they stand for — who would be your top three?
You know what I discovered? People want to do good things. Take a look at some of the responses I received:
Doctors Without Borders
SPCA
St. Jude Children’s Hospital
Gift of Life
National Multiple Sclerosis Society
Special Olympics
Share Our Strength
Habitat for Humanity
Philabundance
National Coalition Against Domestic Violence
Sandy Hook Promise
National Center for Missing and Exploited Children
Save the Music
March of Dimes
Sierra Club
YMCA
NASA
Smithsonian Institute
World Economic Forum
Engineers Without Borders
Network of Victim Assistance
Gates Foundation
Team Rubicon
Common Cause
The White House
Southern Poverty Law Center
SETI
On My Feet
Charity:Water
Veterans Administration
National Women’s Law Center
350.org
Greenpeace
Innocence Project
Planned Parenthood
American Cancer Society
This list doesn’t even include those who saw similar missions and qualities in organizations like SpaceX, Disney Imagineering, National Geographic, Chobani, Alphabet and Mozilla. These are all organizations which, by any measure, make the world a better place to live.
Which begs the question: What’s stopping people from using their talents to help the causes and organizations that mean the most to them? What’s stopping people from making a move like Jack did?
Josh Lyman: So, now you have two choices — meeting with an unruly mob or meeting with lunatic mapmakers.
Toby Ziegler: Or getting paid a lot more money working almost anywhere else I want.
I get it.
Non-profit organizations typically don’t pay as well as a venture-backed Silicon Valley startup or a 100-year-old IBM. Yet, some of the best talent in the tech industry has shown up on the rosters of government organizations like 18F. These are people who left lucrative salaries and perks to work for…wait for it…the government. If they can make sacrifices for something they believe in, can’t others?
Each of us has an opportunity — nay, an obligation — to move humanity forward, to make others’ lives a little easier. We owe it to our own souls to do work that fulfills us. It need not be a lifetime gig, but there is opportunity for each of us to contribute our individual talents to the organizations working on the issues that matter.
So, let’s keep this list going. If you could work for any organization — not because of what you’d do, but because of what they stand for — who would be your top three? Sound off in the comments.
Image courtesy of cdooginz via Creative Commons.
There are few things* more fun in life than discussing something you’re passionate about with someone you have enormous respect for. I had the opportunity to do just that recently when I was invited to participate in a webinar with my friend Marshall Kirkpatrick hosted by the company he created, Little Bird.
The topic of the webinar was how executives can identify and engage influencers who are important to the success of their organizations. Little Bird makes finding them easy and powerful. The harder part for many execs is what to do with these influencers once you’ve found them. You can listen to the full 30 minute discussion over at Little Bird (free, simple registration). For everyone else, I built a quick list of 10 things you can do today to start engaging:
- Use tools (like LittleBird) to identify your most important insiders
- Set up a monitoring system to see where and how your insiders interact with the community
- Set up your social accounts if you haven’t yet
- Spend a weekend reading past articles and feeds from your insiders
- Find out who your insiders pay attention to and do the same
- Record a weekly 2:00 video recapping what you saw happen in your industry
- Make a list conferences to attend where your insiders will be
- Write down what your company stands for
- If you’re a large company, tap high potentials in your comms org to guide hidden gems in your technical and exec ranks
- If you’re a startup, don’t be afraid to engage a comms coach
Engaging with the influencers in your industry shouldn’t be nerve wracking. Because there’s nothing wrong with having a conversation about something you’re passionate about with someone you (and your customers) respect.
*Craft beer, travel, spending time with friends and family
This week’s collection of random stories I’ve read. Some are fun, some provocative, some informative. All are shared to expand and deepen how we see the world around us.
