Curriculum Vitae Erik Borra

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Personal Details

Name: Erik K. Borra
Telephone: +31 (0)641 548 649
Email: mail [at] erikborra [dot] net
Homepage: erikborra.net
Date of birth: 1 April 1981
Place of birth: Jette (Belgium)
Nationality: Belgian
Languages: Dutch (mother tongue), English (excellent), French (good)

Education

• University of Amsterdam, M.Sc., 2006, Artificial Intelligence - specialized in Cognitive Science and Information Retrieval
• University of Amsterdam, B.A., 2003, Artificial Intelligence
• University of Amsterdam, Propaedeutic, 2000, Interdisciplinary "Beta-Gamma" and Artificial Intelligence

Employment

University of Amsterdam

• PhD candidate, ASCA, University of Amsterdam, September 2011 - current.
• Lecturer, "Digital Methods for Internet Research," M.A. research seminar, Media Studies, University of Amsterdam, September-January 2009 - current.
• New Media and Concept Developer, leading the programmers team of Digital Methods Initiative, Media Studies, University of Amsterdam, June 2007 - current.
• ICT Developer, “Mapping Controversies in Science and Politics (MACOSPOL),” (with DMI), European research project led by Bruno Latour, Media Studies, University of Amsterdam, 2007-2009.
• Junior Lecturer, "Introduction to New Media," Propaedeutic Media Studies, University of Amsterdam, February - July 2007.
• ICT Developer, Media Studies, University of Amsterdam, May 2004 - October 2005.
  • Organization and management of a media lab, weblogs, wikis and streaming media servers.
  • Mediator between the New Media Section and the university's ICT service.
  • Consultancy
  • Solving computer problems the ICT service could not handle, like web conferences, laptop connections, videoconferencing, support of Linux en Mac OsX, development of wordpress plugins.
  • Support of various classes, both technical support and explaining principles and software.
• System Administrator, Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies, University of Amsterdam, September 2001 - November 2002.
• ICT Developer, ILIAS web classes, Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies, University of Amsterdam, November 2000 - July 2001.

Other

• Freelance programmer-designer, web analyst and consultant, 2006-current.
• Lead ICT developer, Govcom.org Foundation, Amsterdam, February 2004 - .
• New Media Consultant and coach, Prototype Dev Camp 10, Amsterdam, May 2010.
• New Media Consultant and coach, Mediamatic Social RFID Hackers Camp 09 @ Picnic, Amsterdam, September 2009.
• New Media Consultant and coach, Mediamatic Social RFID Hackers Camp 08 @ Picnic08, Amsterdam, September 2008.
• New Media Consultant, Match4jobs, Amsterdam, September 2008.
• Internet Television Front-End Engineer, Entriq, June 2007.
• ICT developer, Sonologic, Den Haag, May 2004 - September 2005.
  • Consultancy and prospecting of new assignments.
  • Various programming assignments, mainly related to the web.
  • Maintenance of FreeBSD servers.
• Y2K technician, City Bank, Brussels, March 1999 - May 1999.

