BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
X-WR-CALNAME:dataharvest26
X-WR-CALDESC:Event Calendar
METHOD:PUBLISH
CALSCALE:GREGORIAN
PRODID:-//Sched.com Dataharvest 2026 - the European Investigative Journalism Conference//EN
X-WR-TIMEZONE:UTC
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260528T073000Z
DTEND:20260528T080000Z
SUMMARY:Check-in and coffee
DESCRIPTION:Come to the front hall and Media Cafe (large space in the lobby) to get your coffee!
CATEGORIES:ORGANISATIONAL
LOCATION:Mediaforum\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:f864c2fb7959ff651b32a1dab8747eb3
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/f864c2fb7959ff651b32a1dab8747eb3
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260528T080000Z
DTEND:20260528T100000Z
SUMMARY:Masterclass: Get satellite imagery to tell you what on earth is going on! Using code and other tools (Masterclass ticket needed)
DESCRIPTION:A separate ticket is required to attend this masterclass. If you already have a conference ticket and would like to attend but haven't yet purchased a masterclass ticket\, please contact us at info@dataharvest.eu\n\nHeat waves in Europe are increasing in frequency and intensity. People and economies are under pressure: extreme heat is costly for agriculture and deadly for people. At the same time\, floods are among the most frequent and damaging natural disasters in Europe – yet understanding their true impact remains difficult.\n \n In this session\, participants will learn the skills necessary to make use of satellite images to analyse extreme heat or to systematically track flood damage. After a morning introduction to the topic\, tools\, and data/satellite imagery sources\, participants will spend the afternoon working on one of two hands-on tracks:\n \n Track 1: Flooding\n \n Participants will learn how to use Copernicus Emergency Management Service (EMS) to retrieve flood data manually and via the Copernicus EMS API\, clean and structure the data\, and calculate flood extent and impact across agriculture\, infrastructure\, ecosystems\, and population areas. They will learn how to link impacted areas to the EU’s statistical regions (using NUTS classifications).\n \n Track 2: Extreme heat\n \n Participants will learn to navigate USGS Earth Explorer to find and download imagery for land surface temperature (LST) analysis. Using R for spatial analysis\, they’ll identify which neighborhoods in their region are most affected by heat. They will also use auxiliary data to examine the impact of different land types on heat. Participants are welcome to bring their own socioeconomic or location data (e.g.\, nursing homes\, kindergartens) for investigation.\n \n We will assume you have some experience with data in spreadsheets\, but you do not need any prior knowledge of coding in R or Python or satellite imagery. You will leave with the skills (and the data!) needed to work on a hyper-local or national stories about the effects of extreme heat and flooding. These methodologies will also help you create a blueprint for other investigations\, which would make good use of satellite imagery.\n \n Key skills learned:\n \n Learn the basics of R (navigating RStudio\, importing data\, tidyverse\, ggplot) and Python (using the pandas library to load\, filter\, and analyze data\, combine datasets\, and export your results)\;\n \n Basics of geodata (file types\, projections\, NUTS system)\;\n \n Where to access free\, high-quality satellite imagery\, and common limitations of using it in investigations \n \n Navigating satellite imagery portals and databases for natural disasters (depends on the choice of Copernicus EMS or Landsat).
CATEGORIES:DATA SKILLS
LOCATION:3.05\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:e2f7543332f09f20aa1d3e77b963f8f9
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/e2f7543332f09f20aa1d3e77b963f8f9
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260528T080000Z
DTEND:20260528T100000Z
SUMMARY:Masterclass: From ships to satellites: Investigating fossil fuel supply chains (Masterclass ticket needed)
DESCRIPTION:A separate ticket is required to attend this masterclass. If you already have a conference ticket and would like to attend but haven't yet purchased a masterclass ticket\, please contact us at info@dataharvest.eu\n\nThis full-day session with Data Desk’s Sam Leon and Louis Goddard teaches cutting-edge techniques for illuminating fossil fuel supply chains and energy infrastructure projects. Using AIS and aviation data\, customs datasets\, satellite imagery\, and more\, participants uncover not only the international flow of oil and gas but also the movement of equipment\, materials\, and workers during the construction of major fossil fuel projects. Real investigative exercises help translate these tools into actionable reporting.
CATEGORIES:INVESTIGATIVE METHOD
LOCATION:Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:29695ca1da69c1252f81207de2e1609d
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/29695ca1da69c1252f81207de2e1609d
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260528T080000Z
DTEND:20260528T100000Z
SUMMARY:Masterclass: How to investigate the EU (Masterclass ticket needed)
DESCRIPTION:A separate ticket is required to attend this masterclass. If you already have a conference ticket and would like to attend but haven't yet purchased a masterclass ticket\, please contact us at info@dataharvest.eu\n\nThe European Union institutional system is notoriously complex\, and investigating it might prove to be a headache – at least if you don’t know where to look. In this Masterclass\, we aim to provide you with a number of very practical tips and tools to research what is cooking inside the European Commission\, the EU Parliament\, the Council of Member States\, and even less-known but still powerful Court of Justice of the EU.\n \n We will go over a number of public tools – the EU lobbyists register\, the Court of Justice database\, and the legislative documents available on the institutions’ websites – and will also discuss the different types of sources that could allow you to go much beyond the public realm.\n \n We will\, in parallel\, discuss how to request documents from those institutions. The sessions will have a few exercises to ensure that every tip is ready to use. At the end of the Masterclass\, you will be equipped to navigate the European institutional labyrinth and the microcosm surrounding it. On top of that\, we will provide you with written material that you can use afterwards in your reporting. \n \n The masterclass is not just for those wishing to report from and on Brussels\, but for every journalist who could benefit from knowing where to find information about the EU.
CATEGORIES:INVESTIGATIVE METHOD
LOCATION:1.14\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:8e1da02ecb2741e8f27a958313b48482
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/8e1da02ecb2741e8f27a958313b48482
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260528T100000Z
DTEND:20260528T110000Z
SUMMARY:Lunch
DESCRIPTION:Lunch will be served in the Mediaforum (ground floor\, lobby area)&nbsp\;
CATEGORIES:ORGANISATIONAL
LOCATION:Mediaforum\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:335bd87745ecb09543a85ed9a6a07bc2
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/335bd87745ecb09543a85ed9a6a07bc2
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260528T110000Z
DTEND:20260528T130000Z
SUMMARY:Masterclass: Get satellite imagery to tell you what on earth is going on! Using code and other tools (Masterclass ticket needed)
DESCRIPTION:A separate ticket is required to attend this masterclass. If you already have a conference ticket and would like to attend but haven't yet purchased a masterclass ticket\, please contact us at info@dataharvest.eu\n\nHeat waves in Europe are increasing in frequency and intensity. People and economies are under pressure: extreme heat is costly for agriculture and deadly for people. At the same time\, floods are among the most frequent and damaging natural disasters in Europe – yet understanding their true impact remains difficult.\n \n In this session\, participants will learn the skills necessary to make use of satellite images to analyse extreme heat or to systematically track flood damage. After a morning introduction to the topic\, tools\, and data/satellite imagery sources\, participants will spend the afternoon working on one of two hands-on tracks:\n \n Track 1: Flooding\n \n Participants will learn how to use Copernicus Emergency Management Service (EMS) to retrieve flood data manually and via the Copernicus EMS API\, clean and structure the data\, and calculate flood extent and impact across agriculture\, infrastructure\, ecosystems\, and population areas. They will learn how to link impacted areas to the EU’s statistical regions (using NUTS classifications).\n \n Track 2: Extreme heat\n \n Participants will learn to navigate USGS Earth Explorer to find and download imagery for land surface temperature (LST) analysis. Using R for spatial analysis\, they’ll identify which neighborhoods in their region are most affected by heat. They will also use auxiliary data to examine the impact of different land types on heat. Participants are welcome to bring their own socioeconomic or location data (e.g.\, nursing homes\, kindergartens) for investigation.\n \n We will assume you have some experience with data in spreadsheets\, but you do not need any prior knowledge of coding in R or Python or satellite imagery. You will leave with the skills (and the data!) needed to work on a hyper-local or national stories about the effects of extreme heat and flooding. These methodologies will also help you create a blueprint for other investigations\, which would make good use of satellite imagery.\n \n Key skills learned:\n \n Learn the basics of R (navigating RStudio\, importing data\, tidyverse\, ggplot) and Python (using the pandas library to load\, filter\, and analyze data\, combine datasets\, and export your results)\;\n \n Basics of geodata (file types\, projections\, NUTS system)\;\n \n Where to access free\, high-quality satellite imagery\, and common limitations of using it in investigations \n \n Navigating satellite imagery portals and databases for natural disasters (depends on the choice of Copernicus EMS or Landsat).
