# Robin Berjon (@robin.berjon.com)

Profile: https://sifa.id/p/robin.berjon.com
Headline: Governance of Technology & Tech Strategy
Location: Brussels, Brussels Capital, BE
Website: https://berjon.com/

## About

Versatile Technologist

## Experience

- **VP Marketing Analytics (acting) at The New York Times** (2021 – 2022)
- **Deputy Director at IPFS Foundation** (2024 – present)
  Working on new products and technologies that support greater agency and shared governance.
- **Senior Fellow at Future of Technology Institute (FoTI)** (2025 – present)
- **Contributor at Public AI** (2023 – 2025)
  Taking part in the elaboration of public interest AI infrastructure.
- **Founder & CTO at Knowscape** (1998 – 2002)
  A Web agency in the early, fast-moving years of the Web. I worked on many different projects, including an SVG map editor for the French Ministry of Infrastructure, education software for Audi-Volkswagen, glossy sites for Elle or Bordeaux, Web applications for Proximus, and much more.
- **CTO at IDL-net** (1997 – 1998)
- **Founder at Karobase** (1996 – 1997)
- **Editor of the HTML Specification & Head of HTML Activity at W3C** (2012 – 2015)
  (Employers: MIT, Keio University)  Shipped the HTML5 specification (as well as a few others) and managed the W3C HTML world, trying to bring agility to standards.
  
  Founded and launched the Web Platform Tests project to define interoperability for the whole Web (current stats: 1.8+million tests, 50k+ commits, 2,700+ contributors, deployed in CI by every major browser vendor).
  
  Also launched the Web Incubator to open Web standards to a broader community.
- **Consultant, Team Manager, Researcher, & Developer at Robineko** (2008 – 2015)
  I focused on open standards and open source for better internet governance. I managed teams, carried out research, development, prototyping, or handled standards strategy for numerous companies around the world, large and small: Samsung, Vodafone, Canon, Facebook, INRIA/ERCIM, SpinTank, Expway, IGEL, Ikivo.
  
  In 2012 I was elected to the W3C Technical Architecture Group, a small group charged with stewardship of the Web’s architecture.
- **Senior Software Architect at Joost** (2006 – 2008)
  Joost was high-quality, peer-based, legal TV. I worked building its rich UI and defining a widgets platform for third-parties to write extensions with.
- **Senior Research Scientist at Expway** (2002 – 2006)
  I worked on creating a binary XML format, on an XML Schema processor, many XML languages, standard efforts in multiple organisations, and SVG-based UI for embedded devices.
- **VP Data Governance at The New York Times** (2019 – 2022)
  Built up a team to support continued regulatory programmes (CCPA, GDPR) as well as to establish our policy positions, developed and implemented the company's privacy strategy as well as its algorithmic ethics policy, and worked in support of its broader data, advertising, and marketing strategies. I drove our approach to reforming the online advertising ecosystem through participation in tech standards and experimentation, and worked on The Times's involvement in data policy issues. Edited the W3C TAG's Privacy Principles.
- **Executive Director, Implementation and Data Governance at The New York Times** (2017 – 2019)
  Launched the data governance programme in what is a very data intensive organisation, and ran the GDPR compliance project. Began defining what the global data ecosystem should look like if independent media is to thrive in it.
- **CTO at science.ai** (2015 – 2017)
  Brought scholarly publishing into the internet age based on great UX, machine learning, document semantics, and intensive data crunching through ugly formats, with major publishers as clients. Architected, built, and ran many critical components using JS, Node, CouchDB, Stripe, React, Redux, and many other moving parts. Everything running inside AWS with ZeroMQ and auto-scaling.
- **Principal at Supramundane Agency** (2024 – present)
  Leading numerous projects bringing together issues of governance and technology
- **Fellow at Public AI** (2025 – present)
  Supporting research and policy coordination efforts around the EU's AI strategy and ecosystem.
- **Senior Governance & Standards Technologist at Metagov** (2023 – present)
  Researching and elaborating institutions to govern the digital sphere and planetary digital infrastructure.
- **Expert, Technology Advisory Panel at Information Commissioner's Office** (2022 – 2024)
- **Board of Directors, Vice Chair at W3C** (2022 – 2024)
- **Governance & Standards Lead / IPFS Ecosystem Lead at Protocol Labs** (2022 – 2024)
  I worked on next-generation Web architecture, seeking new approaches to digital systems that increase user agency and develop democratic governance of the Internet. I have been bridging novel protocols, notably IPFS and related self-certifying systems, to more traditional Web contexts.

