3 days, 120 participants, 4 Keynotes, 11 Sessions, 2 Workshops and one new Mascot! 😀

The 6th Open Search Symposium #ossym24 took place at the Leibniz Supercomputing Centre from 9 to 11 October. The annual event, organised by the Open Search Foundation, attracts experts and active members of the Open Search community as well as politicians, representatives of the digital economy and interested civilians.

This year’s discussions focused on technical topics such as “Crawling and Infrastructure”, “Search Applications and Technologies”, “Preprocessing and ML for Search”, “LLMs and RAG”, as well as ethical issues related to curation and transparency in community-driven content provision. Last but not least, macro-economic and legal aspects of Open Web Search were discussed and worked on intensively.

In the company of LRZ Deputy Director Helmut Reiser and OSF Chairman Stefan Voigt, Minister Herrmann was invited on a roundtour through the supercomputing rooms, a tour that on-site participants were offered as well as part of the afternoon activities.

Day one kicked off with two back to back highlights

An opening speech by Bavarian Minister of State Dr. Florian Herrmann, followed by a keynote from Roberto Viola – Director General, Communications Networks, Content and Technology, European Commission, set the inspiring tone for day one of #ossym24.

Open Search Symposium back home in Bavaria

Addressing about 80 people in the room and another 40 plus online, Bavarian State Minister Dr. Florian Herrmann opened the symposium by sharing that “In Bavaria, we say that if something happens for the first time, it’s innovation; if it happens for the second time, it’s tradition”, referring to the fact that #ossym24 – after a couple of years in Geneva – has finally returned to Munich/Bavaria.

After warm words of welcome, Dr Herrmann told the audience about history of high tech research in Bavaria that has led and continues to lead to cutting-edge innovation in a wide range of industries. In view of the Open Search Initiative and the idea of promoting science and research through open and free internet search, Dr. Herrmann stated that “for science and research this is absolutely key”. He reiterated his personal belief in the initiative and confirmed the support of the Bavarian Prime Minister, Dr. Markus Söder, who in 2019 launched the so-called High Tech Agenda – a technology initiative that is unique in Europe and covers all the technologies relevant for the 21st century. In the course of this, the state of Bavaria is investing 5.5 billion euros with a particular focus on AI and information technologies.

He ended his speech with “a big thank you to all who are committed to open search with transparent and fair use of the Internet. Let’s fight for it now!”

From left to right: Dr. Stefan Voigt, Dr. Helmut Reiser, Dr. Florian Herrmann, Dr. Megi Sharikaze

8 billion Euros to build a supercomputing network

EU Commissioner Roberto Viola then gave a keynote speech with insights into the EU’s digital agenda for the coming years.

He began by introducing the original NGI (Next Generation Internet*) idea, which essentially aims to return the internet to an “open knowledge” culture rather than the commercially driven closed ecosystems that dominate the digital landscape today. With AI set to take over a large part of traditional web access in the near future, Viola sees many risks in the multiplication of biases along the chain of indexing, searching and training large language models. In particular, the often prevalent commercial bias creates a great need for alternatives.

Acknowledging the work of the Open Search Community, he said: “You have worked hard and especially in the field of web indexing and I am well aware that this community needs support and I will say that this support will be guaranteed from our side, but I hope – and the speech of the State Minister of Bavaria was reassuring me in this – that we have partners around Europe; public partners, but also my hope is that more companies wake up and become much more attentive to the risks of giving all of their assets to just one, two or three players”.

He noted that large companies have already moved into traditional media, disintegrating services. The next target, according to Viola, will be engineering, manufacturing through generative AI and other products – with some of the value shifting to the big players, which he explains as the reason for the continued growth of such companies on the stock markets. “…because the markets anticipate that they will intercept the EU from everywhere. We should not surrender and let our scientific industrial capabilities be this intermediated without us proposing an alternative,” he said.

