Bogomil Shopov logo
HUMAN SIGNAL DETECTED [ONLINE]

HUMAN.
ARTIST.
HACKER. METALHEAD.

I’m Bogomil Shopov - Bogo. I exist where technology meets people, where art interrupts the ordinary, and where freedom is something we build, not just talk about.

bogo@localhost,~$ whoami
Bulgarian in Prague. Open-source contributor. Digital-rights troublemaker. Product thinker. ARTivist. Heavy-metal optimist.

bogo@localhost,~$ ./make_the_system_more_human
01 //

Not a job title. A point of view.

Twenty-plus years around technology have taught me that the hardest problems are rarely only technical. They live between people, incentives, interfaces, habits and systems. I like understanding how things work - and asking who they work for.

01. HUMAN FIRST

Technology should respect people. I care about privacy, fair design and giving people more control over the tools they use. Good tools should be useful without being hard to understand.

[ EMPATHY IS A FEATURE ]

02. OPEN BY DEFAULT

Free and open-source software lets people learn together, improve tools, translate them and fix problems. It also gives people more control over the software they depend on.

[ FORK THE FUTURE ]

03. ART AS A TOOL

With Image Not Found, I use art in public spaces to draw attention to things people have stopped noticing. Sometimes a sticker, a painted pothole or a postcard can start a useful conversation.

[ ARTIVISM // MAKE IT VISIBLE ]

04. KEEP IT LOUD

Heavy metal gives me energy and reminds me to keep an open mind. Work can matter without becoming boring, and communities need room for unusual ideas.

[ DISTORTION WITH PURPOSE ]
02 //

Things I do

Open source / contribution

Contributing to communities and tools including Mozilla, Thunderbird, Fedora and OpenStreetMap. Translation and small contributions count, they help real people participate.

Privacy / security

Threat modeling, digital trust, privacy-aware design and helping teams ask better questions before a risk becomes an incident. I wrote A Convenient Guide to Starting You on Threat Modeling.

Artivism / civic hacking

Image Not Found experiments use creative interventions to surface what has become invisible - from potholes to surveillance - and invite people to act instead of shrug.

Talks / community

Talks and workshops about open technology, digital rights, UX, threat modeling and why fun, curiosity and humanity belong in technical work.

03 //

A small manifesto

Build things people can understand. Protect the space to think, choose and create. Make the invisible visible. Share what you learn. Question systems that demand trust but refuse transparency. And when someone says “nothing will change” - try something anyway.

“With one small pencil you can change the world.”
- a useful reminder from the artivist side of the terminal
04 //

Selected logs

2005
WebTech organizer since 2005. Bogo began organizing WebTech, helping bring Bulgaria’s web-development community together to share knowledge, ideas and practical experience.
2006
Growing the WebTech community. Continuing the event-organizing work, alongside technical knowledge-sharing and educational activities in Bulgaria’s web-development scene.
2007
Open-source advocate and community organizer. WebTech organizing continued, alongside work and talks on PHP, open source, open standards and MySQL.
2008
Against internet surveillance. Helped organize protests against Bulgaria's Decree 40 and represented Electronic Frontier in public discussions about privacy, civil liberties and the limits of state surveillance. Global Voices, March 2008 ↗
2009-11
Open web and digital rights. Writing about Firefox, browser choice, open standards and open digital government. Mozilla community events and talks included FOSDEM, Mozilla Balkans and OpenFest.
2011
Remixing power, defending expression. Using BO.LT, Bogo copied and edited a page from the Bulgarian government website so it appeared to announce Prime Minister Boyko Borisov’s dismissal. Police discovered the remix and forced him to remove it. He then published a blog post explaining his frustration with the government and how quickly digital tools can make dissent visible. The episode was described in Forbes as an example of social tools being used to remix content and express political opinion. Bogo’s account ↗ · Archived BO.LT remix ↗ · Forbes / ChangeBeat reference ↗
2012
Privacy in the real world. A public investigation into a dataset containing Facebook users’ names, IDs and email addresses brought attention to third-party data practices.
2021
20 years in IT. Reflecting on a path through web development, architecture, management, marketing and product work.
2023-24
Make technology fun again. Talks on open source, creativity, UX and what heavy metal can teach technical teams about curiosity and collaboration.
2024-26
Build in the open. FOSDEM talks and ongoing contributions across Thunderbird, open-source communities, OpenStreetMap and participatory art.

A selective timeline, not a complete CV. Explore the source links below for the longer trail.