Mike Maney

Category: Uncategorized

  • MoMoMa

    Tomorrow night I will attend my first meeting as one of the newest advisory board members of Mobile Monday Mid-Atlantic (MoMoMa). I’ve been a long-time proponent (and fanboy) of the global Mobile Monday movement, so it is an honor to work even closer with such a great organization.

    For those who aren’t familiar with Mobile Monday, it is a global community of mobile industry visionaries, developers and influentials whose goal is to foster innovation and facilitate networking across the mobile ecosystem. I got my first taste of Mobile Monday when I participated in its 10th anniversary summit in Helsinki, Finland, and Tallinn, Estonia, which is where I met Mobile Monday’s chairman, Jari Tammisto, and Tokyo kingpin, Lars CoshIshii. Following Helsinki, I was invited to moderate a panel on mobile developer ecosystems co-hosted by MoMoMa and RCR Wireless.

    Mobile Monday Mid-Atlantic was founded in 2007 and has grown to more than 2,000 members — making it one of the fastest growing technology networking and educational organizations in the Greater Philadelphia region.  According to the 2011 Philadelphia Business Journal, we are the 7th largest regional networking group.

    If you are involved in the mobile industry and are interested in what’s going on in the greater-Philadelphia community, give me a shout.

     

  • BarCampBucks

    Last night I participated in another great unconference: BarCampBucks. Unlike other bar camps I’ve attended — where the focus was on technology or social media — BarCampBucks focused on the creative side of business: advertising, photography, etc. I am continually amazed at how vibrant our creative community is here in Bucks County…although I shouldn’t be given its history with the arts. Here’s a shot of me from last night (center) holding court after one of the sessions discussing influencer management.

  • Old Home Week

    Plan 9It’s like old home week here at ManeyDigital. Yesterday, someone I led PR for back in 2003 was named the 2011 Black Corporate Executive of the Year by Black Enterprise Magazine. Today, I see on Hacker News that someone found a way to run Inferno on Android.

    For the non-geeks who read the blog, Inferno is an outgrowth of a distributed operating system I helped launch in the 1990s. It was called Plan 9 (yes, that Plan 9…Paul Fillinich was the marketing lead who made that magic happen) and was created by members of the Computing Science Research Center at Bell Labs — the same group that created UNIX: Rob Pike, Ken Thompson, Dave Presotto, Phil Winterbottom and Dennis Ritchie.

  • Leadership. Recognized.

    Rod Adkins at Mobile World Congress 2003I’ve had the opportunity and luck to work with some very smart, very influential people over the course of my career. Which is why I am very proud to have served as director of communications in 2003 to 2011’s Black Enterprise Corporate Executive of the Year, IBM’s Rod Adkins. I worked with Rod when he led Big Blue’s pervasive computing strategy, moving it from an emerging business into what has become the core of IBM’s (and the industry’s) vision to harness the data coming from all of the sensors and computers embedded in non-traditional computing devices (things like refrigerators, cars and paint chips).

  • Brothers Beyond Blood

    Many of you will read this story about Louis Giaccardo and call him lucky or a hero or a survivor. To me he’s simply brother. Because Louie not only taught me what it means to be a Phi Kappa Tau fraternity man, he lived what he taught. And never more so than on that bluebird sky day in September.

    The Phi Kappa Tau Creed

    Phi Kappa Tau, by admitting me to membership, has conferred upon me a mark of distinction in which I take just pride. I believe in the spirit of brotherhood for which it stands. I shall strive to attain its ideals, and by so doing to bring to it honor and credit. I shall be loyal to my college and my chapter and shall keep strong my ties to them that I may ever retain the spirit of youth. I shall be a good and loyal citizen. I shall try always to discharge the obligation to others which arises from the fact that I am a fraternity man.

  • If I Ran Google+…

     

    I’ve been pretty vocal about my views on how Google is blowing a huge, industry-shifting opportunity with Google+. Most of those views are centered around the company’s inability to know when to let professional marketers take the handoff from the engineers (and accept that it’s ok).

