Mike Maney

Tag: monktoberfest

  • MapMy(Beer)Run

    So here’s the deal: Last year, Matt Helmke and I undertook an epic multi-state beer run from Philadelphia to Portland to attend Monktoberfest. Along the way, we made like Zane Lamprey and Pleepleus by stopping at a number of craft breweries. At each stop, we interviewed the head brewer and put a case or two of their tasty beer into the back of my Tahoe. We arrived in Portland with close to 13 cases of Dogfish Head, River Horse, Old Burnside and Harpoon to share with attendees (on top of all of the ridiculously crazy good beer provided by Steve and the Redmonk crew).

    This year, we’re making the same Philadelphia-to-Portland run…with a twist.

    Come to find out, there’s a site that let’s you plug in your origin and destination and it spits out a map showing the breweries along your route. Which got me thinking: Why not let the Monktoberfest participants decide which breweries to visit on our annual pilgrimage?

    So, take a look at the map. Study it. Then tweet out your top five choices (copying me @the_spinmd). Voting closes at the end of happy hour (ET) on Friday, 9/13. I’ll then tally the responses, gas up the truck and make like The Bandit.

  • 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.

  • Get the Beads, It’s Almost Time for Monki Gras

    Monki Gras 2012In a couple of weeks, I’ll be heading to London’s Conway Hall to participate in Monki Gras, the other-side-of-the-pond follow-up to 2011’s wildly successful Monktoberfest. The conferences grew out of a single tweet by Redmonk’s Steve O’Grady and are now on my (and many others’) Lanyard must-attend lists. And the venue choice couldn’t be better: Conway Hall was named after Moncure Daniel Conway anti-slavery advocate, out-spoken supporter of free thought & biographer of Thomas Paine — an appropriate location for a gathering of open-minded people having spirited discussion about how technology is changing the way we socialize and how the way we socialize is influencing the way we build and use 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).