Do Humans Have An Unhealthy Fetish For The Future?: Listen to any technology evangelist, business leader, politician, educator, futurist, or “cultural influencer” these days, and you’ll hear the same refrain. Anyone who wants to be successful has to innovate, disrupt, and “own the future.” – http://www.fastcoexist.com/3059369/do-humans-have-an-unhealthy-fetish-for-the-future
The future of car ownership that no one is talking about: It has never been more clear that transformational change to one of the world’s largest industries is just around the corner. Car ownership is supposed to change — and when it does, it is predicted to be one of the most monumental displacements of wealth the world economy has ever seen. – https://techcrunch.com/2016/07/13/the-future-of-car-ownership-that-no-one-is-talking-about/
A civil servant missing most of his brain challenges our most basic theories of consciousness: Not much is definitively proven about consciousness, the awareness of one’s existence and surroundings, other than that it’s somehow linked to the brain. – http://qz.com/722614/a-civil-servant-missing-most-of-his-brain-challenges-our-most-basic-theories-of-consciousness/
How technology disrupted the truth: One Monday morning last September, Britain woke to a depraved news story. The prime minister, David Cameron, had committed an “obscene act with a dead pig’s head”, according to the Daily Mail. – https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/jul/12/how-technology-disrupted-the-truth
With the Good Life over, how can suburbia regain its place in the sun?: It was where the interwar generation aspired to, but suburbs today are a tale of dying high streets and creeping poverty “Try to own a suburban home,” said an advertisement by the British Freehold Land Company in the 1920s, “it will make you a better citizen and help your family. – https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/jul/09/suburbs-architecture-stagnation
Apollo 11 sourcecode on Github: Though the code for Apollo 11’s “Apollo Guidance Computer” has been online since 2003, when Ron Burkey rekeyed it from the scans that Gary Neff had uploaded, ex-NASA intern Chris Garry’s posting of the code to Github last week has precipitated a widespread interest in the code, along with close scr – http://boingboing.net/2016/07/10/apollo-11-sourcecode-on-github.html
How statistics are twisted to obscure public understanding: Mark Twain attributed to Benjamin Disraeli the famous remark: ‘There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.’ In every industry, from education to healthcare to travel, the generation of quantitative data is considered important to maintain quality through competition. – https://aeon.co/ideas/how-statistics-are-twisted-to-obscure-public-understanding
The Weird Nothingness Across the Street From Famous Monuments: Four years ago, cinematographer Oliver Curtis went to Cairo for a freelance assignment. Like any good tourist, he visited the Great Pyramid of Giza. – http://www.wired.com/2016/07/oliver-curtis-volte-face-photography/
A Week of Gun Violence Does Nothing to Change the N.R.A.’s Message: In the language of today’s National Rifle Association, “an armed society is a polite society.” The aphorism, borrowed from the science-fiction author Robert Heinlein, is the inspiration for one of the N.R.A. – http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-silence-and-violence-of-the-n-r-a
Last week I hopped a plane out of Philly to attend what I believe was my eighth Gluecon. In years past, I’ve packed light, since the dress code for Glue doesn’t require socks. But this year, I loaded up my weighty Canon 5D Mark III with the intention of capturing a few of the attendees on video. You can see the non-moving images here.
Those who know me, know my background leans more to the still photo side of the lens, so this would be an adventure into the moving picture capabilities of the big rig. Let’s just say a certain Mr. Spielberg’s empire remains safe. But my goal wasn’t to produce a masterpiece. It was done in the age old spirit of minimal viable product and being at peace looking back someday and being embarrassed at my early work.
So, without further adieu, I present a couple of interviews I conducted over the course of the conference. Huge thanks to my guinea pigs, er, interview subjects, for playing along: Aneel Lakhani (SignalFx), Pat Patterson (StreamSets), John Minnihan (Tincup), Jason Hansen (Deis), Tyler Fontaine (Elastic), William Morgan (Buyoyant), Guillaume LaForge (Restlet), Cody Hill (Platform9) and Theo Schlossnagle (Circonus). And, of course, Eric and Kim Norlin for bringing some of the smartest people in tech together each year.
A few photos from Gluecon 2016. All of the images are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
I head out to Broomfield, Colorado, early tomorrow morning for my annual pilgrimage to Gluecon. It’s a conference I look forward to every year, as much for seeing friends I’ve made in the tech industry as for the great content. This year’s conference now has even deeper meaning.
One of the friends I most look forward to seeing is Kin Lane. He’s one of the smartest humans on the building blocks of today’s modern technology infrastructure. He did time in the White House. Yes, that White House. But, beyond being wickedly smart, he’s unbelievably caring. Like the Grizzly Adams of APIs. His API Evangelist website is, arguably, the single most important website on this topic (a topic of which, without it, there would be no apps on your phone or Uber at your curb or Watson playing Jeopardy).
And, today, it’s for sale. For, perhaps, the most important reason of all: family.
Bidding for API Evangelist starts at $10,000. You have until Friday to put your bids in. If you are a company that has built a business on APIs, this is your opportunity to support one of the people behind the reason for your company’s existence. If you are in marketing or communications, this is the chance to counsel your executives on doing what is right. A drop in your marketing bucket means the life of an extended member of your community.
Kin has put his life on hold to help a member of his family who needs his full attention. It’s not a decision anyone would take lightly, yet, I suspect it was an easy decision for Kin because of the kind of human he is.
UPDATE: Mehdi Medjaoui set up a Generosity page to make it easy for people to contribute.
(Image: Creative Commons via Alan Levine).
Every morning I wake up, pour myself a giant cup of coffee, and power through more news than most people see in a week. One of the sites that’s part of my morning routine is Product Hunt.
This morning, an app called Outplanr that was “hunted” caught my eye. I took a gander at the discussion and something in the way the moderator’s questions were phrased and the way the product’s CEO responded got me thinking: Is moderated discussion a better way to do technology trade journalism?