Viola would like to see pharmaceutical companies, engineering companies, robotics companies and all companies that use AI extensively become more active in impressing these technologies. And he added: “In addition – from the public side – we have to do the maximum that we can to help out”.

Some steps have already been taken. Europe has invested 8 billion in building a supercomputing network that is now the largest in the world. He said, “we are very happy that on local levels like in Bavaria, there are initiatives which support the idea that we can have a world-class interconnected Supercomputing Grid and this is only the starting point.” With the recent launch of an initiative for AI factories, the idea is to co-locate start-ups, scientists and companies to connect them to the supercomputers and ensure that this open ecosystem for AI and search can actually be created.

Viola ended his speech with a reference to opening up markets for the benefit of all players. “The commercial web developed in a unique way. In absence of regulation. In every other sector, e.g. Aviation, Pharma, Banking, there are rules. All the most important activities by human beings are informed by rules.” The Digital Markets Act has provoked responses from large internet giants. Europe is being critiqued for over regulating and constraining innovation on the web. However, opening up markets has proven to be successful in other fields before. The European energy and telecommunications markets for example have benefited both providers and consumers. “The Digital Markets Act in particular is an asymmetric measure that is imposing so called gatekeepers to open up the services to competition – this is essential if we want the success of an initiative such as Open Search”.

The afternoon belonged to  “Next Generation Internet”

With this encouraging speech Viola sent participants off into the coffee break and on to a day filled with three science tracks, including an NGI – Next Generation Internet session with a project presentation of “NGI Search”. NGI Search is a project under the NGI umbrella that focuses on supporting entrepreneurs, tech-geeks, developers, and socially engaged people, who are capable of challenging the way we search and discover information and resources on the internet.

The session titled “Implications of an open web index for search, discovery, and indexing projects” was moderated by Mirko Presser. It’s goal was providing a “customer view of the Open Web Index (OWI), which is currently in the making by OpenWebSearch.eu – also a project under the NGI initiative. Projects funded by NGI Search presented their activities and acted as OWI customers/users, sparking a deeper dialogue on how the OWI can best meet potential market needs.

In the evening, on-site participants were invited to network and enjoy some Bavarian treats – provided by the OpenWebSearch.eu consortium as part of their community meet-up session. Read more here.

Day 2: More International voices take the stage

Alternative Search Engines provide AI solutions and specialised search results

The second conference day started with a keynote presentation from overseas by Richard Socher, former Chief Scientist at Salesforce and founder of you.com. He led the charge with a thought-provoking session on AI’s Jevons Paradox: “When AI gets cheaper, we don’t save costs—we just use more of it.” He also gave us a deep dive into you.com, an innovative chat-search assistant that’s taking search to the next level with “Executed Code Output” and verifiable sources.

Richard Socher of you.com at Open Search Symposium 2024

Richard Socher of you.com at Open Search Symposium 2024

A fun fact: you.com results outperformed ChatGPT in fact-checking. And a particular example did not disappoint: Prof. Dr. Christian Geminn challenged you.com with the following question: “What are the legal challenges of an open web index?” The on point answer: “It’s a complex puzzle involving data protection, intellectual property, and ethical web crawling. But with the right approach, an open web index can foster innovation while staying legally sound.”

According to #ossym tradition, two more alternative search engines were explored with Daoud Clarke from the UK-based, community-driven and curated search engine mwmbl.org and Simon Descarpentries from Meta-Press.es –a search engine, that will dig deep through the web and find media articles that other search engines do not pay attention to. Another highlight were the exciting parallel sessions with teams from the German Aerospace Centre and the University of Passau, offering real-world insights into the future of LLM-powered search.

 “Big Tech must go!”

In the afternoon, bestselling author and media scientist Dr. Martin Andree gave a lively keynote with the slogan “Big Tech must go! He not only presented his Atlas of the digital world, which tracks and records the overall distribution of online traffic.

courtesy of LRZ/ Susanne Todorovic

Not much of a surprise to anyone: The world’s top 5 tech companies seem to run the internet more or less in isolation. Not only do these platforms have a disproportionate amount of traffic, but they also virtually eliminate competition through manoeuvres such as limiting outbound links, using self-preferencing traffic tactics when users leave a platform, and many more subtle manipulations.

