fravia's conferences and workshops

fravia's conferences and workshops
Page updated in August 2006

Introduction
The links below may prove useful for the reader, in order to gather a quick (even if somehow cahotic) introduction to the incredible variety -in terms of aspects- of many a searching lore. Some of my conferences and workshop have been completely filmed and may hence appeal to those among the younger readers that have a more, ahem, "visual-oriented" attention-span.

"Until now we have felt it prudent to maintain a certain polite distance from our public appareances, as any sort of real life illustration might be misconstrued as tasteless bragging or boastfulness. However, due to the simply staggering amount of mail we have received in this matter and as our only hope to dam the flood of inquiry, we find ourself compelled to present this little list"
Seeker's task: Find the original snippet quoted above...

Not that i really like blabbering around the world too often... but these contacts with younger searchers & students & crackers & teachers & hackers & bureaucrats & spies & translators & whatsnot always bear useful teachings for me as well... you learn a lot -and have a chance to develop yourself- when you meet people capable of criticizing the crap you do :-)

talks interviews how it looks like

(Some) Workshops / talks / conferences of mine

~ Done ~

21 October 2006: Lecture @ the Hack.lu, Luxembourg
[How to find anything underneath the commercial web: Powersearching without google]

"Another interesting side effect of a correct web-seeking approach is that often, when searching for something, you will find on the same servers many other targets related to your topic, targets that you did not even know existed. We call this the "being inside the library" effect. Imagine you are not filling out a request form at the counter, imagine you are physically retrieving a book inside a library, with shelves and shelves of books around you and within your immediate reach. Thus you can scan with your eyes all other books in the proximity: books, more or less related to the topic you are searching for, that are, imagine, located on the same shelf, next to your target book and that you can also pick up at leisure. Gee... the amazing power of knowing how to search!"
Read my draft: [How to find anything underneath the commercial web: Powersearching without google]

16-18 June 2006: Recon talk in Montreal
Talk: "Reversing our searching habits (Power searching without google)". (16 June, 14.00 local canadian time)
Read my draft: [reversing_our_searching_habits.htm]: Reversing our searching habits - (Power searching without google)

23 February 2006: Luxembourg, Luxembourg
Conference: "How to find anything on the web"
These presentation's minutes will not be published

29 December 2005: Berlin, Germany: 22C3: Private Investigations
Talk: "Private investigations in searching How to find any book (and many other roadkills) on the Information Super-Highway"
"Private investigations for curious web-seekers: techniques, tools and magic tricks"

Read my draft: [private.htm]: Private investigations for curious web-seekers: techniques, tools and magic tricks
See my presentation (confer http://events.ccc.de/2006/04/21/gentlemen-fire-up-your-clients/): torrent link

30 November 2005: Luxembourg, Luxembourg
"How to find relevant information through the web: some quick and dirty approaches and a coupla weird tricks"
These presentation's minutes will not be published

15 November 2005: Brussels, Belgium
"A new, powerful, quick (and dirty) client-side retrieval tool"
These presentation's minutes will not be published

Kutsu puhujaksi T2-konferenssiin in Helsinki, Finland (14-17 September 2005)
"The web: bottomless cornucopia & immense garbage dump"
and
"FFF wizardry: Finding Forbidden Fruits"

Read my draft: Helsinki_.htm

8th July 2005: Luxembourg, Luxembourg
"How to find EU-related information through the web: some quick and dirty approaches"
These presentation's minutes will not be published

1st July 2005: Brussels, Belgium.
"How to find EU-documents (and anything else) on the web"
These conference's minutes will not be published

Recon conference in Montreal, Canada (17-19 June 2005)

Recon talk in Montreal: "Wizard searching: reversing the commercial web for fun and knowledge".

Read my draft: [Montreal_2005.htm]: Wizard searching: reversing the commercial web for fun and knowledge
Also here among their "papers": http://www.recon.cx/recon2005/papers/
Recon conferences: My own conference (The file is big, though).

A Talk at the Trinity college in Dublin (20-21 april 2005)

Dublin, Ireland.
Netsoc talk at the Trinity college: "Basic wizard web-searching".

Read my draft: [conference_in_dublin.htm]: Basic wizard web-searching

A Workshop at the 21C3 in Berlin (27-29 December 2004)
How to find *anything* on the Web Advanced internet searching strategies & "wizard seeking" tips

Session in Berlin, at the 21C3 (the main ccc event), between Xmas and Newsyear 2004. This workshop deals with the "new" engines' searchscape, targeted searching, webbits' cosmic power, linguistic patterns stalking and some simple P2P "bypassing" techniques.
See: [http://www.ccc.de/congress/2004/fahrplan/day_3.en.html]: How to find *anything* on the Web Advanced internet searching strategies & "wizard seeking" tips
Read my draft: [berlin2004.htm]: How to find *anything* on the Web

A Workshop at the Ravensbourne College in London (20 May 2004)
with my friend Richard Stallman and with Cory Doctorow
Searching the web and searching images in the aera of copyright terror
or
How to find everything and then some

This was also a good opportunity to re-encounter Richard, +Malattia and Littlefish and delve a little into searchbots-building techniques.

