This year’s Open Search Symposium takes place from 9 – 11 October 2024 at LRZ Leibniz Supercomputing Centre in Munich (Germany) and online.

#ossym is an international conference that brings together the Open Web Search community in Europe on a yearly basis. The hybrid conference provides a forum to discuss and further develop the ideas and concepts of open internet search and related topics in various formats including scientific talks, panels, workshops, demonstrations, student challenges and informal discussion spaces. Participants include researchers, data centres, libraries, policy makers, legal and ethical experts, and society. Last years’s conferences took place at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. This year the Leibniz Supercomputing Center in Munich is hosting the event.

The call for papers and demos is open until March. The conference programme will soon be announced.

More information: https://opensearchfoundation.org/en/events-osf/ossym24/

“Google knows you: About search engines, privacy and how you can do better”

On January 15, 2024, Christine Plote – board member at osf – will give a lecture at das ottto in Neuburg. It will be about the search engine with the colorful letters and the consequences of a market power that is second to none.

65,000 search queries are made via Google every second, making it the most successful search engine worldwide for decades with a market share of around 83 percent. However, the company, founded in California in 1998, also offers other services and products, such as Google Maps, Google Classroom and YouTube. In September 2023, an antitrust case began in the USA against Alphabet, the parent company, with accusations of abusing its market power.

What consequences does such a situation have for us as a democratic society and as individuals? Christine Plote shows ways of escaping the “Google empire”, at least to some extent. She will also share about the ideas of the Open Search Foundation, whose aim it is to bring the Internet closer to the original idea of “a democratic and transparent” communication space.

Save the Date: January 15, 6.30 pm in the creative space das otto in Neuburg as well as online.

➡️ Click here to register for in person and online tickets: https://easyverein.com/public/DasOtto/calendar/180612648

About the otto – the creative space in Neuburg e.V.:
das Otto e.V. is a non-profit association that combines the topics of technology + education and offers many related events. More about the association: https://das-otto-neuburg.de/Unser-Ziel/index.php