Mike Manos is new Huffington Post CTO, Technology iterating as fast as the news

Mike Manos has been on demand as a Data Center executive going from Microsoft to Digital Realty Trust to Nokia and his latest job at AOL.  Mike let me know of his latest job being CTO for Huffington Post.  First question of course is what what happened to your old job?

on taking the responsibilities of CTO of the Huffington Post Media Group. . .

February 27, 2012 by mmanos

Today I was asked to take over the responsibilities of Chief Technology Officer for the Huffington Post Media Group and I can tell I am extremely excited for this opportunity. This new set of responsibilities will be in addition to my current role as Senior Vice President of Technology at AOL where I have responsibility for the Operations and Day to Day Delivery of all AOL products and services.

OK, so Mike still has his old job at Sr VP of AOL Technologies.  So, what is his new job as CTO of Huffington Post?

Some people familiar with this type of industry may think its nothing more than a simplified website with a custom CMS. I can tell you that the back end systems, custom CMS, widget interfaces and overall flexibility that these systems operate on and develop to are part of the reason for the platforms overall success. In a world where ‘Internet time’ generally means an aggressively accelerated rate of time, the Huffington Post Platform operates at a Faster than Internet time rate. Its an incredible challenge and one I cant wait to sink my teeth into.

Huh, Mike is kind of like a Sr VP of DevOps, expanding into the development of content and web site design.

In computing, "DevOps" is an emerging set of principles, methods and practices for communication, collaboration and integration between software development (application/software engineering) and IT operations(systems administration/infrastructure) professionals.^[1] It has developed in response to the emerging understanding of the interdependence and importance of both the development and operations disciplines in meeting an organization's goal of rapidly producing software products and services.

I've known Mike for quite a few years and we always enjoy discussing big ideas.  So, what can a Sr VP/CTO who gets the paradigm of DevOps do?  When you see how the pieces work together. You can implement changes.  What type of changes?  For Huffington Post it can be how do you create a better web site.

First the integration between the Editorial, Design, and Technology components of the company are truly three equal and dependent legs in the overall delivery of the service. Unlike many media companies where Technology plays a secondary role, at the Huffington Post its an essential and core part of the overall product and delivery strategy. Technology literally iterates on a daily basis.

One of the choices you have is to change when the pain of staying the same is more than the pain of change, but in IT services that can be too late.  Isn't it wiser to change before the pain comes?  Think of the ultimate pain as an outage.  Do you want to wait for an outage before you change?  Of course not.  The slow performance degradation of a site with increasing costs is what people would run into more often, and is a more realistic pain.

Mike discusses the idea of change in his blog post "Breaking the Chrysalis"

Breaking the Chrysalis

October 11, 2011 by mmanos

What has come before

When I first took my position at AOL I knew I was going to be in for some very significant challenges.   This position, perhaps more-so than any other in my career was going to push the bounds of my abilities.

...

AOL has been around for over 27 years.  In technology circles, that’s like going back almost ten generations.   Almost 3 decades of “stuff”.  The stuff was not only gear and equipment from the natural growth of the business, but included the expansion of features and functionality of long standing services, increased systems interdependencies, and operational, technological, and programmatic “Cruft” as new systems / processes/ technologies were  built upon or bolted onto older systems.

This “cruft” adds significant complexity to your operating environment and can truly limit your organization’s agility.

Mike's latest change to CTO and Sr VP of Technologies may be the future of what companies need to replace the CIO and/or CTO role.

AllthingsD reports on the other changes at AOL.

More AOL Tech Moves: HuffPo Tech Head Tim Dierks Out After 5 Months

FEBRUARY 27, 2012 AT 1:28 PM PT

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Yet more change at embattled AOL: Tim Dierks, the top engineer at its Huffington Post Media Group unit, is out, less than six months after he joined the company. AOL tech SVP Michael Manos will replace him, at least temporarily.