Research and collaborations

• "Digital Methods Initiative," Media Studies, University of Amsterdam, 2007 - current.
• “Electronic Maps to Assist Public Science,” (with DMI), European research project directed by Bruno Latour, Media Studies, University of Amsterdam, 2011-2014.
• “Hypertext Corpus Initiative,” (with Médialab Sciences Po), Paris, France, 2010-current.
• "Mapping Iran Online," (with DMI), Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA, May 2011.
• “Political Search,” visiting researcher, Yahoo! research labs, Barcelona, Spain, February - June 2011.
• “Ctrl-X-Ethics: Cyberspace Research Methods Workshop,” Canada Centre for Global Security Studies, Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada, 17-18 January 2011.
• “Digital Methods and Migration,” (with DMI, TIC-Migrations, and the University of California), Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, Paris, France, April-June 2010.
• “Mapping Controversies in Science and Politics,” (with DMI), European research project led by Bruno Latour, Media Studies, University of Amsterdam, 2007-2009.
• "Internet Censorship," (with govcom.org, University of Toronto, and Harvard University), Media Studies, University of Amsterdam, 2006 - 2007, 2009.
• "Walled Garden," (with DMI), Virtueel Platform, Amsterdam, May 2008.
• "Space for People: Suggested Fields," (with govcom.org), research workshop, Video Vortex2, Netherlands Media Art Institute, Amsterdam, January 2008.
• "Palestinian Networks in Cyberspace: Emerging trends and their implications for politics, governance, security, and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict," (with govcom.org and the Information Society Project, Advanced Network Research Group, Cambridge Security Program, University of Cambridge), Media Studies, University of Amsterdam, 2007 - 2008.
• "Open-Search: a distributed, peer-to-peer, search-engine," Amsterdam, 2007.
• "Mapping Public Media," (with govcom.org), Ford Foundation with American University, Amsterdam, 2007.
• "Mapping Future Histories of RFID," (with DMI),de Balie Center for Culture and Politics, Amsterdam, October 2007.
• "Poignancy in the U.S. Political Blogosphere," (with govcom.org), Amsterdam, 2005.
• "The News about Networks 2: Making Issues into Rights?" (with govcom.org), de Balie Center for Culture and Politics, Amsterdam, June 21 - 24 2004

Lectures

• "Analyzing Big Data: Engine Log Analysis," lecture, DMI summer school, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, 1 July 2011.
• "The Social Media Protest Environment: Constructing the Collective Now," conference presentation, MiT7 unstable platforms: the promise and peril of transition, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA, USA, 13-15 May 2011.
• “Digital Methods Research with Archive.org,” Longitudinal Analysis of Web Archive Data (LAWA), Paris, France, 30 November 2010.
• "Controversy Research with Wikipedia," (with Esther Weltevrede), conference presentation, Wikipedia Critical Point of View, Amsterdam, 27 March 2010.
• Guest lecturer, Web-based Methods for Environmental Social Science, M.A. Environmental Social Science, Oxford University, December 2009-February 2010.
• Guest lecturer, Gerrit Rietveld Academy, January-February 2009, Amsterdam.
• "Doing docs differently", conference presentation, International Documentary Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) Doclab, Amsterdam, 23 November 2008.
• "Vriendjespolitiek.net," conference presentation, Visualizing the Network, Waag Society, Amsterdam, 21 May 2008.
• "Cartography and the Web," (with Esther Weltevrede), lecture, St. Lukas hogeschool, Brussels, Belgium, 1 February 2008.
• "Forum on Quaero," conference presentation, Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht, 30 September 2007.
• "Digital Methods," (with DMI), conference presentation, International School for the Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, 23 August 2007.
• "Open-Search: a distributed search engine," conference presentation, Vers Geperst, Amsterdam, 29 May 2007.
• "Dissidents and Restrictions," (with Open-Search), panel member, Impakt Festival, Utrecht, 31 March 2007.
• "Making Things Visible," (with govcom.org), WhatTheHack, conference presentation, Enschede, 27 July 2005. (pdf)
• "The logs of your life," BNAIS, conference presentation, Amsterdam, 9 October 2003
• "Beta-Gamma Fifth Anniversary Conference and Celebration," University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, 2 - 5 October 2003.
• "Signaling Games," Dutch-Flemish Philosophers' Day, conference presentation, Amsterdam, 2 November 2002.

