Robin Good
Robin Good
Robin Good is a communication expert, who helps entrepreneurs, independent publishers, and small companies communicate and market their services online through the sharing of high value content and the cultivation of long-term relationships. Mr. Good is also an independent publisher, author, speaker and startup advisor focusing on curation, marketing, design, learning and collaboration. He has been the publisher of one of the early tech magazines in the first blog era (2000-2007) (MasterNewMedia.org) [undefined] and of its companion newsletter (Top Tools) [undefined] which he publishes to this day. He is also the founder of the POP Campus / Robin Good University [undefined] an online academy designed to help Italian entrepreneurs and small firms develop their online communication strategy, and the author of "da Brand a Friend"[undefined] (ROI Edizioni, 2017) [undefined], a print book about doing business online through relationship building and value sharing.
Professional Career
As a communication professional Robin Good has had the opportunity to work in a wide range of situations in the fields of cinematography, video editing and post-production, computer graphics, design, print publishing, presentation and training.
Before starting is online career, he has worked for Canale5, Retequattro and Italia1 TV networks as a on-air promotion producer, and for RAI as a news information designer. He has produced several music videos and has been program and music director in the relaunch of M100 radio. In 1988 he has opened his communication & design agency devoted to design and publish multi-language publications for international NGOs as well as to train executives and staff of the same orgs into the skills required by new communication technologies. His main clients have been FAO, IFAD, World Food Program, ILRI, World Bank Institute, Asian Institute of Technology among many others.
Starting in 2000, he started publishing a weekly newsletter (MasterMind Explorer) [666666] [666666] [undefined] where he gathered and reviewed in depth the most interesting new tools and technologies for communication. The newsletter gradually gave life to a full online magazine named MasterNewMedia. Initially in English, it later blossomed in multiple editions in Spanish, Italian and Portuguese before coming to a gradual end in 2014.
Thanks to MasterNewMedia.org, by 2008 Robin Good was the first Italian independent publisher to have invoiced one million dollars to Google.
That success, alongside his proactive invitation to use digital tech to create alternative work opportunities, made him a reference person for anyone seeking work independence through the Internet.
Since 2015, Robin Good has decided to devote his full time to book writing and to speaking engagements while coaching new companies and entrepreneurs in their communication strategy through his crowdfunded program.
Publications
• Content Curation World- Scoop.it [undefined]
[Digital magazine] 2011-2015 Insights and commentary on content curation.
• Content Curation World- Flipboard [undefined]
[Digital magazine] 2015 - present Hand-picked news and stories about curation for independent publishers.
• Content Curation Official Guide [undefined]
[Online Guide] 2015 - present
The full spectrum of topics related to content curation analyzed and dissected.
• da Brand a Friend, ROI Edizioni [undefined]
[Book] 2017 How to do business online by sharing value and cultivating long-term relationships.
• T5 [undefined]
[Website + Newsletter] 2014 - present Comprehensive catalog of unique digital tools for communication professionals.
Mostly free.
• A Guide to Crap Detection Resources [undefined] with Howard Rheingold
[Gdoc] 2014 - present Categorized collection of online resources helpful to vet and verify content published.
• ZEEF directories [undefined]
[Tools directories]
Highlights: • Best Online Collaboration Tools [undefined]
• Content Curation Tools [undefined]
• Content Discovery Tools [undefined] • Video Publishing Tools [undefined]
• Pinterest collections [undefined]
[Visual catalogs]
Highlights: • Content Curation Visualized [undefined]
• What Is Content Curation [undefined]
• Free P2P File Sharing (Without Spyware) [undefined] [ebook PDF] 2011
Robin Good's mini-guide to safer music and file sharing
• Bioteaming Manifesto [666666] with Ken Thompson
[ebook PDF] 2005 A new paradigm for collaboration for virtual networked teams.
• Robin Good’s SOHO Web Conferencing Guide [undefined]
[ebook PDF] 2003 “Reviews of 18 Live Conferencing Systems: Comprehensive Feature Comparison Table: Access to 16 Free Try-Outs: 500+ Pages: 600+ Screenshots: 400+ Links”
• Picture Perfect! (Look Ma No Photoshop) [undefined]
[ebook PDF] 2003 How to do basic image editing without using Photoshop (only free tools).