CATEGORIES:DATA SKILLS
LOCATION:3.05\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:35d452af19d882c471b0b6af5321b123
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/35d452af19d882c471b0b6af5321b123
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260528T110000Z
DTEND:20260528T130000Z
SUMMARY:Masterclass: From ships to satellites: Investigating fossil fuel supply chains (Masterclass ticket needed)
DESCRIPTION:A separate ticket is required to attend this masterclass. If you already have a conference ticket and would like to attend but haven't yet purchased a masterclass ticket\, please contact us at info@dataharvest.eu\n\nThis full-day session with Data Desk’s Sam Leon and Louis Goddard teaches cutting-edge techniques for illuminating fossil fuel supply chains and energy infrastructure projects. Using AIS and aviation data\, customs datasets\, satellite imagery\, and more\, participants uncover not only the international flow of oil and gas but also the movement of equipment\, materials\, and workers during the construction of major fossil fuel projects. Real investigative exercises help translate these tools into actionable reporting.
CATEGORIES:INVESTIGATIVE METHOD
LOCATION:3.02\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:ce8a933313768506a5e4fb829e9d9d3f
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/ce8a933313768506a5e4fb829e9d9d3f
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260528T110000Z
DTEND:20260528T130000Z
SUMMARY:Masterclass: How to investigate the EU (Masterclass ticket needed)
DESCRIPTION:A separate ticket is required to attend this masterclass. If you already have a conference ticket and would like to attend but haven't yet purchased a masterclass ticket\, please contact us at info@dataharvest.eu\n\nThe European Union institutional system is notoriously complex\, and investigating it might prove to be a headache – at least if you don’t know where to look. In this Masterclass\, we aim to provide you with a number of very practical tips and tools to research what is cooking inside the European Commission\, the EU Parliament\, the Council of Member States\, and even less-known but still powerful Court of Justice of the EU.\n \n We will go over a number of public tools – the EU lobbyists register\, the Court of Justice database\, and the legislative documents available on the institutions’ websites – and will also discuss the different types of sources that could allow you to go much beyond the public realm.\n \n We will\, in parallel\, discuss how to request documents from those institutions. The sessions will have a few exercises to ensure that every tip is ready to use. At the end of the Masterclass\, you will be equipped to navigate the European institutional labyrinth and the microcosm surrounding it. On top of that\, we will provide you with written material that you can use afterwards in your reporting. \n \n The masterclass is not just for those wishing to report from and on Brussels\, but for every journalist who could benefit from knowing where to find information about the EU.
CATEGORIES:INVESTIGATIVE METHOD
LOCATION:1.14\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:c9266c9b2dc07fb0b448a87e7e8dac69
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/c9266c9b2dc07fb0b448a87e7e8dac69
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260528T130000Z
DTEND:20260528T133000Z
SUMMARY:Coffee break
DESCRIPTION:Coffee will be served in the Mediaforum (ground floor\, lobby area) and on the third floor.
CATEGORIES:ORGANISATIONAL
LOCATION:Mediaforum\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:cde479d4e73801ac696d6b7bc6ecc5a2
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/cde479d4e73801ac696d6b7bc6ecc5a2
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260528T133000Z
DTEND:20260528T150000Z
SUMMARY:Masterclass: Get satellite imagery to tell you what on earth is going on! Using code and other tools (Masterclass ticket needed)
DESCRIPTION:A separate ticket is required to attend this masterclass. If you already have a conference ticket and would like to attend but haven't yet purchased a masterclass ticket\, please contact us at info@dataharvest.eu\n\nHeat waves in Europe are increasing in frequency and intensity. People and economies are under pressure: extreme heat is costly for agriculture and deadly for people. At the same time\, floods are among the most frequent and damaging natural disasters in Europe – yet understanding their true impact remains difficult.\n \n In this session\, participants will learn the skills necessary to make use of satellite images to analyse extreme heat or to systematically track flood damage. After a morning introduction to the topic\, tools\, and data/satellite imagery sources\, participants will spend the afternoon working on one of two hands-on tracks:\n \n Track 1: Flooding\n \n Participants will learn how to use Copernicus Emergency Management Service (EMS) to retrieve flood data manually and via the Copernicus EMS API\, clean and structure the data\, and calculate flood extent and impact across agriculture\, infrastructure\, ecosystems\, and population areas. They will learn how to link impacted areas to the EU’s statistical regions (using NUTS classifications).\n \n Track 2: Extreme heat\n \n Participants will learn to navigate USGS Earth Explorer to find and download imagery for land surface temperature (LST) analysis. Using R for spatial analysis\, they’ll identify which neighborhoods in their region are most affected by heat. They will also use auxiliary data to examine the impact of different land types on heat. Participants are welcome to bring their own socioeconomic or location data (e.g.\, nursing homes\, kindergartens) for investigation.\n \n We will assume you have some experience with data in spreadsheets\, but you do not need any prior knowledge of coding in R or Python or satellite imagery. You will leave with the skills (and the data!) needed to work on a hyper-local or national stories about the effects of extreme heat and flooding. These methodologies will also help you create a blueprint for other investigations\, which would make good use of satellite imagery.\n \n Key skills learned:\n \n Learn the basics of R (navigating RStudio\, importing data\, tidyverse\, ggplot) and Python (using the pandas library to load\, filter\, and analyze data\, combine datasets\, and export your results)\;\n \n Basics of geodata (file types\, projections\, NUTS system)\;\n \n Where to access free\, high-quality satellite imagery\, and common limitations of using it in investigations \n \n Navigating satellite imagery portals and databases for natural disasters (depends on the choice of Copernicus EMS or Landsat).
CATEGORIES:DATA SKILLS
LOCATION:3.05\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:93561749bdbd6e366c7193cf69ff6a5d
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/93561749bdbd6e366c7193cf69ff6a5d
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260528T133000Z
DTEND:20260528T134500Z
SUMMARY:Masterclass: From ships to satellites: Investigating fossil fuel supply chains (Masterclass ticket needed)
DESCRIPTION:A separate ticket is required to attend this masterclass. If you already have a conference ticket and would like to attend but haven't yet purchased a masterclass ticket\, please contact us at info@dataharvest.eu\n\nThis full-day session with Data Desk’s Sam Leon and Louis Goddard teaches cutting-edge techniques for illuminating fossil fuel supply chains and energy infrastructure projects. Using AIS and aviation data\, customs datasets\, satellite imagery\, and more\, participants uncover not only the international flow of oil and gas but also the movement of equipment\, materials\, and workers during the construction of major fossil fuel projects. Real investigative exercises help translate these tools into actionable reporting.
CATEGORIES:INVESTIGATIVE METHOD
LOCATION:3.02\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:a05c4759c0a2cec1f802bd2d033dac59
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/a05c4759c0a2cec1f802bd2d033dac59
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260528T133000Z
DTEND:20260528T150000Z
SUMMARY:Masterclass: How to investigate the EU (Masterclass ticket needed)
DESCRIPTION:A separate ticket is required to attend this masterclass. If you already have a conference ticket and would like to attend but haven't yet purchased a masterclass ticket\, please contact us at info@dataharvest.eu\n\nThe European Union institutional system is notoriously complex\, and investigating it might prove to be a headache – at least if you don’t know where to look. In this Masterclass\, we aim to provide you with a number of very practical tips and tools to research what is cooking inside the European Commission\, the EU Parliament\, the Council of Member States\, and even less-known but still powerful Court of Justice of the EU.\n \n We will go over a number of public tools – the EU lobbyists register\, the Court of Justice database\, and the legislative documents available on the institutions’ websites – and will also discuss the different types of sources that could allow you to go much beyond the public realm.\n \n We will\, in parallel\, discuss how to request documents from those institutions. The sessions will have a few exercises to ensure that every tip is ready to use. At the end of the Masterclass\, you will be equipped to navigate the European institutional labyrinth and the microcosm surrounding it. On top of that\, we will provide you with written material that you can use afterwards in your reporting. \n \n The masterclass is not just for those wishing to report from and on Brussels\, but for every journalist who could benefit from knowing where to find information about the EU.
CATEGORIES:INVESTIGATIVE METHOD
LOCATION:1.14\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:5bf645973ce2b9f7464f867db5909ac2
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/5bf645973ce2b9f7464f867db5909ac2
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260529T070000Z
DTEND:20260529T080000Z
SUMMARY:Check-in and Coffee
DESCRIPTION:Register for the conference\, pick your name tag\, and get a coffee or tea in the mediaforum (ground floor\, behind the check-in desk)
CATEGORIES:ORGANISATIONAL
LOCATION:Mediaforum\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:0c759d14bbafd843c35f04b77f31b609
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/0c759d14bbafd843c35f04b77f31b609
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260529T080000Z
DTEND:20260529T083000Z
SUMMARY:Opening of the conference
DESCRIPTION:The opening of the conference will take place in the Aula Hanswijk (Z1.13\, on the first floor)\, and will be streamed into the Aula Donche (Z1.15\, first floor).