Projects

Online / Software

• "tools.digitalmethods.net," (with DMI), set of tools that collect and analyze Web data for social and cultural research, Amsterdam, 2006 - .
• "WEX Machine," (with Roel Wouters and Vincent Lindeboom), a Physical Website as Permanent Installation recursively connecting the on- and the offline, Amsterdam, php/ajax/xml/python/css/c/dhtml/imagemagick, w139, Amsterdam, 2009-2010.
• "MappingControversies.net," (with DMI), Faceted Multi-Level Classification of controversy mapping tactics, perl/ajax/css, February 2009 - .
• "Issuefeed.net," (with govcom.org), Issue Discovery and Feed Delivery System, php/perl/c/ajax/dhtml/css/javascript/api, March 2008 - .
• "Leakygarden.net," (with DMI), shows which social networks, i.e. 'walled gardens', leak data, and which are watertight, ajax/php/html/css, November 2008.
• "Metareporter.nl," faceted search plugin for wordpress, ajax/php/html/css, September 2008.
• "Scrape Google," (with govcom.org), Lipmannian Devise (after Walter Lipmann) which provides a coarse means of showing actor partisanship, built on top of a Google Scraper, php/javascript/dhtml/css, May 2008 - .
• "Vriendjespolitiek.net," (UvA/HKU project), a social network (Hyves) profile scraper, crawler, and data mining resulting in a political voting recommendation, php/xml/ajax/svg/sql/dhtml/css, May 2008.
• "Tape Mixer," a music video mash-up linking Last.fm recommendations to Youtube clips, also providing pictures, lyrics, biographies, and web shop integration, php/sql/javascript/ajax/rss/xml/dhtml/css, October 2007 - .
• "Issuescraper.net," (with govcom.org, sonologic.nl, and anderemedia.nl), suite of scraping tools: Google, Google News, Google Scholar, Google Images, Yahoo, Technorati, Del.icio.us, etc, php/sql/ajax/xml/rss/perl/shell/dhtml/css/svg 2005 - .
• "Tools.digitalmethods.net," (with govcom.org and Digital Methods Initiative), news and engine scrapers, robots.txt sniffer, internet censorship exploration proxies and other new media and digital methods research tools, php/sql/ajax/xml/rss/perl/python/shell/dhtml/css/svg, 2004 - .
• "Issuecrawler.net," (with govcom.org, sonologic.nl, and anderemedia.nl), Issue Network Mapping Software, server-side network location and visualization software, in java/postgresql/php/xml/svg/rss/html/css, 2002 - .
• "ipbrowser," (with Alexander Galloway, Rosa Menkman, Laura van der Vlies, and Michael Stephenson), alternative browsing, javascript/php/dhtml/css, August 2008.
• "deletefrominternet.com," (with Michael Stevenson and Esther Weltevrede), web service to nominate web pages for deletion, javascript/php/dhtml/css, February 2008.
• "elfriendo.com - taking the work out of social networking," (with govcom.org), mySpace profile scraper, crawler, and data mining, php/xml/ajax/dhtml/css, Montevideo, Amsterdam, January 2008.
• "Misspelling Generator," (with Linda Hilfling), Firefox extension generating Google misspellings, javascript, Impakt, Utrecht, January 2008.
• "Masters of Media Wordpress Theme," UvA Mediastudies, html/css/php, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, October 2007.
• "iTea," (with mediamatic.net), interactive RFID installation querying Google about person information and visualizing it through a projection on a table surface, php/perl/rdf/processing/dhtml/css/shell, Picnic07, Amsterdam, September 2007.
• "Interactive Geographical Visualization of the NISEnet Network," (with Informationlab), sql/xml/google maps/dhtml/css/ajax, Nanoscale Informal Science Education Network, San Fransisco, US, June 2007.
• "Open-Search," (with Open-search), distributed search engine, ajax/java, November 2006 - June 2007.
• "Whatever Button," (with Michael Stevenson), changes Firefox form buttons like 'I agree' in Whatever, javascript, April 2007.
• "The Oracle Machine," (with Jeroen Joosse and Karel Brascamp), Scraping Google for producing Oracles about user defined issues, php, de Balie Center for Culture and Politics, Amsterdam, January 2007.
• "Issuedramaturg.issuecrawler.net," (with govcom.org), Google Page Rank Monitoring System, svg/php/html/css, 2007 - .
• "Infowarroom.org," (with Roel Wouters), a research pile based on user-generated content using the del.icio.us tag network around 'media criticism', php/shell/dhtml/ajax/css, de Balie Center for Culture and Politics, Amsterdam, December 2006.
• "Bliki," a Wordpress plugin automatically linking weblogs to wikis, developed for de Nieuwe Reporter, php, March 2006.
• "Smile," a website showing a random Flickr photo tagged 'smile', php, January 2006.
• Website development, various projects, 1996 - .