Dierks left Google to work for Tim Armstrong and Arianna Huffington back in September. He was first hired as Huffpo’s senior vice president of engineering, andeventually replaced chief technology Paul Berry, who had helped Huffington build the site and left in February, a year after she sold the company to Armstrong.

Accepting the Middle Age Mind, 40 - 65 is not that bad

I've had a bit of a break skiing with the kids, staying at a cabin, and had plenty of time to read with no internet access.  One of the next books I am reading next is about the middle-age mind.

The NYTimes has a review.  Here are a few excerpts.

Good news.

Q.

Doesn’t that make sense, since our young adult lives are often marked by bad decisions?

A.

I think most of us think that while we make bad decisions in our 20s, we also have the idea that we were the sharpest we ever were when we were in college or graduate school. People think if I tried to go to engineering school or medical school now, I couldn’t do it. Because of these memory problems that happen in middle age, we tend to think of our brains as, on the whole, worse than in our 20s. But on the whole, they’re better.

Q.

So what’s happening in middle age that leads to these improvements?

A.

What we have by middle age is all sorts of connections and pathways that have been built up in our brain that help us. They know from studies that humans and animals do better if they have a little information about a situation before they encounter it. By middle age we’ve seen a lot. We’ve been there, done that. Our brains are primed to navigate the world better because they’ve been navigating the world better for longer.

There also are some other physical changes that they can see. We used to think we lost 30 percent of our brain cells as we age. But that’s not true. We keep them. That’s probably the most encouraging finding about the physical nature of our brain cells.

And guess what a lot of those ideas about middle age brains are myths.

Q.

What was the most surprising thing you learned about the middle-aged brain?

A.

The hope I saw from real scientists was surprising. A lot of the myths we think of in terms of middle age, myths that I grew up with, turn out to be based on almost nothing. Things like the midlife crisis or the empty nest syndrome. We’re brought up to think we’ll enter middle age and it will be kind of gloomy. But as scientists look at real people, they find out the contrary. One study of men found that well-being peaked at age 65. Over and over they find that middle age, instead of being a time of depression and decline, is actually a time of being more optimistic overall.

Maybe the media trying to sell the products to make you young were ones who convinced us middle age was bad.

I don't know about you, but I enjoy being 51 better than being 21, or 31.  41 wasn't too bad.  Oh yeh, that's when I started middle age.

Time for a change in Data Center Commercial Real Estate? Jim Kerrigan and David Horowitz join Avison Young

Many of you know who Jim Kerrigan and David Horowitz are in the data center commercial real estate industry.  Top 5 commercial Real Estate brands  we commonly think of are companies we all see listing signs posted on buildings.

So Jim and David joined Avison Young.

Who is Avison Young?  I ran a search on Data Center Knowledge to see if Rich Miller had a post on them.  And nothing.  OK, so I am not the only one who hasn't written on Avison Young.

Your search - avison young - did not match any documents.

Suggestions:

• Make sure all words are spelled correctly.
• Try different keywords.
• Try more general keywords.
• Try fewer keywords.

I asked a local friend who works in commercial real estate if he knew Avison Young.  His response, "Oh yeh, Avison is part of the top 4."  Avison is in the top 4 commercial real estate companies.  i guess being in Seattle, we are used to having lots of Canadians here, so I am not surprised there is more awareness of a Canadian company.

Avison Young about page gives background.

In a little more than 30 years we have grown to become the largest independently-owned commercial real estate services firm in Canada, and our reach now extends across the United States. It is our commitment to our clients to innovate and ensure the highest levels of quality, service and performance that build relationships and create exceptional value.

...

In early 2009, Avison Young opened its first U.S. office in Chicago, followed by new offices in Washington, DC; Lethbridge, AB and Toronto North (2009); Atlanta, Houston, Tysons Corner, VA, Boston and Guelph, ON (2010); Dallas, Los Angeles and Las Vegas (2011).

OK, Avision is huge in Canada. Relevant to the US commercial real estate market, but has very little presence in our current mindset of data center companies.