CATEGORIES:ORGANISATIONAL
LOCATION:Z1.13 - Aula Hanswijk\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:9c1abd3cbbdc77f10bc0187cc1a05cd6
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/9c1abd3cbbdc77f10bc0187cc1a05cd6
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260529T083000Z
DTEND:20260529T093000Z
SUMMARY:Networking welcome
DESCRIPTION:Networking will take place all over the building. To join a group\, please attend the opening of the conference. Don't worry & don't be shy\, we make it very lowkey.
CATEGORIES:NETWORKING
LOCATION:Mediaforum\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:a437c9dc91f9b63361adb86d5aecdedc
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/a437c9dc91f9b63361adb86d5aecdedc
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260529T093000Z
DTEND:20260529T104500Z
SUMMARY:Investigating CO2 emissions fraud by reverse-engineering publicly reported data
DESCRIPTION:This session will introduce the regulatory framework of the EU emission trading systems (EU ETS) and its potentially serious shortcomings. Participants will learn the basics of anomaly analysis and how to reverse-engineer CO2 ‘emission factors’ from various European public databases. The speakers will also explore other potential investigation pathways based on their learnings - including identifying suspicious verifiers\, finding expert sources\, and using environmental FOIs to obtain company emission reports.\n\nThe basis of this panel is a series of investigations published between 2021 and 2025 by OCCRP\, IRPI\, Investigace.cz\, and RISE Project. To learn more\, you can go here: https://www.journalismfund.eu/carbon-deceit-ets&nbsp\;
CATEGORIES:CLIMATE/ENVIRONMENT
LOCATION:2.02\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:f0e433eb3cf1711c46b2d37710e7f4ea
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/f0e433eb3cf1711c46b2d37710e7f4ea
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260529T093000Z
DTEND:20260529T104500Z
SUMMARY:Networking session: Reporting on animal rights and welfare
DESCRIPTION:TBC
CATEGORIES:CLIMATE/ENVIRONMENT
LOCATION:Z2.01 - Mediadrôme\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:c445ecbab4ed519568ee25e4f04ccd65
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/c445ecbab4ed519568ee25e4f04ccd65
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260529T093000Z
DTEND:20260529T104500Z
SUMMARY:Oh wow\, that has changed! – Creating powerful climate stories from old guide books
DESCRIPTION:Comparing the size of glacier 100 years ago to today is a strong message on the impact of climate change without many words. This idea – to visualize gradual changes by contrasting the world some decades ago with today – can be a powerful way to engage new audiences for climate stories. Sources for this kind of structural analysis are often available but untapped: Old guide books\, maps and other materials existing only in print.\n \nThrough an example on the industrialization of ski resorts\, we will show how old guide books and other analog materials can be a treasure trove for climate journalists and how they can use it efficiently\, even if the amount of paper seems intimidating.\n \n In the session we will discuss potential story leads and which guide books (or similar) to look out for. In the second part\, we will discuss strategies and tools to extract information and organize data\, and tools that might be useful for extraction. We will also demonstrate how AI tools might help\, where manual work is needed and which non-AI tools might speed up the work\, even if you don’t consider yourself a data journalist.
CATEGORIES:CLIMATE/ENVIRONMENT
LOCATION:3.09\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:4e59c07ab047aa6fdcaeb204334fb47f
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/4e59c07ab047aa6fdcaeb204334fb47f
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260529T093000Z
DTEND:20260529T104500Z
SUMMARY:Build web scrapers with AI for non-coding journalists
DESCRIPTION:Scraping data from the Internet has become a key skill for many investigations and reporting projects that rely on data. Building custom web scrapers used to require solid coding skills but in two recent environmental investigations supported by the Pulitzer Center\, we used Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT\, Google Gemini\, or Claude to help us build scrapers for online content without much coding skills. This hands-on workshop will teach you how to inspect a website and choose a scraping strategy. Then it will demonstrate\, step-by-step\, how to build web scrapers that have been used in the investigations. LLM prompts will be shared and participants can follow along to create their first custom web scraper.\n\nAfter attending you will understand website structure for scraping and be able to use LLMs to build basic web scrapers.\n\nParticipants should come with their own laptops\, register a free account on any of the main LLMs (e.g. ChatGPT\, Google Gemini\, Claude) and have a free Google Colab account at colab.research.google.com.\n\nNo coding skill is required but basic familiarity with LLMs is recommended.
CATEGORIES:DATA SKILLS
LOCATION:3.02\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:c361b4cb1285cd77c1f3541700783caf
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/c361b4cb1285cd77c1f3541700783caf
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260529T093000Z
DTEND:20260529T104500Z
SUMMARY:How to extract Persons\, Names and Locations from research material – and where AI fails to do it
DESCRIPTION:Processing natural language is seen as the task that artificial intelligence is most adept at. However\, as journalists and researchers\, we need our technologies to be explainable\, understandable\, and deterministic. Because of this\, not all artificial intelligence algorithms are well-suited for our work. And\, when every company promises that their AI software is extraordinary\, it's difficult to distinguish the empty promises from what the technology can actually do. Working on OpenAleph\, an open-source tool for investigative journalism\, has taught us a lot about processing natural language. We extract names of people and companies from raw text. We try to infer the language a text is written in. The names of places\, cities\, and countries are crucial to us\, in order to situate data geographically. All of this is heavily reliant on algorithms. But not all algorithms are as good as getting us what we want! \n\nIn this session\, we'll show you what works and what doesn't. Everything we demonstrate can be used independently of OpenAleph\, and integrated into your own workflows. Some machine learning algorithms are excellent at getting us more insights from our data. In addition to this\, data that we already have\, or public data\, can be harnessed to help us identify names of people and places\, just based on similarity - no AI required! \n\nFinally\, we'll discuss how these approaches compare to using large language models and generative AI. This session is half teaching and discussing common solutions\, half workshop. For the workshop part\, bring a laptop running Python if possible.
CATEGORIES:DATA SKILLS
LOCATION:3.13\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:354d47fb60a00f6190b275ea4d68bc59
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/354d47fb60a00f6190b275ea4d68bc59
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260529T093000Z
DTEND:20260529T104500Z
SUMMARY:Your first investigative data pipeline with agentic AI
DESCRIPTION:Every investigative journalist has faced the same bottleneck. What would I find if I could check all of them: all the company registrations\, all the addresses\, all the permits? Until recently\, answering that question required weeks of scripting. In this session\, we introduce a faster way: directing an AI coding agent to build investigative data pipelines on demand. Participants will direct an agent to pull data from a public source\, clean it\, and turn it into an interactive visualization\, all without writing code manually. The approach is applicable to a range of investigative beats\, from financial crime and corruption to environmental accountability and lobbying networks. \n\nTo follow along\, participants should have a basic understanding of web technologies\, but no programming experience is needed. After attending this session\, participants will be able to direct an AI coding agent to build a data pipeline\, from raw data to interactive visualization\, and apply this methodology to their own investigative questions. Participants should have a laptop with a modern web browser. We will provide API keys and access credentials during the session. Detailed setup instructions will be shared via a GitHub repository before the workshop.
CATEGORIES:DATA SKILLS
LOCATION:3.05\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:c7bfb2197e49567cfc6cfc47ef8286a2
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/c7bfb2197e49567cfc6cfc47ef8286a2
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260529T093000Z
DTEND:20260529T104500Z
SUMMARY:How to budget (almost) anything
DESCRIPTION:In this session\, we'll cover budgets in all shapes and sizes — including investigation budgets\, project grants\, EU grants\, and organisational budgets as a whole. We'll provide you with tools to translate your ideas into budgets to present to donors\, and to explore different financial scenarios. We will also discuss how to improve your financial reporting and what you need to know about financial statements. We'll look at how to budget for your organisation when there is little core funding and lots of project funding\, mistakes to avoid\, and how to juggle reporting needs. This aims to be a candid\, hands-on session where we can help each other and learn together — so be ready to bring your questions and ideas!
CATEGORIES:ENTREPRENEURIAL
LOCATION:2.04\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:81ca17f65aca9eb46acee491e2775e6b
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/81ca17f65aca9eb46acee491e2775e6b
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260529T093000Z
DTEND:20260529T104500Z
SUMMARY:Israel Files: Inside a legal war machine of impunity
DESCRIPTION:A leak of several million emails from the Israeli Ministry of Justice revealed a long-running lawfare operation aimed at shielding Israeli policies toward Palestinians from legal scrutiny in international and European courts\, while also seeking to criminalize protest and advocacy against Israeli human rights violations. Spanning nearly 15 years and involving more than a dozen European countries\, the emails are written mainly in Hebrew and show how several European countries collaborated with Israel to ensure impunity for its illegal occupation\, paving the way to future war crimes. Media in Israel-Palestine are barred from reporting on the leak due to a gag order\, making international collaboration essential.&nbsp\;The leaked collection of MoJ documents have been indexed and made searchable for the public in the Library of Leaks by the nonprofit whistleblower site Distributed Denial of Secrets (DDoS).\n \n This session presents how an independent journalist\, working with European Investigative Collaborations (EIC) and multiple European newsrooms\, analysed and reported on the leak using straightforward\, accessible methods. The investigation relied primarily on close reading\, systematic memo-writing\, manual timeline construction\, and country-by-country mapping of key actors and legal strategies\, complemented by cross-referencing the emails with publicly available records.\n \n The talk will share practical lessons on making sense of large email leaks in multilingual contexts\, combining leaked material with open-source and public-domain data\, coordinating cross-border reporting under legal constraints\, and maintaining accuracy through repeated verification and collaborative review.