Infographics

• ...
• “Social Research with the Web,” Richard Rogers, Fieke Jansen, Michael Stevenson and Esther Weltevrede, Global Information Society Watch 2009. Association for Progressive Communications and Hivos, 17 November 2009.
• "Country codes of the World," (with Esther Weltevrede), August 2008.
• "Tag Cloud of words from Newspaper Titles with Stadionplein and its Translation in Historical Pictures," (with Roel Wouters, Luna Maurer, and Timo Hofmeijer), Items, Amsterdam, June 2008.
• "The Position of Data Art within Information Visualization," (with Minke Kampman and Paulien Dresscher), 29 February 2008.
• A Website is Gone - The Drama of 911truth.org in Search Engine Space," (with govcom.org), September 2007.
• "Thnx for the Add," (with Roel Wouters), Flyer depicting the mySpace friends network of 10 key Amsterdam dj's, Amsterdam, May 2007
• "Celebrities have favorite issues" and "Celebrities have favorite charities," (with govcom.org), tag cloud graphics exhibited at the Netherlands Media Art Institute, Montevideo/Time-based Arts, 2007.
• "Public Media Projects and their Publics," (with govcom.org), graphics commissioned by Center for Social Media, American University, 2006.
• "The Internet treats censorship as a malfunction and routes around it?" (with govcom.org), six graphics commissioned by University of Toronto (Open Net Initiative) and Harvard University (Berkman Center), 2005 - 2006.
• "What the Hack Extended Event Network Map," (with Koen Martens, Anat Ben-David, and govcom.org), July 2005.
• "Digital Divide Cartogram," (with govcom.org), May 2005.
• "Digital Divide Cartogram (inverted)," (with govcom.org), May 2005.
• "Coming to Terms: Conflict Analysis of the usage, in official and unofficial sources, of 'security fence,' 'apartheid wall,' and other terms for the structure between Israel and the Palestinian Territories," (with govcom.org), six-piece pdf set, 2004 - 2005.

