About Me

Professionally Speaking

Michael Cervieri is an Emmy Award-winning storyteller and digital strategist who specializes in helping organizations connect with their audiences through editorial products, communications strategies, and integrated digital ecosystems.

Through Studio Ronaut, he leads editorial teams, develops messaging frameworks, coaches executives speeches and presentations, and builds unified publishing and communications platforms.

Previously, he founded The Future Journalism Project, an independent media lab that explored information ecosystems, and worked with audiences to find better ways to produce, consume and understand the news. In that role, he grew an organic audience from zero to hundreds of thousands through an analog-digital mix of publications, podcasts, and live events.

Michael's career spans leadership roles across media, technology, and human rights.

As Digital Director at WITNESS, he directed global engagement strategies for human rights advocates, while at ScribeLabs he led editorial teams that produced award-winning multimedia content for clients including Google, Microsoft, and Adobe.

His work has been recognized with an Emmy Award for Advanced Media and a Webby Awards Official Honoree distinction.

A dedicated educator, Michael taught graduate-level courses at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism along with its School of International and Public Affairs. In that role he developed courses on digital media storytelling and how non-traditional publishers leverage technology to activate audiences.

Michael holds an MS in Digital Media and a BA in Philosophy and English from Columbia University.

Tools of the Trade

Because it's always kind of fun to look under the hood.

Knowledge Management

Obsidian: For personal knowledge management

Notion: for team knowledge management

Google Docs: for team knowledge management

Writing

Ulysses: for final drafts

Obsidian: for research and initial drafts

CMS & Site Generators

Hugo: for sites that are primarily content driven

Astro: for sites that need more dynamic interactions

Wordpress: for sites that need a backend (and because I've been creating WP sites for close to 20 years.)

Automation

Zapier: to connect sites and platforms so they talk to each other

Pipedream: to connect APIs and databases

AI

BoltAI: a BYOK desktop app to interface with different LLM models 

Claude: for coding support

Perplexity: for research

NotebookLM: a research RAG system where I query discrete source material

Cloud

Cloudflare: for DNS configuration and static site hosting

AWS: for CDN (Cloudfront) and mail (SES) delivery

Google Cloud: for working with and extending Google Workspace and Analytics among many other things

Text Editors & IDEs

Visual Studio Code: for code

Coda: also for code (and an old throwback)

Marktext or Markpad: for markdown

Audio

Logic Pro: for editing sounds and composing soundscapes

Reason: as a standalone DAW or a plugin within Logic Pro

Blackhole: to route audio between apps during recording

Video

Final Cut: For editing what needs to be edited

Screenflow: For creating screencasts and tutorials