CV

"It's not worth doing something unless you were doing something that someone, somewhere, would much rather you weren't doing. - Terry Pratchett"

Personal details


Name:	Gerrit Jan (Gertjan) Filarski
Country:	the Netherlands, Europe
Email:	gertjan[circular thingy]filarski[dot thingy]com
Year of birth:	1976
Nationality:	Dutch

Profile

I implement new technology in collection management, heritage, and academic research, mostly within the social sciences & humanities. I do not believe in technology pushes of fill-in-your-latest-buzzword-here. My main concern is the impact of digital innovation on an organisation, its processes, and above all: its people. This means that I must be able to constantly explain what new value a particular new technology truly adds.

In my career I have chosen range over specialisation. I hold a degree in business economics but am not a financial controller; I have been programming and building computers since childhood but am not a trained software engineer; and I studied medieval history without becoming a scholar. That wide ranging background enables me to translate between specialists.

I can switch between engineers and researchers, between domain experts and the managers who direct them, people in primary and supporting processes, and between executive and supervisory boards. My style of communication is clear, transparent, and open, and I strongly believe in the (maybe Dutch?) habit of calling a spade a spade. I do so with ample amount of humour and try not to take myself too seriously.

After working several spells in highly commercial roles I always seem to drift back to research and heritage. I hold a deep appreciation for these fields, and I get excited when I see new technology like e.g., handwritten-text-recognition or knowledge graphs, help improve our understanding of what makes us human.

My time in corporate environments does provide me with more of a business mindset than typically found in the academic and heritage sectors. I consider myself a ‘public entrepreneur’: using commercial methods to serve a public cause. It enables me to come up with creative solutions and allows me to help people to work together across the traditional boundaries of departments, sectors, domains and siloes.

Professional experience

2021-	*Self Employed – Filarski Consultancy*
Oct21-Sep22	FRONT-END ARCHITECT & DEVELOPMENT – SINGLE ORIGIN (USA)
	Single Origin (start-up 2021, San Francisco, USA) provides a service that helps users to find the semantic overlap in large numbers of SQL statements from different databases. The application standardises (parts of) these queries issued by different departments and people. This helps to significantly improve the value of business metrics. I was responsible for: Architecture and development of the prototype web user interface: Typescript React.js Next.js Chakra UI Data exchange with the backend through gRPC.
May21-Aug21	CONSULTANT INFORMATION SECURITY – KNAW (NL)
	The KNAW is the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (Amsterdam, NL) and is the national society for excellent scientific research in the Netherlands. The organisation also serves as an umbrella for many academic institutes and research facilities, and as scientific advisory body for Dutch government. For the KNAW I mapped the current state of information security in the social sciences & humanities – particularly within the cluster of its three humanities institutes. The report included a risk analysis with specific and real threats, and the outline of a plan of action. Based on the report, the organisation initiated a project to improve its information security.
2018 – 2021	DIRECTOR OF DIGITAL INFRASTRUCTURE
	KNAW Humanities Cluster – Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences
	Responsible for the research and collection management infrastructure of the cooperating organisations: ‘Huygens Institute for the History of the Netherlands’, ‘Meertens Institute for Linguistics and Ethnology’, and the ‘International Institute for Social History’. My task was the redevelopment and modernisation of the hundreds of applications, datasets, and software services that were created by individual engineers and scholars at the three institutes over the period of twenty years. After merging the three IT departments and executing the formal reorganisation I outlined an integrated infrastructure plan and implemented SCRUM and Agile methods at the department. Responsible for linking the institutional research & collection infrastructure with the national roadmap for large-scale research facilities funded through the Dutch Research Council (primarily CLARIAH, ODISSEI, and EHRI) and the Network for Digital Heritage (Dutch only). I worked within a team of closely cooperating partners, among which the Netherlands Institute for Sound & Vision, the dutch National Library, the dutch National Archives, DANS, SURF, NIOD, and many smaller regional heritage facilities. This team drafted a national vision that brought together research infrastructure and heritage collection management systems. The environment also connected to European infrastructure programs such as CLARIN, DARIAH, SSHOC, and the European Time Machine enterprise. Development of a new business model for the department of digital infrastructure. Traditionally the department was entirely dependent on a singular source of funding through the KNAW and Ministry of Education, Culture & Science (in Dutch: eerste geldstroom). I diversified the ability to draw income from (1) research & infrastructure projects funded by the Dutch Research Council (tweede geldstroom), and (2) private third-party non-profit projects (derde geldstroom). I also initiated experiments with for-profit projects (vierde geldstroom). Together with the director of operations, I was responsible for the integration of the new department in the operational processes of the KNAW Humanities Cluster and the wider academy: embedding the department in the organisational governance; organising planning & project management; linking IT-processes with the administrative organisation & internal control (AO/IC); and provisioning management information. Member of the KNAW Humanities Cluster executive board. I held the portfolio for infrastructure in this collegial body with rotating chairmanship. Other members of the board were: the directors of Huygens, Meertens, and IISH, and the director of operations. Member of the board of directors for CLARIAH PLUS (National Roadmap for Large-Scale Research Facilities, 2018-23, €14M). Member of the technical advisory panel for Network for Digital Heritage (Dutch only). National Coordinator NL and member of the General Assembly of DARIAH (European Research Infrastructure Consortium).
2010 – 2018	*Huygens Institute for the History of the Netherlands*
	CTO (2015 – 2018)
	Responsible for the overall research infrastructure of the institute. Manager of both the software engineering and technical R&D departments. Responsible for providing management information and reporting to funding organisations (Dutch Research Council, ERC). Member of the executive board for CLARIAH CORE (National Roadmap for Large-Scale Research Facilities, 2015-18, €12M). Member of the management team.
	DEPUTY CTO (2013 – 2014)
	Coordination of the development strategy among various (inter)national universities and partners. Supervision on supplier SLAs. Responsible for the implementation of SCRUM and Agile methods. Member of the management team.
	SR. & LEAD ENGINEER (2010 – 2013)
	Responsible for the development of research applications such as data analysis, information extraction and knowledge engineering. JAVA/Python Lucene/SOLR/Elastic Search PostgreSQL/MySQL Consultancy and support for academic researchers.
2008 – 2010	LEAD ENGINEER
	Admonitus Credit Management
	Chief software engineer Full stack development of the online debt management product MS ASP.Net MS SQL Server Integration of the debt management product with financial platforms at customers (debt collecting agencies and bailiffs).
2006 – 2008	SR. SOFTWARE ENGINEER
	Calendis Financial Service Centre
	Development of APIs for integration and synchronisation of various financial systems. MS ASP.Net MS SQL Server Responsible for the technical implementation of administrative organisation and internal control.
2004 – 2006	SOFTWARE ENGINEER
	BBSA Web Solutions
1999 – 2004	SOFTWARE ENGINEER
	AIMS Financial Interim Management
1996 – 1999	DATA EDITOR
	PDC - Parliamentary Documentation Centre