Exhibitions

• "For the PPL of Iran: #iranelection RT," (with Richard Rogers, Esther Weltevrede, Marieke van Dijk and the Digital Methods Initiative), an investigation of the transformative capacities of online social networks in politics and society.
  • Gogbot 2011, Enschede, the Netherlands, 8 - 11 September 2011.
  • Transmediale 2011, Berlin, Germany, 01 - 06 February 2011.
  • A Topological Approach to Cultural Dynamics, Arts Santa Monica, Barcelona, Spain, 10 December 2009 - 28 February 2010.
• "iTea," (with Mediamatic), interactive RFID installation showing (not so) public facts about you.
  • exhibition accompanying Noorderslag, Groningen, 12 -15 January 2011.
  • Mediamatic exhibition space, Amsterdam, January 2010 - current.
  • Picnic07, Amsterdam, September 2007.
• "The Oracle Machine," (with Jeroen Joosse and Karel Brascamp), Google oracle, projected in public space. "This is what we write, this is what we read; this is how we deal with information today."
  • de Balie Center for Culture and Politics, Amsterdam, 2007 - 2008, 2010.
  • Sonic Acts Festival, Amsterdam, February 2010.
• "The Web starts here - the IP-browser," (with Alexander Galloway, Michael Stevenson, Marieke van Dijk and the Govcom.org Foundation), an alternative browsing experience that foregrounds the Web’s machine habitat.
  • A Topological Approach to Cultural Dynamics, Arts Santa Monica, Barcelona, Spain, 10 December 2009 - 28 February 2010.
  • Society of the Query Conference, Amsterdam, 14 November 2009.
  • Impakt festival 09, Utrecht, fall 2009.
• "WEX Machine," (with Roel Wouters and Vincent Lindeboom), physical website as permanent installation, recursively connecting the on- and the offline.
  • W139 gallery, Amsterdam, June 2009 - .
  • Art Amsterdam, Amsterdam, May 2010.
• "Misspelling Generator," (with Linda Hilfling), internet installation generating Google misspellings, exploring corrective info-culture regimes and censorship circumvention.
  • Society of the Query Conference, Amsterdam, 14 November 2009.
  • Netherlands Media Art Institute, Montevideo/Time-based Arts, Amsterdam, November 2008 - January 2009.
  • International Design Biennial, Paris, 15-30 November 2008. Winner of Young Design Award!
  • Impakt festival, Utrecht, 2008.
• "elfriendo, taking the work out of social networking," (with govcom.org), internet installation.
  • Picnic08, Amsterdam, September 2008.
  • Netherlands Media Art Institute, Montevideo/Time-based Arts, Amsterdam, January 2008.
• "Text Jockeying a Debate," (with Vincent Lindeboom and Fabian Krausz), debate augmentation through text jockeying with the Oracle Machine.
  • Een kunst om te delen, Track 030, Centraal Museum, Utrecht, 13 November 2007.
• "Issuedramaturg," (with govcom.org), Google Pagerank monitoring system.
  • Impakt Festival Utrecht, 2007.
• "Issue Celebrities," (with govcom.org), video and graphics installation.
  • Netherlands Media Art Institute, Montevideo/Time-based Arts, Amsterdam, February-March 2007.
• "Internet Censorship," (with govcom.org), graphics exhibition.
  • Protect the Net, the Munk Center for International Affairs, University of Toronto, December 2006.
• "Inverted Digital Divide Cartograms," (with govcom.org), graphics exhibition.
  • Here Be Dragons: Cartography of Globalization, Toronto Free Gallery, Toronto, Canada, 12 November - 17 December 2005
• "The Places of Issues," (with govcom.org)
  • Making Things Public: Atmospheres of Democracy, Curated By Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel, ZKM, Karlsruhe, 17 March - 3 November 2005.

Movies

• "Google and the Politics of Tabs," The Demise of the Directory: Web librarian work removed in Google, (with Digital Methods Initiative), 2008.
• "A Thousand Dinners A Night: Amongst the Issue Celebrities," (with govcom.org), made for Montevideo installation, Amsterdam, February 2007.
• "Issue Crawler Backend Movie," (with govcom.org), made for ZKM exhibition, Karlsruhe, Germany, March 2005.

Publications

Articles for a wider public

• R. Rogers, E. Weltevrede, E. Borra, M. van Dijk & the Digital Methods Intiative. 2009. “For the ppl of Iran: #iranelection RT” Cultures of Change: Social Atoms and Electronic Lives. Barcelona: Arts Santa Monica.
• A. Galloway, E. Borra, M. Stevenson, M. van Dijk & the Govcom.org Foundation. 2009. “The Web Starts Here, The IP Browser” Cultures of Change: Social Atoms and Electronic Lives. Barcelona: Arts Santa Monica.
• E. Borra, Using the Web for Documentaries, own blog, 2008.
• E. Borra, Vriendjespolitiek.net,: research into post-demographics, Masters of Media Blog, 2008.
• R. Rogers et al., Issue Mapping & Essay: "Public Media Projects and their Publics", (Ford Foundation with American University), 2007.
• E. Borra and M. Stevenson, Repurposing the Wiki Scanner: Comparing Dutch Universities' Edits on Wikipedia, Masters of Media Blog, 7 October 2007.
• E. Borra, "Automatic wrapper induction of HTML trees," M.Sc. Thesis, University of Amsterdam, 2006.
• Blutner et al., Signalling games: How evolution selects optimal strategies, Handelingen van de 24ste Nederlands-Vlaamse Filosofiedag, Amsterdam, University of Amsterdam, 2002.