CATEGORIES:INSTANT INSPIRATION
LOCATION:1.16\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:a7544a551de19e7d2e729d3032afacab
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/a7544a551de19e7d2e729d3032afacab
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260529T093000Z
DTEND:20260529T104500Z
SUMMARY:A method for investigating private equity-backed companies at a large scale
DESCRIPTION:Over the past three years\, the Guardian Data Projects team has revealed how private equity firms have increased their share in the childcare sector as well as in the provision of children’s care homes in England. We have also investigated how taxpayers’ money for services that provide support for rape and sexual assault victims ends up in private equity companies. And we have estimated that the UK government has spent billions of pounds in companies that are owned by a private equity group. \n\nAttendees to this session will learn about two methodologies the Guardian built to track down the involvement of private equity firms in the country’s economy and specific sectors. They will also learn about specific resources to find out company data\, as well as understand how the Guardian built an automated system to analyse thousands of company records to find the ultimate controlling party for each company group. We will also show how an LLM helped to identify companies owned by a private equity firm\, as well as the limitations of using this type of technique.
CATEGORIES:INVESTIGATIVE METHOD
LOCATION:Z1.13 - Aula Hanswijk\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:329e9ea206ca5a31f9d9179f9a928e13
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/329e9ea206ca5a31f9d9179f9a928e13
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260529T093000Z
DTEND:20260529T104500Z
SUMMARY:OSINT 101: The latest tools\, tricks & tactics
DESCRIPTION:Drawing on real cross-border investigations from OCCRP's Research & Data team\, this session will share the tools\, techniques\, and workflows the team relies on daily to support hundreds of journalists around the world. From geolocating images and tracking assets to social media investigations and smart browser hacks\, this session will offer a practical\, field-tested OSINT toolkit.\n \n With shrinking newsroom budgets and a constant stream of "must-have" tools\, it's harder than ever for journalists to know what OSINT tools might actually be worth using or paying for. This session cuts through the noise and focuses on what works right now.\n \n Whether conference attendees are new to open-source research or looking for a sharp refresher\, they will leave with concrete skills\, trusted tools\, and time-saving methods they can immediately apply to their own investigations.
CATEGORIES:INVESTIGATIVE METHOD
LOCATION:Z1.15 - Aula Donche\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:4bbf8a3303eee0635e52c7de9cf9662a
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/4bbf8a3303eee0635e52c7de9cf9662a
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260529T093000Z
DTEND:20260529T104500Z
SUMMARY:How we built Europe's most comprehensive arms export database - and how you too can find stories in there
DESCRIPTION:In 2014\, we decided to request a comprehensive dataset from the Swiss state: We asked for a detailed overview of all granted export licenses of arms and military goods. Over ten years later\, we run the most comprehensive arms exports database in a European country based on the documents received: www.rüstungsreport.ch. In our workshop\, we take participants on a journey of investigative research\, legal struggles\, methods\, and outcomes.\n\n We'll explain how we managed to create a database of all arms export licenses obtained for armaments and surveillance equipment from Swiss-based companies around the world. We'll take you through a lengthy access process via freedom of information requests. The information was obtained only after a long legal battle against the Swiss state\, which we won before the highest Swiss court. We'll also show how we built a database\, organised the data\, and how this became a tool of transparency\, as we kept requesting the data and updating the database every year. Finally\, we will showcase stories that came out of the database\, uncovering critical company deals and state practices\, and their potential for cross-border stories. We'll guide the participants through our investigations into the use of PC-12 from the company Pilatus in the US war in Afghanistan. And how the toothless Swiss export controls in the dual-use sector\, coupled with the strong lobbying of the arms industry\, made it possible for the Russian war machine to rely on Swiss high-tech. \n\nThis session will enable the participants to adapt our methodology to their countries of interest and give them ideas for further investigations into the defence industry. We will hand out a reader with the most important learnings and a template of the freedom of information request we made.
CATEGORIES:RIGHT TO INFORMATION/TRANSPARENCY
LOCATION:3.04\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:8f655a283cb8d248b8ee8ac73bd487fb
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/8f655a283cb8d248b8ee8ac73bd487fb
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260529T093000Z
DTEND:20260529T104500Z
SUMMARY:Upholding transparency – the right to access EU documents in practice
DESCRIPTION:The European Union promises openness in its decision-making. But\, despite this commitment\, the European Commission and the Member States recently blocked transparency around key decisions on public spending and legislative proposals. Moreover\, the Commission tightened its internal rules to limit freedom of information. These obstacles to transparency have hampered reporting on how the EU spent billions of euros of its post-COVID recovery fund and military aid for Ukraine. \n\nThe official veil of secrecy also restricts investigations into topics such as the EU's fight against Big Tech\, the rollback of environmental laws\, or human rights violations at the EU's external borders. \n\nHow can journalists push back against this reduction in transparency? This panel will discuss the mounting challenges for journalists covering the European Union\, and how to fight back against the rising tide of opaqueness.
CATEGORIES:RIGHT TO INFORMATION/TRANSPARENCY
LOCATION:1.04\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:cc73d737ca0102ad1521b50611ed3f3a
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/cc73d737ca0102ad1521b50611ed3f3a
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260529T093000Z
DTEND:20260529T104500Z
SUMMARY:Is there anybody listening? Creative formats to reach wider audiences
DESCRIPTION:Research shows that\, among audiences in Western countries\, news avoidance has been growing nonstop for the last decade. The result? Sometimes\, it feels that the main audience of our investigations is... other investigative journalists. While experts do use our research\, it seems that we are failing to reach generalist audiences and the wider public. \n One possibility to reach more diverse audiences is to present and disseminate our investigations in unconventional ways. \n\nIn this session\, we will talk about using creative formats to publish investigative journalism: from unusual digital publications to printed and material objects\, and live and in-person activities.\n\n Come to this session to discover different creative formats and real examples of investigations that used them\, as well as the lessons learnt. We will also present an online catalogue of creative formats\, and show how editors and journalists can use it in their work.
CATEGORIES:STORYTELLING
LOCATION:2.03\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:632fa1599e10f8a727828b635fdf5fb0
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/632fa1599e10f8a727828b635fdf5fb0
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260529T104500Z
DTEND:20260529T120000Z
SUMMARY:Lunch
DESCRIPTION:Lunch is served in Mediaforum on the ground floor (lobby area)\, and on the first floor (Z1.06 and Z1.07). Vegan food and special meals (gluten-free\, dairy-free\, and all allergies and special dietary requirements) are available on the first floor only.\n
CATEGORIES:ORGANISATIONAL
LOCATION:Mediaforum\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:aee316f2cff01d2f67c5ece75fe0d138
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/aee316f2cff01d2f67c5ece75fe0d138
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260529T120000Z
DTEND:20260529T131500Z
SUMMARY:Dirty shipping: How we investigated maritime pollution
DESCRIPTION:This session will focus on one of the most underreported actors in climate reporting: the billion-dollar shipping industry. We bring together two investigations into pollution from shipping to show how journalists can follow the environmental harm caused by this global industry.\n \nFrom illegal fuel practices in the North Sea to the hidden ecological costs of scrubber systems in the Mediterranean\, the session will focus on how maritime pollution remains largely unpunished and how the industry keeps on avoiding consequences.&nbsp\;The journalists will walk you through their methodologies\; combining OSINT\, data journalism\, and FOIA requests with scientific research and regulatory analysis. They will show you how to track emissions\, identify regulatory loopholes\, and connect datasets.\n\n The session also offers practical insights into building cross-border environmental investigations\, working with technical data\, and collaborating with scientists to uncover complex pollution systems. The journalists will discuss how a holistic approach —following pollutants across sectors and geographies— can reveal accountability gaps and expose the true environmental cost of global shipping.
CATEGORIES:CLIMATE/ENVIRONMENT
LOCATION:2.03\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:928bbd1884a1aa8b2f2247892e6fc683
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/928bbd1884a1aa8b2f2247892e6fc683
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260529T120000Z
DTEND:20260529T131500Z
SUMMARY:Investigating illicit fishing in the Mediterranean through open data
DESCRIPTION:Italian non-profit newsroom IRPI published a year-long investigation into the supply chain behind the famous red shrimp of Mazara del Vallo\, which is a premium 'Made in Italy' seafood product concealing a trail of illicit practices that threaten both marine ecosystems and market transparency. \n\nRed shrimp is harvested through deep-sea bottom trawling in the Central Mediterranean\, where a huge regulatory gap between EU fleets and largely unsupervised North African vessels has created a hotspot for overfishing and illegal transshipments. The investigation documents how Italian operators source shrimp caught by non-EU vessels through informal and often illegal channels\, using vessel tracking data\, ownership structures\, and Global Fishing Watch's open AIS database to identify suspicious transhipment operations and anomalous fishing patterns.\n\n The session will walk journalists through the methods\, datasets\, and investigative approaches behind the story -from detecting AIS signal shutdowns to mapping opaque supply chains- offering replicable tools for reporting on illegal fishing and environmental crimes in the Mediterranean and beyond.