Why is this a problem? These companies control global sales funnels…But what is also at stake is democracy: “I would say these corporations are non democracy compliant.” stated Andree.

Some of his proposed solutions: freedom for outlink design on platforms, open standards for platform interoperability, economic separation of transmission path and content, upper limit of 30% market share, ban on monetisation of criminal content.

These “5 Tips to Free the Internet” sparked some heated discussions. His new video talk “Big Tech must go” gets to the heart of the matter.

After a rejuvenating lunch break, the two afternoon workshops were dedicated to “Economic Topics” and “Legal Question-marks”. Both sessions brought out fiery debates that were continued well beyond #ossym24.

Day 3: discussions on ethical and societal issues and the governance of an Open Web Index

The final day of the conference came around in the blink of an eye and sparked new discussions around index governance as well as ethical and societal issues. A major highlight was the keynote speech by Nina Leseberg, Head of Communities & Engagement at Wikimedia Germany. In her talk “Digital Discourse: how the Wikipedia Community safeguards the quality of the digital encyclopedia” she shared insights into the complex issue of community-based content curation.

Talk Nina Leseberg (Wikimedia Deutschland) at Open Search Symposium 2024

Updates and discussions from the OSF Working Group Ethics

The following panel on “Ethics + Society” was chaired by OSF chair Christine Plote. The panel also included Noor Afshan Fathima from CERN, Alexander Nussbaumer from the University of Graz and Renée Ridgway from Aarhus University/SHAPE Centre, Denmark, who shared the results of their ongoing OSF Ethics Working Group. Values, risk and opportunity assessments are at the heart of defining ethical guidelines for Open Web Search. The voluntary inclusion of “ethical labels” in applications based on the Open Web Index was just one interesting concept introduced by the panellists.

Noor Afshan Fathima from CERN and OSF chair Christine Plote at the panel “Exploring the ethical foundations of web search – perspectives and findings from research and practice” at the Open Search Symposium 2024 #ossym24

Noor Afshan Fathima (CERN) and OSF chair Christine Plote at the panel discussion “Exploring the ethical foundations of web search – perspectives and findings from research and practice”

In the subsequent scientific session, chaired by Alexander NussbaumerRenée Ridgway, Rik Viergever from MURENA and Alex De Vries from Digiconomist presented their research on the environmental factors of AI in web search, the implications of an ethical smartphone in the context of data privacy and the values and ethics of an Open Search Infrastructure – from free software to open source.

Rik Viergever from MURENA

Young scientists for fresh ideas

The conference ended with a refreshing contribution from the „Young Innovators“ student session. Daphne Auer (Common Grounds Forum) shared her concepts of “User-Driven Re-Ranking for an Adaption of the Variety in Search Results”; Felice Douglas and Susanne Krol shared creative “Curation Strategies for OpenWebSearch” including some gamification nuggets.

And, as a cool surprise, the #OpenSearchCommunity now has a new additional member: The “Weebie” mascot was created by Susanne Krol and handed over to project leader Stefan Voigt at the end of the session!

Together for a better net!

All in all, #ossym24 was filled with plenty of food for thought and exciting insights into manifold ongoing community projects, which all make a piece of the puzzle. Thank you to all contributors and guests! #ossym is nothing without its people!

The saying goes: After #ossym is before #ossym. So please save the date for #ossym25, which takes us up north to Helsinki, Finland from 8-10 October 2025.

 

*NGI – Next Generation Internet is a European initiative under the Horizon Europe programme. It features 39 funded research projects.

Experts from research, business, NGOs, tech and civil society are tackling the issues surrounding tomorrow’s safer European web search.