Conference Reports

• "Recalling RFID," conference report about Remote Frequency Identification, Amsterdam, October 2007.
• "Report on the Forum of Quaero," conference report about the monopoly on information, October 2007.
• "Paraplay," conference report about digital self representation, 2 October 2006.

Grants

Principal

• Open-Search, a distributed search engine, (with Koen Martens and Richard Rogers), Digital Pioneers, 2007.

Partner

• Digital Methods Initiative, Mondriaan Interregeling, 2007 - 2009.

Subcontracted

• Mapping Controversies in Science for Politics (MACOSPOL), (with Digital Methods Initiative), EU 7th framework, 2008 - 2009.
• Issuefeed.net, (with govcom.org), Dutch Ministry of Internal Affairs, 2007.
• Palestinian-Israeli Conflict Mapping, (with govcom.org), Hivos, 2007 - 2009.
• Issue Celebrities, (with govcom.org), Montevideo Artists-in-Residence, 2007.
• Issuedramaturg, (with govcom.org), Impakt Festival Utrecht, 2007.
• George Soros Mapping, (with govcom.org), Open Society Institute, 2006.
• Criminal Justice Initiative, (with govcom.org), Open Society Institute, 2006.
• Publics for Public Media Projects, (with govcom.org), University of Pittsburgh / Ford Foundation, 2006 - 2007.
• Internet Censorship, (with govcom.org), University of Toronto & Harvard University / MacArthur, 2005 - 2006.
• Palestinian-Israeli Conflict, (with govcom.org), Cambridge University / IDRC, 2005.

Awards

• We won the Dutch Spinawards 2008 in the category 'Best innovation' with the applications developed at the Social RFID Hacker Camps, using Mediamatic's IK-tag.

Other

• Part of creative-industries.nl, February - July 2007.
• Chairman of the Beta-Gamma Fifth Anniversary Celebration Committee, May 2002 - October 2003.
• Certificate Windows NT 4.0 Administration, 2002
• Belgian Driving License B (cars), 1999.

Competencies

• Expert skills in (web) scraping and web crawling in various (markup) languages like Java, PHP, Perl, HTML, XML, SOAP, RDF, etcetera.
• Expert skills in rich user interfaces (e.g. AJAX).
• Good skills in algorithmic information visualization.
• Experienced in Hadoop, Map-Reduce and Pig-Latin.

• Linux: thorough knowledge of setting up and maintaining Linux work stations and servers.
• FreeBSD: experience in setting up and maintaining FreeBSD servers.
• Completely familiar with Windows 3.1 through Windows Vista.
• Completely familiar with Wordpress, Moveable Type, TWiki, Mediawiki, various social software applications, etcetera.
• Web server configuration in Linux: apache, ssh, http(s), php, mysql, pgsql, (s)ftp, ssh, mail, dns, ...

• Web technologies:
  • Thorough knowledge and quick application of php, mysql, postgresql, xhtml, dhtml, css, dom, xml, xslt, xpath, xquery, javascript, json, ajax, soap.
• Programming and scripting languages:
  • Completely familiar with PHP, Prolog and Matlab.
  • Experienced in Python, Java, shell, Perl.
• Thorough knowledge of SVG, basic knowledge of Flash.
• Experience with Google Maps, Google Earth, KML, geo XML, and GIS in general.
• Experience with RFID tags and readers.
• Experience with scriptable, (mostly) open-source, media manipulation software like imagemagick, mplayer, ffmpeg, vlc, pd, processing, MAX/MSP, etcetera.

• Familiar with programs like Photoshop and Office.
• For other competencies please consult the list of my subject matters of Artificial Intelligence (in Dutch).
• Fast learner.

Other fields of interest: web 1.0, web 2.0, web 3.0, web x.y, rfid, data mining, search engines, information extraction, privacy, machine learning, language and computation, (computational) psychology, web epistemology, (new) media, simulations of growth and development, algorithmic art, neural networks, genetic algorithms, mind-body, sustainable development, theater with sensors, behavioral marketing and targeted advertising, content filtering and recommender systems/society.