CATEGORIES:CLIMATE/ENVIRONMENT
LOCATION:Z0.15\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:f1a02d10be894999964fa110ab1626ad
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/f1a02d10be894999964fa110ab1626ad
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260529T120000Z
DTEND:20260529T131500Z
SUMMARY:Inside the European Defence Fund: hidden decisions\, weak ethics\, and funding for an Israeli arms manufacturer
DESCRIPTION:This session will explain the methods behind an investigation into the European Defence Fund (EDF) that uncovered how structural weaknesses allowed Israel’s largest state-owned weapons manufacturer - directly involved in the war in Gaza- to receive millions in EU funding\, despite rules meant to support only European companies. The reporters will explain how they identified relevant projects and traced the flow of funds.\n \nThey will break down our data work (scraping the tenders portal and building a dataset) and guide you through how the EDF policy works\, its loopholes\, legal framework\, and how to work with the EU’s defence expenditure processes.\n \nIn today’s political environment of increasing militarisation\, where a huge share of EU funding is directed toward defence\, journalists need to learn how to access and analyse European public defence tender data\, understand the EDF tendering and decision-making process\, and see how European governments fund and benefit from defence projects.\n\nThis session will demonstrate how combining data work\, investigative reporting\, cross-border collaboration\, and legal analysis can uncover hidden practices\, reveal intentional gaps and inconsistencies that favour the arms industry over EU principles and international law.
CATEGORIES:CROSS-BORDER
LOCATION:Z0.10\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:3ea7c31fb5f2bc6f20be1cf4c5dfdbee
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/3ea7c31fb5f2bc6f20be1cf4c5dfdbee
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260529T120000Z
DTEND:20260529T131500Z
SUMMARY:Using data to expose violations of transgender rights
DESCRIPTION:Reporting on transgender people can be a minefield: official data is scarce\, public understanding is patchy\, and with their rights increasingly contested by politicians and commentators\, the community itself is often wary of journalists. \n\n Drawing on Investigate Europe’s project The Cruel Condition -published with Arte\, New Lines\, Taz\, and others- this session explores how laws across Europe pushed trans people toward sterilising surgeries over decades. It will outline how we compiled first-of-its-kind data to produce an unprecedented cross-border estimate\, and share practical insights on building trust with trans sources.\n\nWe will also look at other investigations using data to cover LGBT issues (e.g.\, on money flows to conservative groups)\, a topic quite often overlooked by data journalists\, to consider possible pathways for future investigations amid an intensifying backlash against LGBT rights in many parts of the world. We will look at other examples and invite you to discuss how to be creative with unusual\, and sometimes even non-existent\, datasets.
CATEGORIES:DATA JOURNALISM
LOCATION:2.02\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:5e5eefa0e469380fe4160775ba51ba18
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/5e5eefa0e469380fe4160775ba51ba18
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260529T120000Z
DTEND:20260529T131500Z
SUMMARY:Using LLMs in R to expand and categorise your datasets: the Ellmer package
DESCRIPTION:Large language models can do more than generate text – they can help clean and structure messy data files as well as enrich datasets. As LLMs increasingly become a useful tool for data journalists\, the Ellmer package is a useful resource for R users to easily work with LLMs. The Guardian data team has used the Ellmer R package to clean and organise thousands of emails from the Epstein files\, to investigate private equity firms in the United Kingdom\, and to classify recipients of climate finance.\n\n Using some of these examples\, attendees will learn when this package can be the perfect tool for your investigation\, which are the good practices when using LLMs\, how to connect to an API of an LLM\, how to write an efficient prompt\, how to submit the prompts in bulk using the batch function for structured data and how to evaluate your results and iterate for improvements.\n\n This is an advanced R session and we will assume that attendees have some prior knowledge of R.
CATEGORIES:DATA JOURNALISM
LOCATION:1.04\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:5d4c0c722ffcba16a695b06914e86a10
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/5d4c0c722ffcba16a695b06914e86a10
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260529T120000Z
DTEND:20260529T131500Z
SUMMARY:How to code anything
DESCRIPTION:Coding has long been a skill journalists wanted to learn to make their investigations more efficient and rigorous. The main barrier was the significant time investment required to develop that skill. But since large language models emerged\, we no longer need to write code ourselves. We do\, however\, still need to make informed choices when instructing an LLM to write code for us. Otherwise\, those choices get made for us by the model. \n\nHow do we instruct the LLM best? How can we understand a code? And how do we catch potential mistakes? No prior coding knowledge is required to attend this session. You'll learn a simple\, systematic approach to conversations\, context management\, and effective prompting that will help you to code anything. The participants should have an account with a large language model provider (ChatGPT\, Claude\, Gemini or similar).
CATEGORIES:DATA SKILLS
LOCATION:3.04\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:acdf0f5e0c0ec9cefd02b075341587fd
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/acdf0f5e0c0ec9cefd02b075341587fd
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260529T120000Z
DTEND:20260529T131500Z
SUMMARY:Scraping the unscrapable: advanced approaches to deal with complex sites and evade anti-scraping systems
DESCRIPTION:Scraped data can often be the backbone of an investigation\, but some websites are more difficult to scrape than others. This session will cover how to approach dealing with tricky sites\, including coping with captchas\, IP blocking\, and browser fingerprinting. We'll cover how to figure out what might be preventing you from scraping a site\, and what options you have to proceed\, with their pros\, cons\, and costs. \n\nThis is an advanced session aimed at people who already have experience of writing code to scrape websites and want to move up to the next level: participants will leave with an understanding of how to deal with hard-to-scrape websites\, plus the tradeoffs of different approaches. No tools are required to follow along\, just a web browser.
CATEGORIES:DATA SKILLS
LOCATION:3.02\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:950e14e277e0015a306837f95adcf00a
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/950e14e277e0015a306837f95adcf00a
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260529T120000Z
DTEND:20260529T131500Z
SUMMARY:Using the cloud and local LLMs to rapidly analyse thousands of audio/text documents
DESCRIPTION:In this session\, participants will take an archive of podcast episodes and other documents\, and set up some cloud infrastructure to analyse the files using open source transcription\, text extraction and generative AI tooling. The aim is to equip attendees with the skills to rapidly perform bulk operations on large troves of data by leveraging cloud platforms. By the end of the workshop participants will be have a pipeline that can answer questions like 'which podcast episodes have instances of greenwashing in them'. At The Guardian\, we have used these techniques in two recent investigations. When investigating the Free Birth Society we needed to perform analysis on hundreds of hours of audio files. When the Epstein files were released we had to try and extract meaning out of millions of unstructured text documents. By making use of simple cloud tools (queues and instances) we were able to process hundreds of files in parallel whilst retaining control of the data. \n\nParticipants should have some experience of using the command line. All cloud accounts will be provided. After attending this session\, participants will be able to use the cloud to quickly analyse large numbers of documents and media files. Participants using Windows could save some time by setting up WSL https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install
CATEGORIES:DATA SKILLS
LOCATION:3.05\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:f8e293d2593764025c436ff9ae32a348
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/f8e293d2593764025c436ff9ae32a348
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260529T120000Z
DTEND:20260529T131500Z
SUMMARY:Finding the bad guys
DESCRIPTION:In almost all research\, we need to uncover information about given individuals: criminals\, extremists\, corrupt public officials. This workshop focuses on identifying the players in a nasty game\, as well as people who can provide valuable information as sources. It delves into investigating their social media accounts\, their addresses\, and their networks. Details they aim to keep hidden but often fail to. \n\nWe will provide strategies\, tools and tricks for finding people online. What can email addresses\, social media profiles and telephone numbers reveal about a person? How can data leaks\, Google reviews\, and even apps like Strava offer insights for research? And what do the deceased leave behind? We go beyond abstract methods and present real-world investigation cases: Learn how an investigation can start with nothing more than a name – and end with ringing someone’s doorbell. \n\nThe examples include investigations into neo-Nazis and other extremists\, police officers and unpeaceful UN peacekeepers\, criminal divers\, and Secret Service agents kidnapping people.