– The Open Search Community meets from 9 to 11 October at the Leibniz Supercomputing Center (LRZ) in Garching
– Prominent keynote speakers introduce ways to achieve digital sovereignty
– Workshops and panels offer opportunities for participation and discussion

The 6th International Open Search Symposium #ossym24 invites you to discuss and promote ideas and concepts of open web search at the Leibniz Supercomputing Center of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities (BAdW) in Garching from 9 to 11 October, 2024. Since its launch in 2019, #ossym has provided an annual forum that brings together various players in the open search community. This year’s  focus lies on Artificial Intelligence (AI), Search Applications and Technologies as well as the legal, economic and ethical aspects of open web search.
Also on the agenda: strategies for curating content and building engagement – for a collaborative internet.

Renowned Keynote Speakers provide insights on ethical, societal and economic issues

Five speakers will be giving talks and ignite discussions on hot topics in the digital information age:

Florian Herrmann, Head of the Bavarian State Chancellery and Minister of State for Federal Affairs and Media, will open the event on 9 October  with a personal welcome address.

Roberto Viola is Director General for Communication Networks, Content and Technologies at the European Commission. He will comment on the great importance of open web search and the pursuit of digital sovereignty in Europe.

Martin Andree, Bestselling Author (“BIG TECH must go!”) and Media Scientist, will provide important food for thought on the subject of internet search and democracy in his talk “The Internet of monopolies. How we are taking back the net”.

Nina Leseberg, Head of Communities & Engagement at Wikimedia Deutschland, will share insights into the exciting world of community-based curation and quality assurance of Wikipedia entries.

Richard Socher, CEO of You.com, shows how artificial intelligence is changing search engines – and therefore our everyday lives.

Many players, several tracks, one forum

Several lectures within the Science Track will address the topics of

  • Crawling and the infrastructure,
  • new Search Applications and Technologies,
  • Data Pre-processing and Machine Learning for search as well as
  • Large Language Models (LLMs) and Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG)

The Industry Track is dedicated to Alternative Search Engines and new business models for finding information on the Internet.
Various sessions and workshops will address further ethical, legal and technical issues relating to different aspects of Internet use and digitization.

What the hosts are saying

“We look forward to the Open Search Community and many new impulses for better web search and use. As the host of #ossym and a long-standing supporter of Open Search, we are fully committed to transparent technologies, open web search, science and democratic values – because one cannot exist without the others.”

Dieter Kranzlmüller, Head of the Leibniz Supercomputing Centre

“Searching the internet is often the first step on the way to obtaining information and therefore a prerequisite for forming an opinion. This central process must not be controlled by a few tech companies. We believe that access to information must be open and transparent – and we are not alone in this. The Open Search Symposium is a forum for all pioneers and advocates of free internet search. Together we can make a difference and if you want to be part of it, come to #ossym.”

Stefan Voigt, Chairman of the Open Search Foundation

Information and Registration

The #ossym24 is organized by the Open Search Foundation in cooperation with the Leibniz Supercomputing Centre (LRZ) of the BAdW. The symposium will take place in a hybrid format. Registration is required for both on-site and online participation. Participation in both formats is free of charge. There are 100 places available for on-site participation at the Leibniz Supercomputing Center in Garching near Munich. Information on registration can be found at: https://opensearchfoundation.org/en/events-osf/ossym24/h Foundation e.V.

About Leibniz Supercomputing Centre
The Leibniz Supercomputing Centre of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities has been the competent IT partner of Munich’s universities and colleges as well as scientific institutions in Bavaria, Germany and Europe for over 60 years. It offers the complete range of IT services and technology as well as consulting and support – from e-mail and web servers to Internet access, virtual machines, cloud solutions and the Munich Scientific Network (MWN). With the supercomputer SuperMUC-NG, the LRZ is one of the leading international supercomputing centers and focuses on emerging technologies, artificial intelligence, machine learning and quantum computing in the field of future computing.

