John Robb (author)

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John Robb
Born John Robb
August 19, 1962 (age 50)
Concord, New Hampshire
Nationality American
Education B.S. in Astronautical Engineering, USAF Academy (1985), Masters of Public and Private Management, Yale University (1995)
Occupation Author
Spouse(s) Yes
Children 4
Website
http://www.resilientcommunities.com

John Robb is a noted American author, military analyst, and entrepreneur. He is the editor of the blog Resilient Communities,[1] as well as a newsletter entitled Resilient Strategies[2]

Contents

Career [edit]

Military [edit]

Robb graduated from the United States Air Force Academy Honors Program with a Bachelor of Science in Astronautical Engineering in 1985 and completed USAF Undergraduate Pilot Training (UPT) in 1986.

During his military career, Robb worked in the area of counterterrorism with the United States Special Operations Command, participating in global operations as a mission commander, pilot, and mission planner in El Salvador, Panama, Colombia, and Egypt, among others.[3]

He resigned his Air Force commission with the rank of Captain in August 1992.

After leaving the Air Force, John attended Yale University. He graduated with a Masters in Public and Private Management (MPPM) in 1995.

Internet analyst [edit]

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After graduating from Yale, Robb was hired by Forrester Research, a technology research company located in Cambridge, MA., in June 1995. He published his first report at Forrester in December 1995, called "Internet Computing" with George Forrester Colony, the CEO of Forrester, as the editor.

Robb was made a senior analyst in January 1996 and led the launch of Forrester's first research service dedicated to covering developments on the Internet, called "Interactive Technologies." While there, he wrote the reports, "Which Web Browser" and "which Web Server" in early 1996. In the summer of 1996, he wrote the report "Navigation Hubs" which predicted that Web Search services like Yahoo would dominate the Web. In the fall of 1996, he wrote the Forrester report, "Personal Broadcast Networks" on the rise of social software — software that allowed people to broadcast their written thoughts, pictures, and videos and subscribe to other people doing the same.

For these reports, Robb was awarded Forrester's "Best Research" award in 1997. Further, the 1997 Forrester Forum (Forrester's annual conference in Boston), was dedicated to the theme of "Personal Broadcast Networks."

John was quoted as an expert source on technological trends by:

Entrepreneur [edit]

In 1997, Robb co-founded (with Julio Gomez and Alex Stein) Gomez, a performance measurement company in financial services. Gomez was sold to Compuware Corporation in 2009 for $295 million.[4]

While at Gomez, Robb co-created the first Gomez Performance Scorecard, an objective system for ranking the quality of a broker's online offering, with Julio Gomez at Julio's kitchen table. The Gomez Scorecards provided objective decision support to hundreds of thousands of people opening online brokerage and banking accounts.

Robb, with the help of Dann Sheridan, designed and built the Gomez performance measurement system. This system was briefly featured as the "online broker weather report" on CNBC. The Gomez network checked on the availability of transactions systems that operated at big banks and brokerage firms like Fidelity Investments and JP Morgan. The Gomez network consisted of monitoring servers in 54 cities around the world, on six continents and across 23 different Internet backbones. Measurements were taken ever five minutes and reported back in real time.

Social software pioneer [edit]

John became the president of UserLand Software — a pioneer in the development of XML-RPC, SOAP, RSS, and OPML — in 2001. He became the CEO in 2003.

Robb served as the product manager for Radio UserLand, the first RSS aggregator and blog publishing tool in the fall of 2001. This tool allowed individuals to both publish their work to the Web as a blog and to subscribe to the blogs of other people. Decentralized control over publishing and subscription, as seen in Radio, now serves as the basis for social networking and social software.

To educate a growing number of people on the power of social software networks Robb formed a discussion group called K-Logs, Knowledge Management Weblogs[5] in 2001. This group explored how decentralized publishing and subscription using social software would and could be used.[6]

In 2003, Robb signed a deal with Martin Nisenholtz, the CEO of New York Times digital to publish an RSS feed for The New York Times, the first major publication to use RSS.

Military theorist [edit]

In 2004 Robb began the blog Global Guerrillas to cover developments in terrorism and guerrilla warfare.[7] In April 2007, he published his book Brave New War,[8] introducing the concept of Open-Source Warfare and Superempowered Terrorism.[9]" The book was featured in The New York Times by the columnist David Brooks.[10]

His thesis contributed to the overall understanding of the "Global War on Terror" and specifically the Iraq War.[citation needed] Numerous other contemporary military theorists have noted the significance of Robb's work, including Thomas P.M. Barnett,[11] William Lind, and Chet Richards.[12]

Noah Shachtman, the editor of Wired's military column, "Danger Room", wrote, "For years, now, no one has had a better read on the enemies that America has been fighting — from Afghanistan to Iraq to Indonesia to here at home — than John Robb."[13]

The New York Times' David Brooks wrote, "Over the past few years, John Robb has been dissecting the behavior of these groups on his blog, Global Guerrillas. Robb is a graduate of the Air Force Academy and Yale University, and he has worked both as a special ops counterterrorism officer and as a successful software executive. In other words, he’s had personal experience both with modern warfare and the sort of information management that is the key to winning it. He’s collected his thoughts in a fast, thought-sparking book, “Brave New War”."[14]

Resilient Communities [edit]

In 2006, Robb turned his attention from the international war on terror to the domestic concept of "resilient communities". The concept was formally introduced in his article "Power the People" published in Fast Company in March 2006,[15] and expanded in Brave New War (John Wiley & Sons, 2007).

Robb defines resilient communities as a social and economic development in response to a broken bureaucracy. Resilient communities are self-dependent, producing all critical goods (food, water, energy, security, etc.) locally rather than relying on a central supply system. Such communities do not separate themselves from society, but are prepared for any breakdown in society that might arise.

References [edit]

  1. ^ John, Robb. "Resilient Communities". Resilient Communities, LLC. Retrieved November 2012. 
  2. ^ John, Robb. "Resilient Strategies". Resilient Community, LLC. Retrieved November 2012. 
  3. ^ Robb, John. "John Robb". Retrieved 3 June 2007. [unreliable source?]
  4. ^ Darryl, Taft. "Compuware to Buy Gomez for $295 Million". eWeek. Retrieved November 2012. 
  5. ^ John, Robb. "K-Logs". Yahoo. Retrieved November 2012. 
  6. ^ John, Robb. "K-Logs Example". Yahoo. Retrieved November 2012. 
  7. ^ John, Robb. "Global Guerrillas". John Robb. Retrieved November 2012. 
  8. ^ John, Robb. "Brave New War". Wiley. Retrieved November 2012. 
  9. ^ Robb, John. "The Open-Source War". The New York Times. Retrieved November 2012. 
  10. ^ David, Brooks. "The Insurgent Advantage". The New York Times. Retrieved November 2012. 
  11. ^ Barnett, Thomas P.M. In guerrillas we trust. Retrieved on 15 June 2007
  12. ^ Richards, Chet. Review of Brave New War. Retrieved on 15 June 2007.
  13. ^ Shachtman, Noah. "Inside the Brave New War". Wired. Retrieved 23 November 2012. 
  14. ^ Brooks, David. "The Insurgent Advantage". The New York Times. Retrieved 23 November 2012. 
  15. ^ Robb, John (March 2006). "Power the People". Fast Company. 

External links [edit]

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