CATEGORIES:INVESTIGATIVE METHOD
LOCATION:0.10\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:9d7df912ea53e82387743a0133ef448f
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/9d7df912ea53e82387743a0133ef448f
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260529T120000Z
DTEND:20260529T131500Z
SUMMARY:Investigating sound: Where nobody looks\, but everyone should listen
DESCRIPTION:Everyone listens to audio all the time\, yet investigators rarely think of it. This session introduces audio forensics as an often-overlooked OSINT skill. We’ll explore how frequencies\, compression\, spectrograms\, and a touch of physics can be used to authenticate media\, detect edits\, determine locations\, and even prove war crimes. Participants will learn how to calculate a shooter’s distance using bullet speed and the speed of sound\, analyse electrical network frequencies\, and recognise platform-specific compression. No prior experience in OSINT or extensive knowledge of audio is required — this session is suitable for beginners.
CATEGORIES:INVESTIGATIVE METHOD
LOCATION:Z1.13 - Aula Hanswijk\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:5208ee7764b75b89e6d31053997cc49c
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/5208ee7764b75b89e6d31053997cc49c
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260529T120000Z
DTEND:20260529T131500Z
SUMMARY:There’s more to life than metadata – using analogue photos & archival documents in your investigations
DESCRIPTION:Public archives all over the continent are full of historical stories waiting to be told. From armed conflict and genocide to colonialism or the environment\, there are enough subjects that are still very relevant for investigative journalism.\n \nThis session will focus on the challenges and\, more importantly\, the possibilities of working with on-paper archives and analogue photographs. Is it possible to geolocate old prints without metadata or StreetView? Are there any old-school tricks to verify images? And what about AI slop that disguises itself as historical material?\n\n We'll also discuss the importance of historical investigative work\, possible subject areas\, and useful tools and resources. The session is meant to inspire investigative journalists to dive headfirst into public archives and find relevant stories using their existing skills.
CATEGORIES:INVESTIGATIVE METHOD
LOCATION:Z1.15 - Aula Donche\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:f95d4f7cf8ff07a588c60a5f495efc11
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/f95d4f7cf8ff07a588c60a5f495efc11
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260529T120000Z
DTEND:20260529T131500Z
SUMMARY:75\,000 meetings\, 1\,800 side jobs: Investigating policy capture and conflicts of interest with Integrity Watch EU database
DESCRIPTION:Did you know: since July 2024\, Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) have disclosed over 55\,000 meetings with lobbyists and collectively declared more than 1\,800 side jobs\, including roles linked to registered EU lobby organisations? Or that of the over 23\,000 lobby meetings disclosed by the European Commission\, only less than one in five was held with civil society organisations? This expanding body of public data enables systematic analysis of lobbying exposure\, conflicts of interest\, and undue influence risks in EU decision-making\, and has become a key resource for investigative reporting to break stories across the EU. \n\nDuring this session\, we will examine the practical investigative applications of Integrity Watch EU (IW EU)\, a near real-time transparency and data aggregation platform on the interactions between the private sector and over 2000 EU officials. IW EU collates all available data on MEP and European Commission lobby meetings\, MEP side activities\, and lobbyists registered on the EU’s Transparency Register. It is part of the wider IW eco-system of platforms\, deployed in 23 European countries\, enabling cross-border linkages with national integrity data such as political donations\, lobby registers\, or public procurement procedures. \n\nParticipants will receive a technical introduction to the new real-time monitoring features of IW EU\, including its underlying data sources\, legal disclosure frameworks\, and analytical functionalities. We will go hands-on to learn how data sets can be queried\, cross-referenced\, and contextualised for investigative purposes. This session is suitable for beginners\, and no data journalism knowledge is required.
CATEGORIES:RIGHT TO INFORMATION/TRANSPARENCY
LOCATION:3.09\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:e00c32993bc51a8077c57fea1a53df8e
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/e00c32993bc51a8077c57fea1a53df8e
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260529T120000Z
DTEND:20260529T131500Z
SUMMARY:Unmasking Palantir's Business activities with 59 FOIA requests: A Deep Dive into Corporate Influence and National Risk
DESCRIPTION:In this hands-on workshop\, we will unpack our year-long collaborative investigation into the US data-analytics company Palantir Technologies in Switzerland. We uncovered how the tech giant tried over multiple years to sell its products to various Swiss government institutions and how it failed nearly a dozen times.\n\nAt first\, our written requests to the authorities all received the same answer: "We have no contracts with Palantir." We went on to extensively FOIA the authorities and found traces of just how hard the company had tried to wriggle its way into Swiss administration\, including the Armed Forces. Documents from 59 FOIA requests across 41 federal offices\, combined with additional research\, exposed the corporate sales playbook of one of the most controversial companies in the world.\n\nThe workshop is built around three things we want to share:&nbsp\;First\, the specifics of the methodology: how we ran a cascading FOIA strategy keyed to the name "Palantir" rather than to specific documents\, letting one office's release point us to the next. And how that approach finally surfaced our crucial piece of proof: a classified Swiss army assessment warning against the procurement of Palantir's products on data-sovereignty and reputational grounds.&nbsp\;Second\, what a year of reading Palantir's correspondence with authorities taught us about how the company actually sells: high-stakes meetings between Palantir executives and senior officials at international security forums and the World Economic Forum\, pro-bono pitches that arrive in moments of public crisis\, and the persistence with which the company cycles between federal offices after each rejection.&nbsp\;Third - in hindsight\, which aspects of our research and reporting proved most important once Palantir sued Republik before the Zurich Commercial Court. The interview in Zurich\, the extensive right-of-reply process before publication\, and the documentation of every exchange. We will share what the litigation has looked like from the inside\, and what we would do differently in hindsight.\n\nLinks to the investigation:\n• Part 1: https://www.republik.ch/2026/02/18/how-tenaciously-palantir-courted-switzerland\n• Part 2: https://www.republik.ch/2025/12/09/warum-palantir-zum-risiko-fuer-die-schweiz-wird\n• English adaptation on swissinfo.ch: https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/war-peace/why-palantir-is-becoming-a-risky-bet-for-switzerland/9066633518:25\n\n
CATEGORIES:RIGHT TO INFORMATION/TRANSPARENCY
LOCATION:Z2.01 - Mediadrôme\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:525ec5d8da013e62e0e077551fd4d1fe
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/525ec5d8da013e62e0e077551fd4d1fe
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260529T120000Z
DTEND:20260529T131500Z
SUMMARY:Digital hygiene - level up your security game
DESCRIPTION:If you’re new to digital security\, this hands-on session serves as a starting point to level up your security game. We aim at introducing the basics of digital security in an easy-to-understand and interactive way.\nThe session will start with a fun check of your current security habits and will be tailored to the participants’ needs based on their answers. We will give an overview of the most common online threats and share practical and easy-to-implement tips to improve both your personal and your team’s level of security. We will focus on how to harden your devices (both phones and computers) and secure your accounts\, as well as how to encrypt confidential data.\nAfter this session\, you will have a better understanding of how to communicate and carry out investigations securely. You will leave with the knowledge and tools to protect your data\, devices\, and accounts.\n\n
CATEGORIES:SAFETY AND SECURITY
LOCATION:3.13\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:2f61759e16ff76a562ce1553e4ab2fca
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/2f61759e16ff76a562ce1553e4ab2fca
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260529T120000Z
DTEND:20260529T131500Z
SUMMARY:How to turn a data-driven investigation into a documentary
DESCRIPTION:More and more OSINT and data-driven investigations are being turned into documentaries for television and platforms. From the success of programs such as Cash Investigation in France\, to Sweden’s flagship investigative show Uppdrag granskning\, and internationally acclaimed documentaries such as the Oscar-winning Navalny (based on Bellingcat’s data-driven investigation) and the Emmy-winning Pegasus\, data- \, OSINT\, and leak-based reporting is increasingly finding its way onto the screen.\n\n But many journalists (specifically those who are not familiar with video production) are unsure whether their story is suitable for a documentary\, or how to approach pitching\, filming\, security\, or narration. This panel offers a practical methodology for turning an investigation into a documentary for journalists coming from print or online media. Drawing on concrete European case studies\, we will explore how to pitch a documentary project to producers and broadcasters\, when to start filming\, how to protect sensitive data\, and how to transform abstract data into compelling visual and narrative-driven storytelling.\n \n After this session\, participants will be able to:\n\n -Assess whether a data/OSINT/leak-driven story is suitable for documentary storytelling\n -Decide when and how to start filming during a data investigation\n -Integrate audiovisual constraints (security\, budget\, narration) into their investigative workflow\n&nbsp\;-Understand how to pitch a documentary based on a data investigation
CATEGORIES:STORYTELLING
LOCATION:1.16\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:fb5929b04a64abfd85b8e41385d1e87d
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/fb5929b04a64abfd85b8e41385d1e87d
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260529T131500Z
DTEND:20260529T134500Z
SUMMARY:Coffee break
DESCRIPTION:Coffee is served in the Mediaforum (ground floor\, lobby area) and on the third floor.
