[FULL] April 11: Advanced Scraping Webinar (4 hours)

This webinar requires prerequisite knowledge of the command line and of programming. A registration link to the workshop can be acquired through the completion of a simple task that will prove prerequisite competency for the training, found here.

The participant should be comfortable using the command line to run scripts and software. They should be familiar with the fundamentals of computer programming, and have a working Python installation on their computer. They do not need to be a Python expert – with a willingness to learn, and a working Python configuration, programming experience in another language is enough to follow this webinar.

The webinar session will cover:

Python tools for scraping social media data from Telegram and Twitter, including official and unofficial APIs
Python libraries for data analysis
Examples of analyzing social media data and post content over time
Tools for building a network diagram visualization from post data

Please follow the link https://gist.github.com/trislee/5adefcddb97c36bf5d38eadeb6be8193

This script will retrieve the registration link to the paid webinar for social media scraping.

To ensure every participant gets the most out of the webinar, we require that each participant is familiar with the very basics of Python (configuring an environment, installing packages, running scripts).

By being able to run this script (using Python version 3.x) and getting the correct webinar link, you’re demonstrating that you meet those requirements.

Payment Note

If you register and select credit card or Paypal, you must pay when you start the payment process, otherwise Eventzilla will lock you out and we will have to manually delete and restart your registration. Wait to open the payment tab until you have your card or Paypal information ready to go!

Alternatively, you can choose “bank transfer” and pay later — many of our participants whose employers sponsor them choose this option.

Costs and VAT

For our webinars, we charge a rate of 250 EUR/person per 4-hour block, plus any applicable VAT and fees.

The ticket price is inclusive of 21% VAT (tax). All participants personally paying for this course are subject to the Dutch VAT. However, if a company (e.g. your employer) is paying for the course, they may be exempt from the VAT charge.

If the company is based in the European Union, please write the VAT number during the registration process and an invoice sans VAT will be issued.
If the company is based in the United States or Canada, there is no added VAT.
If the company is based in other countries, please write any VAT number (if available) and a correct billing address and we will issue an invoice per the VAT regulations for the respective country.

Additional fees included in the ticket price are detailed in the Eventzilla page. Please reach out to us at workshops@bellingcat.com if you have any questions on the VAT fees and regulations.

Cancellation

Please look closely at the cancellation and event policies before you take the leap. We run all of these trainings on Zoom in a private webinar room, with two or three trainers present to help with both the webinar itself and any questions the participants have. Also, please note the times — about half of our trainings are Europe-time friendly, and the other half more US/Canada-time friendly. If you are in California, you probably don’t want to sign up for an event that is at 10am Amsterdam and 1am Pacific time!

Eventzilla lists most of our events in the Amsterdam (GMT+1) time zone, which is sometimes noted as “CET” and other times as “WEST”. We don’t know why Eventzilla sometimes uses this designation of “WEST” for Central European time, but just keep in mind that it’s one hour ahead of London and six hours ahead of New York.

Screening

We manually approve all applications after registration on Eventzilla. We do basic due diligence checks on our participants to be sure that our trainers and other participants are comfortable with their participation. Members of any military or intelligence service are not permitted registration at our workshops, and we allow government employees in on a case-by-case basis to be sure there aren’t any serious ethical issues. We also restrict access to our workshops from members of police forces, but make some exceptions depending on participants’ areas of responsibilities.

For example, in past workshops, we have approved the participation of government employees working on issues around election integrity and security, while we have rejected the participation of those working for state migration services tasked with information gathering around deportations. For police officers, we have approved the applications of those working on issues of child exploitation and trafficking, but rejected those who work for departments where there have been publicized cases of surveillance and abuse. We also conduct basic due diligence for non-government employees to be sure both the participant and their employer do not have a track record that would clearly make our trainers and other participants uncomfortable with providing training in research techniques that could be abused.

That said, the vast majority of participants are approved without any issue.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I receive a certificate for the workshops?

Sure! Just email us (workshops@bellingcat.com) before or after the workshops, and we’ll send you a PDF certificate showing completion after the training is completed. Please let us know if there are any particular details that you need on this to fit requirements for your workplace or other institutions.

Can I receive a recording of a workshop?

We do not record our workshops, or allow others to record them. However, we do provide copies of our training slides to participants after the completion of the training for their personal reference.

When will you come to my city for an in-person workshop?

We are planning to host at least four in-person workshops in 2023. The first will was in Amsterdam, in March.

The other workshops will be in Prague, London, and New York City. The Prague workshop will be held on August 21-25, and the other two will held at some point in the autumn and winter of this year. We cannot take registrations for these workshops until we finalize venue details.

Who usually attends your workshops?

We have a pretty interesting mix of participants at our trainings. We have around 20-25 participants per workshop, and among those between a third to a half come from private companies or the corporate world. Among those, we have plenty of information security researchers, corporate security investigators, lawyers, due diligence experts, and other professions. Journalists are the next-most popular profession for our workshops (around a fourth or third of participants), and then we have a mix of human rights/NGO researchers, academics and students, and even retirees just curious about what this whole OSINT thing is all about.