The Open Search Symposium 2024 (OSSYM24) brought together the Open Web Search community in Europe for the sixth time, and NGI Sargasso attended it to network with the open search ecosystem and other NGI-funded projects.
Organized by the Open Search Foundation at the Leibniz Supercomputing Centre in Munich (Germany) from the 9th to the 11th of October 2024, the hybrid conference provided a forum to discuss and further develop the ideas and concepts of open internet search, search and AI, and related topics in various formats including scientific talks, panels, workshops, demonstrations, student challenges and informal discussion spaces. Participants included researchers, data centres, libraries, policy-makers, legal and ethical experts, and society.
During the first day Helmut Reiser, the Deputy Director at Leibniz Supercomputing Centre, and Florian Herrmann, State Minister, Head of the Bavarian State Chancellery, gave the Welcome Session, followed by Roberto Viola, DG CONNECT’s General Director, who delivered the Opening Keynote.
Then, the Science Tracks took over the agenda, focusing on:
- Crawling and Infrastructure.
- Search Applications and Technologies.
- Preprocessing and ML for Search.
- LLMs and RAG.
In the afternoon, the Next Generation Internet (NGI) session was hosted, including presentations from NGI Search and OpenWebSearch.eu.
During the second and third days, more keynotes were offered to the participants, being Richard Socher (CEO of You.com), Martin Andree (Bestselling Author and Researcher at the University of Cologne), and Nina Leseberg (Head of Communities & Engagement, Wikimedia Deutschland) the speakers. The rest of the agenda was completed with sessions and workshops focused on Ethics and Society, Legal Aspects of Open Web Search, Economic Aspects of Open Web Search, and an Industry Track titled “Alternative Search Engines”.
Our partners Sara Abu and Laura Argilés, from AUSTRALO, were there to join the discussions, while getting insights from the ecosystem’s researchers, policy-makers and other relevant stakeholders about Next Generation Internet Transatlantic cooperation.
Potential synergies with NGI Search and OpenWebSearch.eu
OSSYM 2024 was attended by two more NGI-funded projects: NGI Search and OpenWebSearch.eu.
Sara and Laura took the opportunity of meeting them in person in Munich to discuss potential collaborations and synergies to work together in the creation of an Internet of Trust with a human-centric approach. They networked with Megi Sharikadze (Head of Research at Leibniz Supercomputing Centre) and Stefan Voigt (Founder and CEO of Open Search Foundation) from OpenWebSearch.eu, and Mirko Presser (Associate Professor at Aarhus University), representing NGI Search.
Together, we will shape a better Internet for our future generations!