Ken McCarthy

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Ken McCarthy (born September 20, 1959) is an American activist, educator, entrepreneur and Internet commercialization pioneer.

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[edit] Early life and education

Born in New Haven, Connecticut, McCarthy's father Francis W. McCarthy (1922-2003) was pioneer in the practical applications of data processing technology for the insurance industry.

McCarthy's maternal grandfather, Andrew Paretti of the Bronx, NY, was the pre-eminent granite masonry contractor in the New York City area from 1930 to 1955. His firm did the stone work for the Chapel at West Point, Keating Hall at Fordham University, and the Peace Plaza of the UN as well as numerous public works projects during the Robert Moses era.

McCarthy graduated from Regis High School (New York City) in 1977 and Princeton University in 1981. At Princeton he was the program director for WPRB-FM. While at university and immediately afterwards, he produced numerous concerts including several for his college roommate, multi-Grammy nominee Stanley Jordan. His studies at Princeton included neuroscience, cognitive psychology and anthropology.

[edit] Contributions to the Internet industry

McCarthy is best known for his pioneering work in the movement to commercialize the Internet in the first part of the 1990s including early experiements with legitimate e-mail advertising, contributions to the development of the banner ad, practical applications of pay-per-click advertising and Internet video.

In 1994, he organized and sponsored the first conference ever held on potential commercial applications of the World Wide Web. Marc Andreessen co-founder of Netscape and developer of the first commercially successful web browser was the keynote speaker. Other Internet pioneers who acknowledge the impact McCarthy's ideas had on their own work include Ed Niehaus, Rick Boyce, and Steve O'Keefe. In a talk at Pac Bell in 1994, McCarthy described in detail the new content marketing and distribution model the Internet was making possible, a model now sometimes referred to as the The Long Tail.

In 1998, he sold his company E-Media (a term he coined and owned the federal trademark for) to an investment group which rolled it up into Nine Systems, which in turn was absorbed by Akamai Technologies. He remains active in the Internet industry as an advisor, investor and entrepreneur operating under the name Amacord, Inc.

[edit] Activism

In 1995, McCarthy organized and sponsored a conference on the topic of using the web as a local publishing medium to assist community building.

Projects that came out of that conference include one of the first detailed studies of an election fraud to appear in any medium (the 1997 49er Stadium bond issue in San Francisco); a virtual museum dedicated to recovering the forgotten story of one of San Francisco's most historically important neighborhoods (the Fillmore); and documentation of the largest and most successful maritime evacuation in history (New York City on September 11, 2001.)

McCarthy has also worked with challenged communities - Hudson, NY and New Orleans, Louisiana - to develop strategies to use the web to organize citizens and engage in public education and outreach. His work in Hudson resulted in the defeat of a plan to site what would have been North America's largest coal fired cement plant on the banks of the Hudson River.

[edit] Other activities

In addition to his work in the Internet industry, McCarthy has been involved in the music industry, as a concert producer and promoter; in the film industry, as co-founder of one of New York City's first digital film audio post production studios (When We Were Kings, Like Water for Chocolate); and on Wall Street, as a technical communications consultant to Bankers Trust and First Boston. In the 1980s, while still in his twenties, he guest lectured at the business schools of Columbia University, MIT and New York University as part of a project called Optimal Learning which was based on practical applications of his academic studies in psychology and neuroscience at Princeton University.

[edit] References

  • Gross, Ronald (1991). Peak Learning. Tarcher. ISBN 0-87477-610-4.
  • Kennedy, Dan (1996). How to Make Millions with Your Ideas. Plume. ISBN 0-452-27316-1.
  • Kennedy, Dan (1996). The Ultimate Sales Letter. Adams Business Media. ISBN 1-59337-499-2
  • McCarthy, Ken (1996). The Internet Business Manual. Bunksha (Tokyo). ISBN4 8211-0515-2.
  • O'Keefe, Steve (2002). The Complete Guide to Internet Publicity. J. Wiley. ISBN 0-471-10580-5.
  • Pepin, Elizabeth and Watts, Lewis (2006). Harlem of the West: The Fillmore Jazz Era. Chronicle Books. ISBN 0-8118-4548-9.
  • Reid, Robert (1997). Architects of the Web: One Thousand Days that Built the Future of Business. J. Wiley. ISBN 0-471-17187-5.
  • Vee, Jimmy; Miller, Travis; and Bauer Joel (2008). Gravitational Marketing: The Science of Attracting Customers. J. Wiley. ISBN 978-0-470-22647-6.

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