Richard Kastelein

Richard Kastelein, CEO and co-founder of Agora Media Group, is a C-level strategist with several start-ups who has strong skills in Social Media and Social TV Architecture, and Analysis - Community/Social Media building using Open Source technology. New Media publishing and remodeled old school print media using on-demand technologies. Top notch communicator.

Kastelein is an adept team player - a publisher, writer, photographer, marketing director, web developer and graphic designer with more than 20 years experience in the development and operation of newspapers, magazines, web media and marketing of multinational, companies in international settings.

A Well travelled yachtsman (24,000 nm offshore - two Transatlantics/one TransPac), with outstanding problem solving skills, he published first article to crewing on boats as a lifestyle called 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Sea' in 1991. Lived aboard sailboats in Caribbean for a decade and built €1.200.000 catamaran in Brazil in 2004. He is an Open Source Evangelist.

Life Snippets

• Been known as a 'grottie yottie' while living barefoot onboard our sailing vessel GOLEM in the Caribbean for ten years.
• Was covered by Avantoure Magazine for sailing lifestyle.
• Built a 1.3 million dollar catamaran in Brazil in 2004.
• Publisher and founder of www.freepressgroup.eu - a group of online publications that work with over 300 academics and media creatives who focus on progressive politics and ideas.
• Open Source CMS junkie having been in movement since phpnuke all the way to Joomla.
• Viral web projects including thankyouqwest.org and unassociatedpress.net covered by NYT's, USA Today, IHT, CNN and more...
• Sailed across Med and Atlantic with wife in 1994 on small sailboat. Indian Ocean in 1990. Pacific in 1991.
  
• Interviewed Canada's first woman astronaut, Roberta Bondar, about what the Northern Lights looked like from above... while looking at them from below in the Canadian Arctic.
• Did over 100 restaurant and bar reviews as Editor of What's ON St. Martin and St. Martin's Week.
• Published on demand print book by Chris Floyd on Amazon.com called 'Empire Burlesque' ,  and Oceania by Andre Vltchek  as well as theologist Jan Chr. Vaessen's A Quest For Hope: Searching For Ways Out Of Postmodern Nihilism Into New Reality
  
• Devised and innovated on new system to deliver a Quest 3D environment from TV to the web using a wowza flash streamer, advanced streaming capture solutions, and delivery on a linux server.
• Broke international story and uncovered a human smuggling ring as an investigative reporter in St. Maarten.
  
• Wrote the Hitchhiker's guide to the sea, the first travel guide on crewing on sailboats in 1991 after sailing around the world hitching on yachts.
• Delivered sailboats for a year between the Virgin Islands and St. Maarten for Sunsail. Threw bottle with resume on the beaches of Richard Branson's Necker Island while sailing by hoping to connect...
• Fathered three lovely daughters all currently under eight. Married to a Groningense for a dozen years.
  

Write, photograph, design, code, dream, organize, structure, feed, mould, shape, feel, warp, laugh, smile, elucidate, innovate, invigorate, appreciate, empathize, sympathize, enterprise...