    This morning, my friend and fellow corporate misfit, Greg Lowe, posted his views on why he’s abandoning the Google+ party until it figures out how to make its various systems work together. Greg’s not alone. And that’s when it hit me: What would I do if I was running Google+’s marketing today?

    Would I allocate gobs of cash from my search business to promote this new product that — according to former Google CEO Eric Schmidt — has the potential to replace search as the backbone of the company? I could. It’s not like Google doesn’t have the money to make Google+ a household name like Facebook or Twitter.

    Would I pay a bunch of celebrities and brands bucketloads of moolah to make my new product look cool to people not immediately related to Robert Scoble? I could. Twitter has shown that tactic works pretty well.

    Would I initiate basic political and competitive campaign tactics to reshape how press, analysts and other influencers define the market? I could and would.

    No, what I’d do is much simpler.

    The biggest problem with Google+ right now isn’t that it’s UI is ugly or that people like Greg can’t log in from their different Google accounts. Google+’s biggest problem is that it’s marketing team isn’t harnessing the power of its most passionate customer base: those who take the time to complain about the product’s current shortcomings (early adopters who are core to the growth of the product).

    My fix? Have a strike team scour Google+, Twitter and the web for any and all complaints about the product. Capture them. Catalog them. Categorize them. Communicate them. And then turn the engineers lose fixing them. As each issue is addressed, check it off. Keep the list public. There’s a built-in, passionate product marketing department already built into Google: its customers.

    People want Google to be successful with Google+. The meteoric sign-ups show many are looking for something that builds on the early foundations laid by Facebook and Twitter. But unless Google gets some basic marketing religion — and gets it fast — their constant drumbeat of “It had potential…” flops will increasingly erode confidence in the company’s core geek foundation.

  • Freefall and Bottle Rocket

    Freefall and Bottle Rocket speed map

    No, it’s not an EKG (although it might as well be). It’s a graphic showing the speed from this morning’s “Freefall and Bottle Rocket” ride with Mike Rubillo.

    * The ride’s name comes from the fact that I drop down the hills like a lead shot due to weight and gravity, and Mike takes off with the speed of a bottle rocket on the flats.

  • 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.

  • How Do You Define Friendship?

    • Is it the amount of time you’ve known each other? (13 years)
    • Is it how quickly you went from being co-workers to your families being, well, like family? (~1 year)
    • Is it the number of marathons you’ve run together? (2, Chicago and NYC)
    • Is it the number of Punkin’ Chunkin’s you’ve witnessed? (1)
    • Is it the number of top IBM execs you’ve both supported? (2, Patrick and Adkins)
    • Is it the amount of sushi one can be served in a hot tub on the side of a Killington ski slope? (18 pieces)
    • Is it the number of bottles of red, Yards or Black Maple Hill you’ve shared over late-night debates about PR, politics and people? (let’s not go there)
    • Is it the number of laughs, brainstorms, conversations and memories you’ve experienced together? (too many to count)

    In the case of Tim Blair, his wife, sons and dogs, friendship is defined as all of that…and more. The news this past week that Tim — one of the smartest and nicest human beings I’ve ever known — is returning to his beloved Chicago is but one more entry in the definition of our friendship. Because while I and my family are sad to see them move even just a timezone away, we know the unbreakable bond of friendship we’ve built over the past 13 years is defined not by distance, but by the sum of all that encompasses what it means to be called a friend.

  • Water, Water Everywhere


    (Awesome image by Art Gentile, Intelligencer staff photographer)

    Every year, Jenn rallies the other mothers in the neighborhood to surprise the kids when they get off the bus on the last day of the school year. And by surprise, I mean soak them with as many water balloons and super soakers as she can find. The little aqua assassins ganged up on me this year, but I was able to return fire and drench a number of them.

    The local paper, The Intelligencer, was also on hand to capture the festivities (thanks to our neighbor, Victoria, for tipping them off). Photographer Art Gentile captured me returning fire on one of the kids.

    *As an aside, I have been really impressed with the quality of the photojournalism coming out of The Intelligencer over the past year or so. Not sure if they are doing anything differently, but the composition, sharpness and vividness of their images are some of the best I’ve seen. Way to go Art and crew!