Most tech trade interviews for new products begin with a core set of standard questions. The discussion thread format (again, moderated for sanity) allows for questions and answers beyond a single human. It’s a transparent model. Could a format like this eliminate the need for useless tech press releases, using a public challenge/response as a new industry PR/journalism standard? Could it free up time for journalists to do deeper reporting than covering questionable new product announcements?
Does it work for every industry? Maybe not. Does it replace other necessary types of journalism? Definitely not. Is it something flacks and hacks should be looking more closely at? Probably.
What do you think? Sound off in the comments.
*Disclosure/humblebrag: My comms advisory service is on Product Hunt. Feel free to jump into the journalism…er, discussion thread.
We all have them. Moments from our childhood that stick with us. Of course, some stick with us more than others. They are part of the narrative documenting our journey through life; the stories that create the adults we become.
Growing up, my brother and I spent a lot of time with two of my cousins. We were all two years apart. Brian and I occupied the middle, bookended by Larry at the older end and my younger brother, Greg, at the other. Their mom, my aunt Kathy, was a prominent character in my narrative.
Aunt Kathy is the reason I never took up smoking. “You think it looks cool? Try it.” We were sitting around the wooden table in her kitchen. That was the first and last time I put mouth to cigarette. A teaching moment in my personal narrative.
I don’t think I ever saw her not smiling or laughing. Except for the afternoon Brian and I didn’t tell her we were going for a walk and her car pulled up behind us on Asbury Road a few miles from the house. That was definitely a moment.
Even as Alzheimer’s took over her life at a way too early age, she found a way to smile. I saw it in the photos my parents took visiting her over the years she lived with this horrible disease. I saw it in the photos my cousins posted to Facebook (where the images from this post came from). My aunt Kathy passed away on July 2, 2014. She was 68 years old.
Her role in my narrative is why I jumped at the chance a little over a month ago to help the Dementia Society of America build and promote a program to raise awareness around dementia and brain health.
More than 6,000,000 people in the U.S. live with a form of dementia. 1 in 9 people age 65 and older live with a form of dementia. 1 in 3 U.S. seniors will die with dementia. Dementia is the 6th leading cause of death in the U.S. Alzheimer’s and CTE are two of 10 types of dementia
On May 7th, we’re kicking off a grassroots challenge called Step2Raise. People from across the nation will register their FitBits and other health trackers to walk a combined 6 million steps — enough to virtually walk across America — over the 44 day period between Mother’s Day weekend and Father’s Day.
What makes this challenge different than others is that it’s not a fundraiser. There is no financial or fundraising commitment asked of participants. You just need to register and walk.
Walk a mile, walk 10,000 steps. Every step counts.
The all-volunteer, non-profit Dementia Society of America is underwritten through the generosity of individual donations and corporate supporters. 100% of any donations that come into the organization during Step2Raise will go directly into a program called Ginny Gives Grants. The program was created to enhance the quality of life for those living with dementia, their caregivers, and the public at-large, by underwriting events and activities in places like nursing homes and continuing care residential communities. It accomplishes this by providing small grants to musicians, artists, therapists and performers. This year alone, Ginny Gives Grants recipients delivered life-enriching art, music, movement and touch programs to more than 600 people living with dementia.
The Ginny Gives program was created to honor the life of Dementia Society of America founder Kevin Jameson’s wife, Ginny, who died shortly after my aunt Kathy after a valiant struggle with dementia. I recently interviewed Kevin to learn more about Ginny and her namesake program. You can here her story in his own words below.
Like my aunt Kathy, Kevin and Ginny have become part of my own narrative. If you have a fitness tracker, I encourage you to register and support this valuable program to help those living with dementia (and share it with your family and friends on Facebook).
I’m a media junkie. I grew up devouring the New York Daily News and Morristown Daily Record. And, of course, I read my hometown paper, The Star-Gazette (click that link to see a younger me on the pitch). As my career moved into tech way back before bubble was a word and internet was still spelled with a capital I, I gorged on the trade rags — everything from Inter@ctiveWeek to SD Times.
What I didn’t realize was that it wasn’t the media fix I was after, it was something more intoxicating: the stories.
Never before have stories — and the ability to spin a good one — been more important. Tech trades have seen a decimation the like of which was last seen when dinosaurs saw that fiery rock barreling down on them from outer space. Companies today need to be their own storytellers.
Good storytellers read. Sure, they keep up with industry news in the trades, but the good ones — the really good ones — spend just as much time reading for pleasure. They have an insatiable appetite for heroes, villains, conflict and opportunities for an author to transport them beyond the page.
Ask your current PR team what they read at night. Listen closely to what they tell you. Are they filling their brain bucket with industry content or are they expanding their storytelling arsenal reading works by authors like Hemingway, King, McCullough, Philbrick, Bryson or Poe?
Mike Maney 
