G’day readers. It’s time to get a little more serious with my blog.

Please allow me to introduce myself….

I am a Canadian expatriate based in Groningen in the northern Netherlands where I ‘work’ – mainly remotely – with a number of startups and clients globally, utilizing social media and community to add Web 2.0 to their projects and businesses.

My background is in the print media and I have worked in far flung locales from the Arctic to the Caribbean as a reporter, editor and publisher of ‘old school’ paper products before making the jump to digital in 1997, when I formed my first community online in the Dutch West Indies.

Though I have worn a few different hats in my days…

I now operate a very small company and consultancy here in Holland with my wife and we do quite a few different things, many pro bono and personal and others for pay.

PRO BONO – We are active politically as progressives – and like to think we are part of facilitating change and disseminating new ideas with a group of sites at the Free Press Group – which has over 300 progressive and like-minded writers from around the world (20% hold PhD’s) who contribute in an Open Source Journalism format. We swap coverage on Google News (we are three of 4000 official Google News sources in English) for copy. They get fresh eyeballs and we get material – it’s a great barter. And I get the chance to write myself as well as create political Photoshops for the sites. We also host several of them at www.safehost.nl.

And despite losing money (hosting bills etc.) over the years, the connections I have made with many brilliant writers has brought an immense amount of satisfaction personally – as well as added professionally to my personal brand – at Linkedin for instance – where I have had several writers offer their recommendation.

More recently, I have been involved in a couple of web campaigns that rocked the boat for two corporate entities…

I think one of the most interesting areas to cover in terms of social media, and I know that so much of the money and interest in this field is generated and emanates from the relationship between corporate PR and what’s going on in Web 2.0 – is my history in both lauding a corporation to the point of gathering thousands of comments, hits and positive coverage, both on the web and in the mainstream with www.thankyouqwest.org. My phone was ringing off the hook here in Holland with calls in from CNN, NYT, USA TODAY, Denver Post and many more as the Mainstream wanted to get the Web response in this saga of Government muscle and corporate ethos.

That was good. That probably made their PR department all warm and fuzzy. And the Mainstream Media response to the ad hoc project that Chris Floyd I put together in a day was totally unexpected.

On the other hand, when I started up www.unassociatedpress.net to lobby thousands of political bloggers from all points of the ideological spectrum to boycott Associated Press, use banners to announce their boycott, and basically send AP into maximum damage control – it was a corporate nightmare. And the sad, silly decision of some guy in a suit, in an office, all puffy chested and with an ax to grind…. to test the blogging community was a silly one. He was – no doubt – a lawyer and not a hired social media strategist or even in PR. It was hell for AP as they buckled and retracted, covered their balls, and ran for cover in a media blitz which did ten years of brand damage in a week.

Whether or not the boycott affected their bottom line is not the point. The point is that AP got smacked in the ass by the citizen media and learnt a lesson or two in terms of how to… or rather, not to deal with the press. And there are still anti-AP badges floating around the net today.

Anyway, here’s my ‘official’ spiel:

Expathos is a professional web development and design network based in the Netherlands run by Social Media Strategist and Architect Richard Kastelein. Currently he is a Social Media strategist for Moho Holding B.V. in Groningen, Netherlands as well as several other consulting roles with other companies. Chief Networking Officer and Social Media Developer for Sparkling Media in London, UK and on the Advisory Board of Tel Aviv-based Zephyr Financial Technologies heading up their Social Media and Publishing development… Richard began developing online communities (forums at first) in 1998 in the Caribbean with Such is Life and was later head of his own web development company – Caribbean Web Wizards – based in St. Maarten, Dutch West Indies. He has also sailed, on small sailing vessels, over 25,000 miles offshore (2x transatlantic, transpacific, Indian Ocean and Red Sea), and lived aboard various boats he owned in the Caribbean for over a decade.

He is currently the Managing Director of V.O.F. Expathos, a social media and web development company and network based in the Netherlands. His roots and education lie in the media and he has held positions as a reporter, investigative journalist, editor, photographer, designer, and publisher of numerous print publications ranging from the Canadian Arctic to the Caribbean and Europe. He has done work for the CBC, the BBC, Pacific Yachting, Yachting Monthly, TNT Travel, and various other international magazines. He is the publisher and founder of the Free Press Group (Atlantic Free Press, Pacific Free Press, Empire Burlesque et al.) – a leading progressive political online Media Group with over 300 academics, journalists, and writers and was formerly employed as a marketing director for two multinational marine industry powerhouses.

