Mike Maney

Category: Uncategorized

  • Gluecon 2013: It’s Not the Things

    It’s not the things. It’s the things that make the things work.

    That’s the core of Gluecon, one of a very select few conferences that are on my must-attend-at-all-costs list. Held every May in Broomfield, Co., Gluecon brings together a who’s who of the tech industry’s smartest people. You won’t find a Zuckerberg, Mayer or Brin, but you will find a Hoff, Merling and Cockroft — the sort of people who are building and running the core infrastructure that enables the world we all live. Household names? Maybe not. But high Q scores among those who follow cloud computing and APIs (and, I suspect, equally strong Little Bird influence rankings).

     

    As I looked through this year’s attendee list (using an awesome app developed by Full Contact), there was noticeable shift from year’s past in the type of developer and company attending Glue. Where past conferences had a healthy smattering of long tail developers, this year seems to have a robust profile of enterprise folks (something I also saw reflected in the agenda). The reason, in my opinion, is that we are finally seeing the enterprise wake up to power of things like the cloud and APIs. But instead of seeing power in apps, like we saw in the last wave, they are finding opportunity in new business models.

  • Think In Words

    Conventional wisdom says humans are creatures of images. However, really understanding a subject requires words (and complete sentences). Amazon’s Jeff Bezos gets this:

    “When you have to write your ideas out in complete sentences, complete paragraphs it forces a deeper clarity.”

    So save the PowerPoint (or Keynote) for the stage and podium. If you really want people to take you seriously, put your thinking into a stream of nouns, verbs and punctuation.

  • LEGO Does It Right

    One of the things I advise companies is that sometimes the best marketing is not marketing at all…it’s simply a matter of doing what is right. LEGO is now my poster child for that advice.

    And a spot-on post by B.L. Ochman -> “Lego: a company that doesn’t have to force customers to Like them on Facebook“

  • Damn You Nate Silver

    Slides from my closing keynote at The Social Business Future Conference yesterday.

  • Don’t Be a PR Fluffer

    Video of my talk closing out day one of Monktoberfest 2012.

  • Recap: Monktoberfest 2012

    Redmonk founder Stephen O’Grady posted a great recap of Monktoberfest 2012 (complete with the list of amazing, impossible-to-find beers they served). I’m slightly partial to this paragraph:

    Mike Maney, a longtime Friend of RedMonk, arranged and shot the video for the conference on his own. He and his colleague Matt Helmke turned their travel to the Monktoberfest into an epic 7 state roadtrip, featuring stops at craft breweries all the way from Delaware to Maine. From Riverhorse to Olde Burnside to Harpoon, they went from brewery to brewery, collecting stories and – thanks to some very gracious donations – beer.

    Crazy un-marketing ideas like this — the kind where you do what is right for the communities you do business in — aren’t possible without the support of forward-thinking executives like Laura Merling and the sure-what-the-hell-why-not participation of great pros like Matt Helmke and Justin Tormey.

  • Monktoberfest 2012 in Pictures

    The accompanying blog post: Mike, Matt & Monktoberfest 2012.

  • Bucks County Classic

    The pro peloton rode into town this weekend for the last stop on the 2012 UCI America Tour. A strong contingent of local riders camped out at the midpoint of the king of the hill climb on Wismer just out of Carversville. Feedback from the riders and their support teams echoed what so many of us who live and ride in the area know all too well: tough climbs, fast flats and one of the best areas in the country to ride.

  • Citizen Journalism FTW

    I’m a big fan of citizen journalism…but an even bigger fan of seeing my images in the press. Caught this shot while riding on the new Route 202 Parkway on a lazy Sunday while it was open to cyclists and pedestrians. This guy was decked out in his finest Little House on the Prairie attire and cranking circles on a wooden bike.

     

  • Forever the Orator in Chief

    As someone who has written a number of speeches in his career, last night’s oratorial tour de force by President Bill Clinton was, in my opinion, the greatest speech he’s ever given and, likely, one of the top three political speeches delivered over the past decade.

    And a great job by The New York Times turning on the multimedia spigot to annotate the video.