R.G. Kastelein - the designer, CMS architect and co-founder of Atlantic Free Press (with Chris Floyd) is the technical guru and art director of the site. Kastelein's company, Expathos (www.expathos.com), specialises in Open Source Content Management Systems for bloggers, online social groups and communities.
His choices for open source solutions are more commonly used in Europe, therefore unique in the US market, giving his work a unique stamp in the American digital landscape. He prefers staying away from cookie cutter, proprietary software solutions such as Moveable Type and blog hosting services such as Xanga, blogger.com and Live Journal. By using Open Source Content Management System software such as Joomla, Drupal and Postnuke, not very common in the blogging world, his work is unique. He also helps authors layout, design and publish their works using on-demand printing solutions such as Cafe Press and Lulu.
Bucking the traditional publishing paradigm (writer-agent-publisher triage) by using new developments in technology and distribution, Kastelein's company works with expatriate and 'dissident' writers such as Chris Floyd, Will Charlesworth and others.
Hailing from the Canadian Pacific Southwest - he grew up on the fringes of Vancouver, a liberal and progressive city often noted as one of the best places to live in the world by such publications as the Economist and the UN. Packing his bag at 19, he left the city in 1986 and has lived overseas most of his adult life, choosing the life of a sailing vagabond over immediate college.
After sailing the Atlantic with a clan of Viking Norwegians, hailing boats in Thailand and Malaysia and sailing the Pacific, he published his first series of articles called "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Seas" in 1991 in the UK in an array of international adventure travel magazines.
He then went on to Art College in Victoria B.C. where he studied Photography and Journalism at the Western Academy of Photography to hone his writing and visual skills. Kastelein's first job out of college was reporting for a weekly newspaper in a small enclave of 3000 people, Fort Smith, in the Canadian Northwest Territories. After two years in Fort Smith, Kastelein went back to sea and ended up in St. Maarten in the Dutch Caribbean where he spent almost ten years, on and off, working as an editor and reporting for the local media as well as serving stints in the marine industry as a sailboat skipper and marketing director for two multinational marine chandleries.
In 1994-95 Kastelein sailed from Crete, Greece to the Caribbean with his wife and two friends on a 38 foot Morgan sailboat.
He has created two print publications from conceptualisation, design, content production, layout, distribution and solicitation of advertising in the Caribbean - What's ON St. Martin and The Limin' Times as well as provided hard news for St. Martin's Week as English Editor and Today St. Martin as an investigative reporter. Kastelein returned to Europe in 2002 to start life anew with additions to the family along with the desire to live in the First World once again. He now develops websites, manages a boatbuilding operation in Brazil and writes.