• NewsGod [undefined]
[ebook PDF] 2003 “How To Be The First One To Know Everything About Anything.
Intelligent Information Agents Come of Age”
• MasterNewMedia.org [undefined]
[Website magazine] 2001-2011
Tools, guides and resources to communicate more effectively with new media technologies
Achievements
• First Italian online publisher (MasterNewMedia.org) to invoice over one million dollars to Google (at the time about 700,000€) 2010.
• Mentioned in over 100 books [undefined] including NetSmart [undefined], ContentNation [undefined], Informal Learning [undefined].
• Changed altogether his career in 2004, at age 47, by giving up traditional consulting and by starting to work 100% online as an independent publisher.
Ideas
Collaboration. One of Robin Good's early interests in his online career has been with collaboration strategies, tools and technologies. He founded the website Kolabora.org (2003-2008) where he published tens of articles on web collaboration and in particular on the tools that would make it possible. In 2003, he published the Robin Good’s Official Guide to SOHO Web Conferencing & Live Presentation Tools [undefined] a compendium containing over tens of reviews of conferencing technologies targeted at independents, home and small businesses, first an ebook PDF on Amazon and then as online guide. He later advised Microsoft on its Live Meeting conferencing platform. Of note the fact that with Kolabora.org, Robin Good also organized several online webinars in which he interviewed international renowned experts as Ray Ozzie, Howard Rheingold, Nancy White and others.
Sharing
A key characterizing trait of Robin Good's philosophy and communication approach is strongly connected to the idea of sharing.
Since his very first newsletter publication, MasterMind Explorer (2001), at times consisting of over 20 pages of printable information, Robin has chosen to give out freely what in the recent past would have commanded a price.
While this sharing approach has gradually become commonplace in the following years, Robin has made it central to his communication by responding publicly to all questions from his readers on his social media page, as well as by organizing many webinars and online events freely accessible to anyone interested.
Mr. Good is an open supporter since 2005 of Universal Basic Income and the ideas of Nicolò Bellia, and of the P2P philosophy heralded by Michel Bauwens. Even his complete pen name, Robin Good from Sharewood, is deeply and unequivocally connected to it.
Curation
The key interest area Robin Good has been focusing on since 2004, is the one of digital curation.
His specific interest in this area stems not just from his early years DJ career, but also from a lifelong passion with organizing and categorizing methodically things, as well as with his developed-over-time ability to see patterns and to remix and re-juxtapose things to create something of additional value.
The first practical application of this interest emerged when RSS feeds became popular and with them the issue of how to digest such vast number of feeds and news in an effective fashion.
At that time Robin Good started leveraging the opportunity by new RSS aggregation and moderation tools like Mysyndicaat [666666] [undefined] [46]. With them it was possible not only to aggregate and republish selected news stories coming from a very large pool of news sources, but it was also possible to manually moderate, pick, edit and add value to each one of them. This, in Robin Good's view would be the work of what he called a "newsmaster"[undefined], somebody dedicated to the task of scanning an entire topic area by aggregating and reading all of its incoming news, and to hand-pick and pass-on, with his personal added value, such news into a dedicated thematic stream (what he called a "newsradar"[undefined]).
Independent Publishing as a Profession
Robin Good has always been a strong evangelist of free and low-cost, accessible digital publishing tools.
In his view, these tools offer tremendous, never before available opportunities to individuals: - in creating truly useful information resources and tools for others - in developing new types of work opportunities that reflected their own true interests and passions.
Independent publishing tools are the new means to re-open the conversation gates that were closed and monopolized by big business and media in the industrial era.
Alternative Marketing
As a communication specialist, Robin Good, has always made clear his uneasiness with marketing as we all know it.
The idea of having to boast and hustle, to scream and interrupt others, to speak always for oneself and to be so comprehensively self-referential, is not in Robin Good's view the ideal approach to communicate effectively and to create long-lasting one-to-one relationships in the 21st century.
That was possible in the age of mass media.
But now that people talk to each other every day through the net, it is indispensable that brands are true to their values, transparent, and truly interested in listening and addressing their specific client needs.