Video of my talk closing out day one of Monktoberfest 2012.
Tag: redmonk
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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.
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Get the Beads, It’s Almost Time for Monki Gras
In 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
It’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:
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).
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A Face for Podcasts
Last week, Redmonk’s Michael Cote interviewed me on the topic of how I stay on top of what’s happening in the tech industry. We discussed the tools I use, some of the ways I use those tools, and a number of other topics that address the shifting role of the PR pro (listen to the podcast).
Mike Maney 