So, let's jump to parts of the press release that announces Jim and David joining Avison Young.

Industry leaders Jim Kerrigan and David Horowitz join Avison Young in Chicago

Data center and mission critical facilities experts join as Principals

Chicago, IL — Michael McKiernan, Avison Young Principal and Managing Director of the company’s Chicago office, announced today that data center experts Jim Kerrigan and David Horowitz have joined Avison Young’s brokerage operations in Chicago.

Effective immediately, Kerrigan and Horowitz join Avison Young as Principals and will lead the company’s data center specialty efforts. They will continue to focus on assisting clients in Canada and the U.S. with their data center space needs.

I ran a search on Avison Young's Professional site on data centers.  Jim and David are in the database and when this press release goes live on Feb 13, 2012 it will have Jim and David's phone ringing.

	David Horowitz	312.273.9481	David.horowitz@avisonyoung.com	Chicago	Principal	Data Centres
	Jim Kerrigan	312.273.9480	Jim.Kerrigan@avisonyoung.com	Chicago	Principal Director	Data Centres

As we all know data centers break the commercial real estate thinking focused on space - as power, cooling, networking, and space for racks of equipment are the customer needs.

“More than 50% of companies run out of space due to power and cooling constrictions that could easily be avoided with the proper real estate strategy. Jim and David understand that the approach to data center planning has little to do with square footage and everything to do with the proper planning for racks and kilowatts.”

...

“To become a Principal in such a dynamic, growing company as Avison Young represents a significant opportunity for me at this point in my career,” notes Horowitz. “I look forward to continuing to work with Jim Kerrigan as we leverage the firm’s Canadian platform and utilize the experience of Earl Webb, Avison Young’s President, U.S. Operations, to help our clients with their strategic data center investments across North America.”

I had a chance to talk to Jim this weekend and he is excited to build a team that has many other experienced professionals besides Jim and David.  Here is a quote from Jim that gives you an idea of the services Jim is offering.

“The consolidation of our competitors into publicly-traded entities has eliminated options for clients seeking knowledge and advice from privately-held real estate consultancies. This situation is exacerbated by a lack of highly-trained and skilled experts who don't respond to groupthink or the need to respond to publicly-traded deadlines. A number of Canadian-based companies are looking for logical data center solutions but have not found the necessary guidance to solve their problems. We understand client concerns across Canada and the U.S. and can help create individualized solutions.”

The combination of private company. Canadian clients, and experienced data center professionals has the potential to drive change in the data center industry.  The smart will react quickly to changes.  Are you ready to change?

Good for a good laugh, my son misses the rail skiing

I don't blog on the weekends during ski season as there is not a whole lot of spare time, and there is limited Internet access.  Spending time with the kids is fun and great family time.  In this case, it is also good for a laugh.

Below is a video I shot today of my son having fun trying to balance his skis on iron rails.

Just to let you know my son was fine.  He didn't hit any of the metal, and just had a face plant on to soft snow.  He has a full helmet and goggles.

He is curious how many YouTube views he'll have.

I need to get him to watch this video before he tries again.

Amazon lures Data Center Architect from the Mouse (Disney)

The data center community is small and news travels fast.  One of the moves that became official through LinkedIn is Bill Hunter leaving the Mouse (Disney) for Amazon.

Bill Hunter Moving on. Last day at Disney. Starting at Amazon 2/1/2012. New opportunity! Thanks to all the fantastic people at Walt Disney who made the past 5 years great!

Bill is based out of Seattle so he doesn't have to move, but he will be on the road more than ever.

I expect to be traveling more, and
Globally. Should know more after this week.

Now that Bill has joined amazon he will be less visible, but i am sure the vendor community will be pummeling him with e-mails looking to take him to lunch, dinner, drinks, maybe a party in LV.

Amazon made a good hire and there is a more consistent need for data center capacity than the Mouse.  Especially in emerging markets.