About Open Search Foundation
The Open Search Foundation e.V. is a European movement that creates the basis for independent, free and self-determined access to information on the Internet. In cooperation with research institutions, data centers and other partners, we are committed to a web search that benefits everyone. True to the motto: “Together for a better net”.

Contact:
Leibniz Supercomputing Center

Sabrina Schulte

 

Open Search Foundation e.V.

Stefan Voigt

 

Summer isn´t over yet, but we are already preparing a bunch of interesting events to look forward to this fall and winter

As Open Search Foundation we are on a mission to educate on the multifold implications of  free and open web search, open data, artificial intelligence, as well as ethics in search. We are hence hosting and co-hosting a couple of events this year, that we would like to draw your attention to:

  •  #FWSD24 – FreeWebSearchDay is going into its second year with exciting interactive actions and events happening on September 29 and the surrounding days and week.
    ➡More info and how you can partake and support this special day https://freewebsearch.org/
  •  As part of FreeWebSearchDay, we are offering an online presentation in cooperation with Mücke Roth & Company and BMW Foundation Herbert Quandt on 30 September. The topic: A comprehensive study on the market potential of #OpenWebSeach in Europe. The study is part of the OpenWebSearch.eu third-party community programme.
  •  #ossym24 – The 6th international OpenSearchSymposium takes place from Oct 9-11 at Leibniz Supercomputing Centre near Munich. Speakers include Roberto Viola – Director General, Communications Networks, Content and Technology, European Commission , Dr. Martin Andree – Media Scientist and Bestselling Author and Richard Socher – CEO at you.com.
    Participation is free, with 100 on-site spots available. The hybrid event will also be streamed.
    ➡ All infos and sign up link: https://opensearchfoundation.org/en/events-osf/ossym24/
  •  Our PriDI team will actively partake with a session on Fundamental Rights in the context of an Open Web Index at this year‘s Plattform Privatheit Jahreskonferenz on the 17 and 18 October in Berlin.
    ➡ Find the programme here:  https://plattform-privatheit.de/p-prv/jahreskonferenzen/jahreskonferenz-2024.php
  • Last not least, we are hosting an Ethics in Search event with results from our working group in Berlin in November this year. Updates will follow, so make sure to stay tuned;)

 

📍To stay in the loop on further events, make sure to sign up to our events newsletter here.

 

With 100 on-site spots available, this year’s #ossym24 will take place as a hybrid format at Leibniz Supercomputing Centre in Garching near Munich and online.
Registration via our committee partner CERN is open now. If you sign up, this is what you can expect:

Thought leaders in web search and Artificial Intelligence from all around Europe

From 9- 11 October 2024, the #ossym will again unite researchers, data analysts, computer scientists, tech companies, but also policy makers, legal and ethical experts, and society. The sixth International Open Search Symposium will provide a forum to discuss and advance ideas and concepts of Open Internet Search, with a focus on Artificial Intelligence (AI), Search Applications and Technologies, legal and ethical aspects of Open Web Search as well as insights into the topic Wiki/Curation.

Keynotes on ethical, societal and economic issues in the Digital Information Age

The #ossym24 will feature keynotes on digital (un)sovereignty in the areas of Information Retrieval, Web Search and AI.
Roberto Viola is Director General, Communications Networks, Content and Technology at the European Comission. He will speak to the importance of Open Web Search and a quest for digital sovereignty in Europe. 
Bestselling Author, Media Scientist and University Lecturer Martin Andree will talk about „The Internet of monopolies. How we are taking back the net“. Richard Socher – CEO at You.com will present the innovative AI-extended search engine that implemented LLMs even pre-ChatGPT.

#ossym24 brings you research sessions on „Preprocessing and ML for Search“ as well as „LLMs, RAG and NER“

2 Parallel Session tracks cover cutting edge study results and paper findings surrounding Retrieval Augmented Generation and Scientific Knowledge Graphs for Scientific purposes, Scientific Summary Creation through LLMs, Grammar Rules for Textgeneration and more.

