Benjamin Doherty

Benjamin Doherty is an experienced web application developer with expertise in numerous Free and Open Source environments. Benjamin has done extensive work with Oembed, an open format (API) allowing embedded content (such as photos or videos) enabling simple distribution of content from many services including YouTube, Hulu, and Vimeo. Other open source community work includes his role as the maintainer of Drupal 7's taxonomy system, which enables a very flexible organization of categories essential to the findability of information in large content archives.

Prior to joining CivicActions, Benjamin began working with the Electronic Intifada building and maintaining a complex site that provides a very valuable supplement to mainstream commercial media representations of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He also maintains the multilingual (Arabic and English) site for Al-Shabaka, The Palestinian Policy Network. Benjamin was co-founder of the Chicago Palestine Film Festival in 2002 which is today one of the most important venues in the US for the screening of Palestinian cinema.

Since joining CivicActions, Benjamin has worked with numerous clients, including an (unnamed) think tank to build and launch a co-editing web system enabling multiple parties to comment on shared content. At CivicActions, he has also worked with Privacy International to develop the online challenge games: IP Sleuth and Domain Invader in an effort educate European citizens though entertaining engaging games.

Benjamins skills include social media integration with Facebook and Twitter's APIs, as well as work with Google Analytics APIs which enable the tracking and reporting of viewers behaviors while watching videos. He has an intimate knowledge of the API for Apache Solr enterprise search server.

Benjamin is passionate about assisting organizations and individuals assess their information/technology needs from the ground up and is familiar with social issues, nonprofit organizations, social services, children’s services, political activism, and cross-cultural spectacles