Mike Maney

Tag: tech conference

  • In Pictures: Defrag X

    It’s taken me longer than I expected to write this post. It’s been a decade since Eric and Kim Norlin sent out the first registration link for a small Denver-based conference called Defrag. 10 years for a tech conference is a helluva run.

    Defrag had a long run because Eric and Kim made it something special. Attendees never knew what to expect from the agenda other than it would be mind-expanding and changing until about two weeks out. Unlike many conferences, the talks weren’t chosen by committee. They were chosen by whatever Eric saw coming down the pipe that the community might need to get in front of. From connections between housing starts and ladders falling off of trucks at one exit in Los Angeles to tales of dinner table conversations with computing greats and cosmonauts in training…Defrag never disappointed.

    Luckily, much of what made Defrag great will carry on at Eric and Kim’s other long-running conference: Gluecon. Different time of the year (May instead of November), but same Bat channel. If you’ve never attended, I encourage you to register and come prepared to learn from some of the smartest people in the business.

    And, if you’re like me and have been to more Defrag’s and Glue’s than you can count, I’ll see you, my friends, in May at the Omni.

     

     

  • Stop Selling

    Last week, I had the pleasure of being the opening keynote speaker at the second annual Social Media Business Life Conference produced by Chuck Hall. I’m usually the guy writing speeches for others, so it was an interesting role reversal to be the guy in front of the audience for a change.

    Chuck does a great job organizing this conference and putting together a full-slate of content that is, refreshingly, vendor-free. Too often, those of us who have been involved in social media for years forget that many people are still ramping up. There were nearly 250 people drawn to learning about how they could use social media to improve their organizations. In a suburb of Philadelphia. As my friend, John Patrick, often said when the web was first molten hot: “We’re only 10% of the way there.”

    My talk focused on the need to look beyond the tools of social media and see the humans behind those tools. I also challenged the audience to stop using social media to sell…which I think forced Chuck and several members of the audience to wonder if I’d started the conference-ending happy hour a bit early.

    (My keynote starts at ~9:30 into the video.)

    Because Face Time is as Important as Facebook

    View more presentations from Mike Maney

  • The Blur(con)ing of Human Computer Interaction

    blurcon

    I’ve never made any excuses for being a big fan and supporter of the conferences organized by Eric and Kim Norlin (and their dedicated group of pool hustlers family and friends who make the events run smoothly). I still have a brainache from my first Defrag. And Alcatel-Lucent (my employer) is putting serious weight behind Gluecon this year, a conference that has become *the* must-attend gathering for developers working with the APIs and the cloud.

    This year Eric and Kim also introduced a new conference. It’s called Blurcon. And I am highly bummed I’m not going to make it (crazy travel schedule). What is Blurcon? Let’s let Eric describe it in his own words:

    …we stand on the verge of a major revolution in the models of Human Computer Interaction (HCI). A revolution that will fly right past academic and into a world of retail, medical, gaming, military, public event, sporting, personal and marketing applications. From multi-touch to motion capture to spatial operating environments, over the next 10 years, everything we know about HCI will change.

    Take a look at the agenda for day one. If you can get to the Orlando area in February and you’d like to stretch the gray matter in your head to the point of breaking, get yourself registered for Blurcon.

  • Defrag 2009: Day .5

    It was arrival day for one of the tech industry’s most brain-straining conferences, Defrag 2009, in Denver. Lots of catching up with old friends like Graeme Thickins and meeting new ones like PostRank CTO/founder Ilya Grigorik. Here’s a quick shot from our table at the John Minnihan/Freepository-sponsored pre-conference dinner hanging with Infectious Greed’s Paul Kedrosky, Foundry Group’s Brad Feld, and the man himself, Robert Scoble.