Highlights: publications & presentations

2019	Reassembling the Republic of Letters in the Digital Age: Standards, Systems, Scholarship; eds. Hotson, H. & T. Wallnig, Göttingen University Press. Co-author chapter "Events" with N. Jefferies & T. Stäcker; p.159-171. Co-author chapter Letter Model with H. Hotson, N. Jefferies, C. Kudella, M. Lewis, T. Stäcker & T. Wallnig; p.171-193 Co-author chapter Exchanging Metadata with A. Bosse, H. Hotson, N. Jefferies, & T. Stäcker; p.281-299.
2019	Member of the international advisory panel CLaDA-BG (Sofia, Bulgaria)
2019	Ambassador European Time Machine consortium (Dresden, Germany)
2019	Speaker Tribunal Archives as Digital Research Facility (Dutch only) at NIOD (Amsterdam, NL)
2018	Speaker TORCH (Oxford, UK)
2018	Speaker DBpedia (Vienna, Austria)
2018	Speaker CLARIN Annual Conference 2018 (Pisa, Italy)
2017	Speaker COST CONNECT Cultural Heritage in the Digital Era (Brussels, Belgium)
2017	Speaker DH Benelux 2017 (Utrecht, NL)

Other activities

2009 – 2011	Member executive board of the Van Oosbree-foundation (Dutch only)
2007 – 2012	Editor youth work support, Apostolic Society (Dutch only)

Degrees, education and relevant training

2004 – 2008	History at the University of Leiden, specialisation late medieval religious development and proto-reformation
1994 – 1999	HEAO Business Economics at The Hague University of Applied Sciences
1989 – 1994	Senior general secondary education (HAVO)

Recent relevant training

Incompany LEAN green belt (Dutch only); SCRUM-master; Liberating Structures; a year-long intensive coaching leadership training at Leadership Solutions in 2018.