Science Tracks surrounding OpenWebSearch.eu

Research tracks of the symposium will include a Lightweight Approach to Crawling, OWLer for distributed and collaborative Open Web Crawling, Federated Data Infrastructure for Open Web Search and Open Console insights.

Information and Registration

The #ossym24 will be hosted – in person and online – by the Leibniz Supercomputing Centre in Garching near Munich from 9th to 11th October. Participation is free of charge with only 100 on-site seats available.
Find all information on sign up: https://opensearchfoundation.org/en/events-osf/ossym24/

The Open Search Foundation e.V. is a European movement to create the foundation for independent, free and self-determined access to information on the Internet. In cooperation with research institutions, computer centres and other partners, we’re committed to searching the web in a way that benefits everyone.
Motto: „Together for a Better Net“.

Contact
:
Open Search Foundation e.V. – OSF
Christine Plote

Freedom of information and democracy require open access to online resources. The #FreeWebSearch Day on 29 September brings this topic to the table bundling participatory actions online and offline.

In 2023 the Open Search Foundation (OSF) brought to life the International #FreeWebSearchDay, which on 29 September each year stands for free and transparent internet search: Via the #FWSD website people are invited to participate and advocate for a free web.

“#FreeWebSearchDay unites all people wishing to stand up for free web search. Its main target is to support an open and transparent internet search. The action day highlights the strong influence internet search has on all of us – and why its freedom and transparency are key to our democracies”, says Christine Plote, co-founder and member of the board at OSF.

“For events surrounding 29 September 2024, we are looking for fellow campaigners from companies, schools, universities and civil society organisations. Therefore, we are collecting events, talks and actions across Europe around open internet search.”

Intransparent information: A core problem

#FreeWebSearch Day on 29 September is all about raising awareness for the overwhelming power of major search engine providers. Worldwide, about 90 percent of internet users trust Google when they search the internet for information they need for work, education, lifestyle, hobbies or purchases (Quelle: gs.Statcounter.com). However, these corporations do not disclose their search indexes or algorithms. They keep in the dark, firstly, how their results come about and, secondly, what criteria are used to list them. What it all comes down to: A few profit-oriented tech companies determine what information we build upon and thus shape public opinion.

Why web search requires our immediate attention

Search is not a private matter! The major search engines also hide what personal data they collect from users when they search and retrieve results. It is not clear how they store, use or market this personal data. All we know is that the data is processed for advertising purposes, because advertising is the search companies’ main business model. Pointing out these connections, drawing attention to the consequences of the existing lack of transparency in web search, a lack of privacy protection and, above all, highlighting alternative solutions are additional goals of the international #FreeWebSearch Day on 29 September.

“Many internet users still think that search results at the top of their results list are good, correct and trustworthy, even though they cannot know the criteria of the rankings,” states Christine Plote. However, freedom of information is the most important foundation of a functioning democracy. There is still a huge lack of knowledge on how search results come about and are ranked or how a search engine will know, what is in a picture. “Surprisingly, we seem to accept a high degree of digital illiteracy in this respect. Yet, it is high time that search and the evaluation of search results become part of the curricula of schools or universities, training and further education”, the co-founder of the OSF claims. In addition, schools and companies should give higher priority to hot topics, such as the impacts on online search by artificial intelligence, the new text generators or Large Language Models (LLMs).

Actions, lectures, hackathons: Ideas wanted

For #FreeWebSearch Day 2024 on 29 September contributions from as many different groups as possible are welcome: Companies, schools, universities, other educational institutions, museums or associations can contribute to with (online) lectures, discussions, participatory activities or projects. IT specialists or programmers can contribute with technical know-how and organise hackathons and more.
And everyone can help spread awareness by downloading and reposting our social media graphics and helping us spread the word.

Information and events on #FreeWebSearch Day on and around 29 September will be continuously updated at: www.FreeWebsearch.org