Hi, I'm Javier

I live in Melbourne with my wife Helen, our two kids and our dog Jet. My coffee order is a magic if it’s still morning, or a half-full latte in the afternoon. I speak four languages reasonably well, and another handful badly, none of them Japanese.

At work, I help build and maintain the infrastructure of civilisation, mostly by typing words into computers. Some of these words are English paragraphs, and some of them are computer programs.

Outside of work, I help run meetups and conferences.

I also cook, clean, sail, walk the dog, take photos, scroll through too much social media, drive the kids to their school and social activities, draw pictures, read books, write both programs and paragraphs, try to learn japanese, and build increasingly elegant splints for reverse-tenting my keyboards.

This is now, in Australia. Before I came over, I lived in Spain, where I also did many things:

2005, January: Organised two events in Madrid for the 100 day celebrations of the release of the Creative Commons Spain licenses. That’s when I finally got to meet “Internet Lawyer” Javier de la Cueva, though we had been collaborating online for some time. Cory Doctorow gave a fun Cervantes-inspired talk. José Antonio Millán spoke of how the Creative Commons licenses serve to manage the audience’s enthusiasm for an author’s work. My friend Pepe Cervera was present as the author of the first public license in Spain. The cuffs of my trousers were held together with duct tape.

2004, November: Toured with Dirty Princess in its original lineup with producer François at the decks and two singers, Nikky and Yasmin (warning: NSFW). I had accompanied them to Sónar, and I followed to Amsterdam, after which I left the band behind because I had a date in Hamburg. While with the band, I carried flight boxes, blocked doors so the band could get in and out, and otherwise spent most of my time talking to other acts like the Freelance Hellraiser. I also carried a debilitating crush on Yasmin, thankfully unrequited, and that’s how I got to meet Helen and fall in love with her only a couple of months later.

2004, October: Started Dorkbot Madrid with my friends Murphy, Nikky, Aitor and Antoine. Over five and a half years, we hosted an outstanding lineup: Fela Borbone’s musical instruments made with garbage and Zach Lieberman’s Manual Input Sessions, Professor Franz of Copenhage’s ion sputtering deposition kit and Chris Sugrue’s Eyewriter, Kal Spelletich’s SEEMEN and Olaf Ladousse’s Doo-Rags. After I moved to Melbourne in 2007 and Murphy took over, I kept myself involved by maintaining the website, one of my proudest creations.

2003: Having written about videogames for underground comix magazine El Víbora got me invited to write game reviews for Rolling Stone Spain. This gave me the opportunity to pitch articles about copyleft and Creative Commons, and also interviews/profiles of people like Richard Stallman or my friends Anne Laforet and Olatz Acosta.

2001: Published in Revista de Occidente “La Web como memoria organizada”, a panpsychist (and panglossian) view of the Internet as outbrain. Re-reading it 25 years later, I feel it might hold up better if I had managed to hold back the naive optimism. José Antonio Millán, who commissioned the piece, also has an article in this issue, alongside newcomers Roberto Blatt, Roger Chartier and Vannevar Bush, who were no doubt grateful for the opportunity. Coincidentally, the illustration for the cover is from my friend Mateo Maté, who I met while working as an artist’s assistant in 1992 and who I would later invite to present at Dorkbot Madrid, because good things come in threes.

2000: Launched with my friend Joan Llorach Interactora which, before its two successive pivots, was an interactive TV startup. Joan spoke at both of my wedding celebrations, and I was “second-best man” at his. We play phone tag a lot. Maybe one day he’ll remember to write “co-founder” instead of “founder” on his LinkedIn profile.

1999: Started (with a bunch of partners) Barrapunto.com, which has been called “a Spanish-language Slashdot-like website”, and “a void that nobody has covered since”". Site is currently in permanent hiatus. However, given that every dog has his day, and a good dog might as well have two days… who knows? Barrapunto might return.