## Education

- **MITx on edX** — MITx 8.370.1x: Quantum Information Science I, Part 1
- **Université de la Sorbonne (Paris IV)** — 2 years (1995 – 1996)
- **Lycée International Stendhal** — Bac ES Mention Bien (1992 – 1995)
- **Collège International Stendhal** — Baccalauréat (1988 – 1992)

## Skills

- JavaScript
- PostgreSQL
- Node.js
- Mobile Applications
- XML
- Web Development
- Git
- PHP
- HTML5
- HTML
- Open Source
- CSS
- Software Engineering
- Data Governance
- Perl
- Ruby
- Defining Requirements
- HTML 5
- XSLT
- Web Standards
- Web Applications
- Software Development
- REST
- Mobile Devices
- SVG
- Standards Development
- Semantic Web
- Open Standards
- Mobile
- Guinea Pigs
- Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)
- Representational State Transfer (REST)
- Privacy
- Privacy Law
- EXI
- GDPR
- Information Architecture

## Publications

- From Clicks to Consensus: Collective Consent Assemblies for Data Governance (https://doi.org/10.1145/3772318.3790690)
- Privacy Principles — W3C (https://www.w3.org/TR/privacy-principles/)
- Identity isn’t about identifiers – it’s about people — WARC — Future of Identity (https://www.warc.com/newsandopinion/opinion/The_New_York_Times_Identity_isnt_about_identifiers_its_about_people/4320)
- The Fiduciary Duties of User Agents — SSRN (https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3827421)
- How The New York Times Thinks About Your Privacy — The New York Times (https://open.nytimes.com/how-the-new-york-times-thinks-about-your-privacy-bc07d2171531)
- A data citation roadmap for scholarly data repositories — Nature Scientific Data (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-019-0031-8)
- HTML 5.1 specification — W3C Working Draft
- HTML5: A vocabulary and associated APIs for HTML and XHTML — W3C Candidate Recommendation World Wide Web Consortium, W3C (February 4, 2014)
- Widget URI scheme — W3C (http://www.w3.org/TR/widgets-uri/)
- Widget Access Request Policy — w3c (http://www.w3.org/TR/widgets-access/)
- HTML5-A vocabulary and associated APIs for HTML and XHTML W3C candidate recommendation — Retrieved March
- Html5 — World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
- The Harmonious Path to HTML. — Dec3D
- XML and HTML Cross-Pollination: A Bridge Too Far? — XML Prague 2012
- The 'view-mode' Media Feature — W3C (http://www.w3.org/TR/view-mode/)
- The network information API — Retrieved June
- Multimedia XML — XML Prague 2010
- Cool mobile apps with SVG and other Web technologies — XML Prague 2009
- DesigningXML/WebLanguages: AReview of Common Mistakes — XML Prague 2009
- Remote Events for XML (REX) 1.0 — Working draft, W3C
- Introducing binary SVG (http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?eid=2-s2.0-84874393281&partnerID=MN8TOARS)
- Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) Tiny 1.2 Specification — W3C Working Draft
- Mobile SVG Profiles: SVG Tiny and SVG Basic — W3C Recommendation
- Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) 1.1 Specification — World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), Recommendation

## Honors and awards

- The New York Times Publisher's Award
- The New York Times Publisher's Award
- The New York Times Publisher's Award

## Languages

- French (native)
- English (native)

## Other profiles

- website: https://berjon.com/
- github: https://github.com/darobin/
- orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1731-5346