Of GoodMedia
One lazy summer day in the 1990’s when I tried Google for the very first time, I typed in my name expecting nothing and up instead came an image of a guy in the U.S.A. named Scott Goodfellow, standing there with his band, and oh look at this; he’s also the singer and keyboard player…(!)
I remember closing the browser window as fast as I could, standing up with a jolt, and needing to pace around in circles for a while. That's when I registered scottgoodfellow.com, scottgoodfellow.ca, etc.
One thing the Internet teaches and reminds me, is how similar I am to so many other people in this world; from the minutia of daily routine maintenance, right down to the very name I answer to and what makes me smile. I’ve since discovered that there are so many other guys like me who also love music, women and anything with motors and engines… and I’ve received email from guys also named Scott Goodfellow, who mostly say the same thing… “I looked up my name, and there you are”… freaks me out every time.
GoodMedia initially came on line in 1991 as a FirstClass Mail Server, connected to the Internet “full time” using a dozen Bell telephone lines and 2400 baud modems, and all served from the furnace room in my house.
GoodMedia in the early 1990s; was just my initial attempt to park and contain my own digital “identity”, (what ever that is), as much as I technically can do so, at any one time along what has been a path of constant change, through many incredible technical upgrades, and all while a constant barrage of other people (hackers, spammers) endlessly try to hack in and kill it for their fun & profit.
An endless cyber war is a difficult reality, and one that I have come to reluctantly accept as just base line human nature; an undeniable form of evil playing out before me every day of my working life as an always connected, network administrator.
When my kids were born, they eclipsed in importance everything that came before them, and there was suddenly value (specifically and especially to me) of having our very own individual identities on this thing called the Internet, under our given names; labels that I had somehow innocently believed were unique, so long ago, before the internet changed everything...
In the 2010s, finally getting the GoodMedia physical and virtual Servers into place was like finishing all the straight pieces around a puzzle, from being the Registrar of my domains, to building and owning the physical machine clusters in the data center; I control my own core domains from end to end and host them all from many machines as "GoodMedia", which over 30 years has become populated by many similar people who also value their identities in the same way I do, and who just want the same thing as I did; a safe place to put my (digital) stuff and not be exploited in any way.
I gradually refined a business model around building awesome machines and administrating them as core hosting and related services, instead of depending on music for income.
GoodMedia became my “Plan B”, which included selling my music as downloads directly from my own machines, instead of signing away my copyright in a record contract, back in the day, but that ship too has long sailed, for now…
The name “Good Media” recalls from when I primarily focused on being the best musician I could be; “Good” obviously comes from my given name, but “Media” comprises what I believe is the best thing on earth that we create for each other; really good media that communicates intelligently and effectively; be that in audio, text or image, or all combined as edited video… So then, what does that have to do with “hosting and related services” ? In my years of service, I have met some really incredible people through building GoodMedia. The common thread is that they all tend to create and/or value Media, and that has mostly all been Good, so far…