CATEGORIES:ORGANISATIONAL
LOCATION:Mediaforum\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:c6d1ed2cbba7a2dd97b0ea9bdaa5e3b2
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/c6d1ed2cbba7a2dd97b0ea9bdaa5e3b2
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260529T134500Z
DTEND:20260529T150000Z
SUMMARY:Investigating inequality in Copenhagen’s nurseries
DESCRIPTION:Learn how the investigative team at the Danish Altinget used scraped data from 350 inspection reports to map structural inequality in Copenhagen’s nurseries and kindergartens\, and how the method can be applied to other local areas and welfare institutions.
CATEGORIES:DATA JOURNALISM
LOCATION:3.02\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:e80b8278a16e35694d499f6b3604ead5
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/e80b8278a16e35694d499f6b3604ead5
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260529T134500Z
DTEND:20260529T150000Z
SUMMARY:How local LLMs can help you with sensitive information: a beginner's guide
DESCRIPTION:Journalists often work with sensitive information. This information should not end up in web-based tools like ChatGPT and similar services. However\, there are alternatives: local LLMs that run on your own computer. This not only ensures data protection when processing large volumes of documents\, but it can also save costs on expensive APIs. \n\nThis introductory workshop aims to answer the most important questions: What hardware do I need? What frameworks are available (LM Studio\, Ollama\, etc.)? Which models can I use for which tasks? And what does such a workflow look like (e.g.\, with Python)? This session is a mix of presentation and hands-on elements. \n\nTo attend this session\, no prior knowledge is required. If you want to participate in the hands-on parts\, make sure to download and install Ollama and/or LM Studio and download a local model like Qwen3.5-4B\n\n After attending this session\, the participants will understand the pros and cons of using local AI models and get ideas from real-life examples on how to use this knowledge.
CATEGORIES:DATA SKILLS
LOCATION:3.04\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:8603f6bae52db2e477cb33bf6eb3310c
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/8603f6bae52db2e477cb33bf6eb3310c
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260529T134500Z
DTEND:20260529T150000Z
SUMMARY:Mapping and spatial analysis in code
DESCRIPTION:Data journalists have traditionally thought of maps and spatial calculations as a job for special mapping software\, like QGIS. But it's often more efficient to do GIS work within the same script that you perform the rest of your analysis. \n\nIn this session\, you will see how easy it is to work with GIS within your code and share interactive maps with colleagues. To follow along\, participants should have some experience in data journalism and a curiosity about the relationship between data and maps.\n\n This session will introduce participants to a new world of possibilities for doing spatial analysis in code. While participants will benefit from simply observing\, those who want to run the code should have R Studio installed https://posit.co/download/rstudio-desktop/
CATEGORIES:DATA SKILLS
LOCATION:3.09\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:94b90fe4d185a182c53e48983b330098
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/94b90fe4d185a182c53e48983b330098
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260529T134500Z
DTEND:20260529T150000Z
SUMMARY:Newsroom infrastructure for AI experimentation
DESCRIPTION:Learn approaches to tooling and infrastructure that allow every member of your newsroom to participate in your AI experiments\, along with how to test and track both improvements and disappointments along the way! \n\nIn this workshop\, we'll look at: Python libraries that can turn tiny snippets of code or prompts into shareable web apps (Gradio\, Streamlit)\, platforms that allow non-technical users to build evaluations and experiment on their own (Braintrust\, n8n)\, and approaches to models and tooling that provide long-term value and flexibility when selecting services and providers (Pydantic\, OpenRouter). \n\nWhether you're looking to use AI for investigative work or to ease the copy-editing burden\, increasing participation across the newsroom can help discover limitations and inspiration\, along with easing anxieties over automation. To get the most out of this session\, participants should have a working knowledge of Python. \n\nAfter attending this session\, participants will have a suite of approaches to bring non-technical members of their newsroom into their AI processes. Participants should have Jupyter installed or a Google account to work in the cloud.
CATEGORIES:DATA SKILLS
LOCATION:3.05\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:8eea9fdd1a2cb9a715fdccc260500d6d
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/8eea9fdd1a2cb9a715fdccc260500d6d
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260529T134500Z
DTEND:20260529T150000Z
SUMMARY:One day\, I decided to establish a nonprofit media outlet: What I wish I knew back then
DESCRIPTION:Many journalists\, disillusioned with traditional journalism outlets and shrinking media freedoms in their countries\, decide to branch out on their own. In Europe\, the number of public interest media outlets has been rising\, but the sector consists mostly of small to medium-sized newsrooms. The Journalism Value Project found that half of the public interest media it surveyed (174) reported annual budgets of less than 200\,000 euros and 70% of all surveyed centres were purveyors of investigative journalism. They found that the sector faced an uncertain future and other existential threats\, such as legal\, governmental\, and similar.In this panel\, speakers will give guidance\, tips\, and a heads up to people thinking of branching out on their own\, those who recently established their own media\, and those who have been doing it for a long time. The panel will discuss the intricacies of establishing and running a non-profit media\, and things you might have been thinking about.How does a centre survive the first 2-3 years before funding begins to stabilise? How does the founder survive? What strategies can you adopt? We will also discuss the topics nobody told us about when we were starting out. For instance\, if you’re a journalist\, you will probably not do much journalism for the foreseeable future. You will need to find a way to manage journalists while being a journalist first yourself. You will compete for funding with your friends and colleagues. You may lose yourself and your personal priorities while trying to make ends meet for yourself and your team. How to navigate it all?Join this panel to learn how not to make the same mistakes or miss the same opportunities as we did.
CATEGORIES:ENTREPRENEURIAL
LOCATION:3.13\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:03e70b25023d7c86468135970c62cf09
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/03e70b25023d7c86468135970c62cf09
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260529T134500Z
DTEND:20260529T150000Z
SUMMARY:Using local AI-models to investigate with explicit or sensitive data
DESCRIPTION:Large language models (LLMs) have become a common tool in most investigative newsrooms. But what do you do when prudish language models refuse to process what you are investigating? Or you have so much sensitive information that it makes your stomach hurt to send it to Big Tech?\n \n Enter local AI models!\n \n Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK) has used AI models running on their own machines or leased ones to carry out several projects. Together with Lighthouse Reports\, we exposed a hidden class divide in Norwegian courtrooms – revealing that the wealthy receive more lenient sentences than the poor – by analyzing 9\,000 verdicts. The NRK team then turned its attention to the adult industry\, reviewing over 1\,000 films to document a sharp rise in choking incidents.\n \n While the subjects differ vastly\, the projects share a common thread: the controlled use of local AIs to process massive datasets. We want to share our methodology\, our findings\, and insights along the way – but most of all demonstrate how to get you started with using the latest local models for your specific investigative needs.\n \n In the presentation\, we will show concrete examples of how to run the latest local models and invite the audience to think with us about how these models can enhance investigative workflows.
CATEGORIES:INSTANT INSPIRATION
LOCATION:Z1.13 - Aula Hanswijk\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:6a779dcf5b46c608e598c6857f0f8ae0
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/6a779dcf5b46c608e598c6857f0f8ae0
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260529T134500Z
DTEND:20260529T150000Z
SUMMARY:FunForensics: What can you squeeze out of a second-hand laptop?
DESCRIPTION:What can you learn from a discarded laptop? In this session\, participants will gather in small groups\, and each will receive a laptop. They will have 50 minutes to get as much information as possible from the machines\, especially about their past owners. Due to the risks to their (past owners') privacy\, a clear code of conduct will be read out at the beginning of the session: no personal information contained in the machines will be photographed or shared at any time. \n\nThe session organizers will document the strategies developed by each team to investigate and share the results with all participants. The participants' findings are not shared with the room (for privacy reasons). Besides the fun of satisfying naked curiosity\, participants will be able to hone their forensics skills on hardware\, develop investigative strategies in large amounts of files\, and use OSINT techniques to cross-validate information. They will also have to develop team management skills so as to ensure that all team members have access to the data. \n\nFinally\, this session will serve us as a reminder to seriously erase data before disposing of hardware. Please note: in order to attend this session\, you need to register. The maximum number of participants is capped at 20.