Kastelein is an Open Source software evangelist, advocate of Freemium Business models, and is active in the Network Economy. He has skills as a coder, designer, frontend CMS developer, copywriter, viral and guerrilla marketeer, photographer and general it skills.

Cheers

Richard

Got some tips via a lead.

It’s half a million views if we get in – huge coverage globally – doubt we will but it’s worth a shot.

Dear Techcrunch

It’s not just about Twinners – or what we are currently running on two European TV broadcast stations… it’s really about the technology.

Think Second Life making it’s way onto broadcast network television in Europe… on top of the Net.

It’s about what we can do in the future – aside from our tangible and innovative entertainment-based Cross Media Social Platforms (CMSP) -  in the realms of education and direct democracy. Cable and IPTV-based classrooms and lectures with Virtual Students answering questions from virtual professors, it’s about the possibilities for the hearing challenged being able to type in keys that allow their virtual characters the ability to talk and sign and communicate with others… it’s about about communities participating in discussions about grassroots issues in their area using virtual characters in a round table with their community leaders…

It’s fairly simply on the outside – we using an advanced IVR and Business Logic Server to allow people to create and control avatars using a simple phone keypad and interact on their mobile and landline telephones in a realtime virtual world (limited to approx. 100 users) on their TV – or on the Net of they so choose. But it has taken us five years to really shake out the bugs and develop what we now have today. There are videos here that elucidate what we do more clearly.

On an entertainment level, we are implementing bars, like Twinners, but ideas such as gameshows… or even something like ‘Barbie World TV’ for a company like Mattel have been pulsing around in our team.

No one is doing anything remotely similar at this time and we are currently live in RTL in Belgium, TV Copenhagen with rollouts slated for Uno in Spain and SuperRTL this autumn.

By innovatively using technology that is already in place – telephony, television, 3D, and the web – Twinners – from Sparkling Media -  has leaped over the potential competition and created a revenue-generating platform – largely based on Open Source Software – that simply creates an interactive, virtual world on both television and the Internet that envelops social networking, community, user generated content, competition, and entertainment.

In a nutshell… Twinners is – vocal social networking in a 3d world on television and the net -Think of a place where well known & successful concepts around communities are joining all together in harmony on the net, TV and mobile: Second Life meets, meetic, meets myspace, meets facebook, meets youtube… to create TV2.0. Think TV with user generated content coming from a web community – that can be accessed and interacted by mobiles, telephones, and the web. TV viewers use a phone to create a character that interacts in virtual worlds on TV and on the web. Web users create content that can been seen in a smaller streaming box viewable within the 3D environment on TV and the web while invited to vote, download, upload, participate, play, … in realtime.

We have produced a unique 3D multiparty live chat platform currently broadcasting a 3D environment on TV merged with interactive telephony and the web. Integration of telephony, TV, and 3D exists within this core video and audio community.

Simply, our goal is to entertain, stimulate interaction with content or with other people while feeling being part of a community.

We are confident there are various elements of our TV and web development that can bring added value to the broadcast industry and generate income on a revenue shared basis. Sparkling Media was a huge hit at MIPTV in Cannes early in 2008.

Please see videos at http://www.youtube.com/user/sparklingmedia and our company site at http://www.interactivechatsystems.com

When we exhibited at MIPTV in April 2008, broadcast executives were simply ‘blown away’ with our presentation which included 60 inch screens of the interactive Twinners product. We were being called, ‘the future of TV’ by more than one person. And we were probably the most innovative product at the show in my opinion. Richard Dickson of Mattel was agape and completely entranced by the product… Michael Costello of Polar Productions and Simon Nelson, head of BBC’s Multiparty Platform Strategy was as well… The broadcast execs were all over us and over 300 business cards collected.

Though we are releasing in Belgium, Germany and Spain, other opportunities that could be more lucrative or newly formed relationships that would allow us to financially move toward more R&D as well as diversify the product to more than just Twinners are not being explored as we are seeking Round A funding to take it to the next level.

Warm Regards

Richard Kastelein

Chief Networking Officer (CNO)

www.interactivechatsystems.com