Check: [http://www.cubicgarden.com/copyright/]: Copyright vs Community
Read my draft: 1) [london2004.htm]: How to find everything and then some

Hear my workshop: Downloading the sound files here, where you may choose between:
Fravia 56kbps.mp3 (35,0 MB). Fravia 64kbps.mp3 (38,9 MB), Fravia 128Kbps.mp3 (77,8 MB, the clearest one), Fravia Ogg/Vorbis (99,9 MB),

See my workshop:
Video files here: http://www.archive.org/movies/details-db.php?collection=opensource_movies&collectionid=copyrightvscommunity_fravia

A Workshop in Paris (October 2004)
(together with G.Bidwell)
Images finding on the web as art and passion ~ Advertisement debunking

This was -basically- an "anti-advertisement" workshop for students of semiotic.

These workshop's minutes will not be published, but you can read (and maybe find useful) the "image finding workshop" that I subsequently proposed to the seekers' community using the same material discussed in this session.
See: [source2.htm]: Searching and understanding an image without knowing its name and purpose: "The chick on the river", an autumnal small assignment and the three other related assignements: What do we sell? The head of the crab The quiet harbour

A Workshop at the Ravensbourne College in London (28 February 2003)
Wizard Web search techniques: how to find anything (and any image whatsoever) on the web
Read my drafts:
1) [london/lea2tra.htm]: Learning to transform questions into effective queries
2) [london/london.htm]: How to find anything on the web

See my workshop Learning to transform questions into effective queries:
Video here: [http://www.archive.org/movies/details-db.php?collection=opensource_movies&collectionid=websearching]:
Just thumbnails here: [http://www.archive.org/movies/thumbnails.php?id=13540]:

A Session @ the 19c3 in Berlin (30 December 2002)
How to find anything on the web
I held a two hours sesssion at the great ccc 2002 event in Berlin on 30 December, where I spoke on the last day, for two hours, about effective searching techniques, the importance of names, the recent applets opening approaches, the mp3 query strings, and my synecdochical searching method. Of course a quick overview of the 'structure of the web' was given as well.
As the videos of this session testify (see MPEG-4 Recording and MP3 Recording here), there were a series of annoying technical problems (it took a long time to have a working internet connection and it was so slow you could cry), but the public seemed nevertheless quite interested in our various lore :-)

See: [ccc 2002]
Hear/see my workshop: [MPEG-4 Recording and MP3 Recording]
Read my draft: [berlin.htm]: Scaletta of the 2002 session

A workshop with Richard in Brussels (FOSDEM 2002 - ULB)
Advanced Web searching approaches
I held a workshop at the ULB/VLB in Belgium on 17 February 2002 during the Fosdem meeting. My [friend] [Richard Stallman] spoke on Saturday morning (about GNU/Linux), I spoke on Sunday afternoon about simple effective searching techniques, my synecdochical searching method and 'the structure of the web'.

See: Advanced Web searching approaches

A great session at HAL 2001 (Twente, The Netherlands, 11 August 2001)
Web wizard searching techniques, anti-advertisement galore and software reversing tricks

This has been held at the Hal 2001, on 11 August 2001, in Holland (@ Twente).
For info cfr: http://www.hal2001.org/hal/03Topics/saturday.html or http://www.hal2001.org/hal/03Topics/speakerlist.html#ravia
Crackers and Hackers are at least as important (and probably more :-) as EU-officials (see below) in order to change the world. Here is the [draft] of my session! Moreover the dutch television made a complete video of my session, and i look nice there:-)

See: Web wizard searching techniques, anti-advertisement galore and software reversing tricks

My three older workshops in Brussels (March-July 2001, Belgium)
How to find anything on the web: secrets and techniques for efficient seekers
These "closed" workshops, reserved for EU-officials, have been held on 19 march 2001, on 20 april 2001 (on the same day of the 'ebenezer tribe' meeting in Brussels, so that Laurent could partecipate :-) and on 3 July 2001. Few partecipants understood their importance at the time (in 2001 it wasn't "trendy" yet :-)

These workshops' minutes will not be published.

A workshop at the 'polytechnique': Paris (February 2001, France)
The art of information searching on today's Internet

Conference held on 6 February 2001 at the Ecole polytechnique (Paris). I spoke about [the art of information searching on today's Internet], presenting five short lesson/slides about not well known effective searching lore, 'the structure of the web', some simple pseudo-anonymity techniques and the way you can modify and use some commercial tools for your own searching purposes.

My first workshop with Richard Stallman: Milan (October 2000, Italy)
The art of information searching for the open culture aera
I held a conference/workshop in Milan (Italy) on 20 October 2000, celebrating the local "Linuxday". My [friend] [Richard Stallman] spoke in the morning (about GNU/Linux), I spoke in the afternoon about [The art of information searching for the open culture aera], presenting six short lesson/slides about simple effective searching techniques and 'the structure of the web'.

(Some) Interviews and articles

(Part of) [an older interview] (December 2002)

Paul Money's interview (October 2003)

Jaakko Kuivalainen's interview (ITviikko, 8 september 2005, in finnish)

A typical blabbering workshop

to basic

to advanced

to classroom

to further