Michael Goff is a publisher, executive and entrepreneur who founded Out magazine and was its first editor in chief and President. The child of diplomats, Goff himself was rejected by the State Department for being gay. He later was general manager of Microsoft MSN when it was first taken to the internet. He inspired Visual AIDS to launch the red ribbon campaign with his column in Outweek. "The trigger was a column by Michael Goff in the American gay/lesbian magazine OutWeek. Mr Goff had looked around at all the yellow ribbons worn in support of the 1990-91 Gulf War, and he asked why there wasn't a ribbon for HIV/AIDS." More recently he was Dan Gillmor's partner in citizen journalism company publishing Bayosphere and is involved with many media and tech companies and blogs, including Towleroad.com.