1999: Installed Linux for the first time. My friend Amaya taught me how to use bash shortcuts for history search and line editing. Through Amaya I would later meet my wife Helen. Some days I wonder: what is there in my life that is good and that I don’t owe to Amaya?

1997: Bought an apartment, where my friend Darío would eventually help me put in a flatpack kitchen. The apartment was above a fire station. So many phone calls interrupted by the sirens, and so many laughs. Over the years, friendly fireys have opened my door for me by going in through a window when I had locked myself out, have let me shower at the station when our hot water boiler broke down, and they also gave us a great parting gift: this photo of the cutest Daft Punk tribute band ever.

1997: Created and presented two TV programs about digital culture and the Internet for a direct-to-satellite channel called Canal C. At this job I met Luisa Picinelli and Pepe Cervera, both now sadly gone. Our friend Carlos Herrán commented that Pepe and I were so alike that, when he introduced us, he didn’t know whether we’d annihilate each other in a flash of light or mind-meld into a single thinking entity. The second happened. With Luisa it was love at first crossing the door to our office uttering her trademark “Hoooooola”. She was 180cm tall and I was sitting down, which reinforced her amazonian presence. I loved Luisa and I loved Pepe, and now they’re both gone, and I miss them.

I also met Pilar and Luis and Feli and David and Nacho and Mencía, and made enough money to get a mortgage on an apartment. It was only ok as a job, but it was great as a set of chances at life.

1995: Created the first ever website for a movie in Spain. It was for El día de la bestia and it was not very good. At this time I was still learning to make websites, mostly by indiscriminate copying of the output of the “View Source” menu and by cutting and pasting scanned-in bits of the press kit. At the presentation of the website, director Alex de la Iglesia mocked me, clowning around with lines about how the Internet was for nerds, and nobody would want to click on their screens to find out stuff about movies. Who’s laughing now, Alex? Who’s laughing now?

1994: Published in La Balsa de la Medusa “Bienvenidos a la galaxia virtual”, a panoramic (and panglossian) view of virtual reality as an impending inevitablity. Re-reading it 32 years later, I feel it might hold up better if I had managed to hold back the naive optimism. Carlos Piera, who commissioned the piece, also commisioned work from Aurora Polanco alongside newcomers Noam Chomsky, Michael Foucault and Pierre Boulez, who were no doubt grateful for the opportunity. The front cover was given to Aurora Polanco’s diatribe against Botero’s voluminous commercial garbage and how exhibiting this work in public thoroughfares fosters the most wretched and reactionary interests of the art market.

1993: Finished a 5-year degree in Modern Philology, which entailed 2 years of classics and philosophy, and then three years of English language and literature, with some French and German thrown in. This could have been a master’s if I had written and delivered a minor dissertation, but I decided to spend my time learning to program instead, and also hanging out with friends Amaia and Kole, and more-than-a-friend Ana. During uni I worked moving furniture and boxes of textbooks, so I got really fit, and never even realised it until it was gone.

1992: Worked as a secretary/dogsbody at Juana de Aizpuru Gallery. How does one get such a job? Because I had worked as an assistant to artist Eugenio Cano, who went to the same high school where I did Year 12 and who needed help to build his massive Compact. I miss Eugenio and his wife Victoria. There are nights where I dream that I’m back installing an exhibition at Juana de Aizpuru’s Sevilla gallery and finishing at 2 fucking AM and being the guy pouring the bucket of black dye into a leaking toilet, cleaning it up with a mop, and then forgetting about the leak and pouring the mop bucket into the toilet again…

1991: Sold books at Madrid Comics, where ineffable proprietor Mario Ayuso eventually promoted me to handle distribution. The best-selling pride of our catalog was the first Calvin and Hobbes translation to Spanish, published by La Colla de la Pessigolla. Resident bookstore philosopher Lorenzo Díaz and I still conspire about comics sometimes. He conspires much better.

1989: Met Jesús Palacios, Met Kole.

1987: Met Tonino.

Before that, I was once a baby. A baby! What a concept!