CATEGORIES:INVESTIGATIVE METHOD
LOCATION:2.04\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:23b15e0ac6e0338851930ae4fc0eea97
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/23b15e0ac6e0338851930ae4fc0eea97
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260529T134500Z
DTEND:20260529T150000Z
SUMMARY:Investigating with trade data
DESCRIPTION:This session will cover how to use trade information for investigative reporting\, from the theory behind commercial flows to its application to real investigative cases. The first part of the presentation will focus on the "dictionary" that is crucial to read and interpret trade data. Then\, it will explore how to source official customs statistics for free\, understand crucial variables in import-export sheets\, and find workarounds to expensive third-party commercial providers.\n \n Examples from real investigations will show the power of using trade data in covering topics such as deforestation\, sanctions evasion\, the military industry\, cocaine trafficking\, but also much more "ordinary" commercial flows that might be linked to pollution/environmental issues. Throughout the session\, participants will be welcome to bring examples of commodities they would like to track and guided in a few hands-on exercises to familiarise themselves with finding and understanding this kind of data.\n \n The session is suitable for beginners. No technical/coding experience is needed\, but the participants should be familiar with spreadsheets.\n\n\n
CATEGORIES:INVESTIGATIVE METHOD
LOCATION:Z0.10\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:a6923e97e14634b8520c484773157f09
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/a6923e97e14634b8520c484773157f09
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260529T134500Z
DTEND:20260529T150000Z
SUMMARY:Tracking AI scam ads and platform failure under the DSA
DESCRIPTION:AI-generated scam advertisements have flooded European social media platforms\, using deepfake videos\, cloned voices\, and fabricated news stories to lure thousands of victims into fraudulent investment schemes. While the EU's Digital Services Act (DSA) was designed to curb illegal and harmful content\, these scams continue to spread at scale\, exposing major gaps in platform enforcement and regulatory oversight. \n\nThis session will show how to investigate AI-driven scam ads and platform failure using publicly available tools\, leaked material\, and EU tech legislation. We will walk through how to find and identify and analyse AI-generated scam ads and deepfake content\, use Meta's Ad Library to map scam campaigns\, detect duplication and evasion tactics\, and estimate scale. The session will also address how to collaborate effectively with civil society organisations and trusted flaggers to monitor platforms and access specialised expertise. \n\nAs part of the presentation\, we'll also talk about how to investigate the Digital Services Act in practice\, including transparency obligations\, systemic-risk provisions and reporting mechanisms\; how to document and report on failures of enforcement by platforms and public authorities\, and how to connect platform-level analysis to human stories\, including victims' experiences. That also includes how to responsibly handle leaked messages\, call scripts\, and fake trading platforms\, balancing verification\, security and ethical considerations. \n\nThe session will include concrete examples and live walkthroughs\, showing how journalists can combine platform data\, legal frameworks and human sources to hold tech companies and regulators accountable.&nbsp\;
CATEGORIES:INVESTIGATIVE METHOD
LOCATION:1.16\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:a9b3a19b042658159037de97e5a6a3ef
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/a9b3a19b042658159037de97e5a6a3ef
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260529T134500Z
DTEND:20260529T150000Z
SUMMARY:Understanding and investigating Polymarket data
DESCRIPTION:Predictive Markets are on the rise\, and with them\, easy money for insider knowledge and those who can influence their outcomes. While regulation is slow to catch up\, investigations don't have to be. Polymarket is the most well-known of these predictive markets\, and one thing that defines it is open data on all exchanges going on in a market. \n\nThis session will cover key concepts of Polymarket and the possibilities and limitations of investigating it. It will include basic Python code to extract and analyse its open data\, and a new open source user interface tool you can use to quickly understand the market and accounts. In the end\, we will learn techniques to identify suspicious actors from a few example markets. \n\nAlthough some code will be shared during the session\, you don't need to have a working knowledge of Python to participate.
CATEGORIES:INVESTIGATIVE METHOD
LOCATION:Z1.15 - Aula Donche\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:faaffd0179a6165beb48d08f99bdc789
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/faaffd0179a6165beb48d08f99bdc789
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260529T134500Z
DTEND:20260529T150000Z
SUMMARY:Investigating arms and defence industry - Networking roundtable
DESCRIPTION:This roundtable is for everyone who has investigated - or would like to - weapons trade\, defense budgets\, and military. What should we investigate next\, and how can we join forces?&nbsp\; Join this roundtable to discuss ideas and network with reporters working on the subject across Europe and beyond.
CATEGORIES:NETWORKING
LOCATION:Z2.01 - Mediadrôme\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:3ef69365ccd419bee8df51035ecac355
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/3ef69365ccd419bee8df51035ecac355
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260529T134500Z
DTEND:20260529T150000Z
SUMMARY:How close is too close? Setting boundaries with human and digital sources
DESCRIPTION:Whether it’s a human source or a data set – if you want to get something out of it\, you have to engage with it. The closer you look into the data or the closer you interact with a protagonist\, the higher the chances for a good story. But what happens if boundaries blur? How close is too close?\n \n What helps if you realize an investigation (or a tiny piece of information) is emotionally overwhelming? How can you shield yourself from unbearable content or heartbreaking narratives? How can you set professional boundaries if protagonists show abusive or simply inappropriate behaviour? How can you end work-relationships with protagonists after a story is done\, even though they try to keep in touch constantly\, or you feel responsible for them? How can you avoid getting sucked in by data sets\, forgetting about day and night\, regular office hours\, and ignoring warning signs of your body?\n \n Psychotherapist Friederike Engst and journalist Malte Werner of the German “Helpline” for journalists will guide you with their combined expertise through the session\, in which you can ask your own questions\, exchange ideas\, and learn from each other.
CATEGORIES:SAFETY AND SECURITY
LOCATION:2.03\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:b70f3fe97d0eab460999b4713652429a
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/b70f3fe97d0eab460999b4713652429a
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260529T134500Z
DTEND:20260529T150000Z
SUMMARY:How to find new angles in reporting on a long-running conflict
DESCRIPTION:When covering a long-running conflict\, finding new ways to tell the story and keeping audiences engaged is a big challenge\, especially when the stakes are too high for events to pass unnoticed. As Russian journalists in exile\, we have been reporting on Russia's aggression against Ukraine for more than four years. For the third anniversary of mobilisation\, which sent hundreds of thousands of Russian men to war\, we developed a new approach to illustrating the consequences of that aggression for Russian society itself. By narrowing our focus to one of Russia's 85 regions and drawing on a range of sources\, we were able to establish the most precise casualty figures ever reported at that level\, combining that data with carefully crafted storytelling. The result proved effective: the piece reached not only Russian audiences\, but widely read globally as well.\n\n Attendees will leave this session with both the inspiration to keep reporting on long-running events even when audiences show signs of fatigue\, and concrete techniques for doing so. These include thinking outside the box\, revisiting older sources that may hold new value\, and combining different reporting methods -data analysis\, interviews\, and OSINT- to keep coverage of a long conflict fresh\, rigorous\, and compelling.
CATEGORIES:STORYTELLING
LOCATION:Z0.15\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:796d7f1ecb122974db5c33f8f0c934aa
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/796d7f1ecb122974db5c33f8f0c934aa
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260529T151500Z
DTEND:20260529T161500Z
SUMMARY:Budgeting café
DESCRIPTION:Do you want to learn how to translate your ideas into budgets\, explore different financial scenarios\, draft budgets for grant applications\, and improve your financial reporting? Join the budgeting cafe to ask anything you’ve always wanted to know about journalism finance.\n\nPlease note: you need to book a time slot in advance. You can do it HERE.
CATEGORIES:NETWORKING
LOCATION:2.02\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:eccc82629b740cdf6547e63809513e48
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/eccc82629b740cdf6547e63809513e48
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260529T151500Z
DTEND:20260529T161500Z
SUMMARY:Cross-border café
DESCRIPTION:This cafe/clinic is intended as a safe space for individuals or teams involved in a cross-border investigation where they can receive custom support with specific challenges. Potential topics include pitching stories to editors cold-door\, finding colleagues to pursue a story\, managing and resolving team conflicts\, organising workflows\, beginning cross-border projects from scratch\, and tips for progressing when you find yourself stuck in an investigation.\n\nPlease note: you need to book a time slot in advance! You can do it HERE.
CATEGORIES:NETWORKING
LOCATION:2.03\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:71897a111253ed92028891891a664efc
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/71897a111253ed92028891891a664efc
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260529T151500Z
DTEND:20260529T161500Z
SUMMARY:Data helpdesk
DESCRIPTION:Stuck on something technical? Come talk it through.\n\n Maybe you've got a folder of 800 PDFs and no good way in. Maybe a source sent you a database and you don't know where to start. Maybe your scraper broke the night before deadline\, or you're staring at an Excel file with merged cells and dreams. Maybe you just want to know if the thing you're trying to do is actually possible\, before you sink three more days into it.\n\n Bring it to a one-to-one session with a data engineer. No prep required\, just show up with the problem.\n\n Things people often bring:\n Messy data that won't behave Scraping and extraction that's stuck An investigation idea where you don't know if the data exists A manual task you suspect could be automated When to use LLMs\, and when not to Whatever else you'd like to discuss! \nWe may get in touch before the conference to learn more\, so we can hit the ground running.\n Please note: you need to book a time slot in advance. You can do it HERE.\n\n
CATEGORIES:NETWORKING
LOCATION:Z0.15\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:5426a50c7de1e1c2a1699e0b6873fe2b
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/5426a50c7de1e1c2a1699e0b6873fe2b
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260529T151500Z
DTEND:20260529T161500Z
SUMMARY:EU/FOI café
DESCRIPTION:Do you need help drafting an FOI request\, writing a complaint about your FOI request being rejected\, or understanding EU legislation? Are you looking for specific EU databases\, experts\, and sources? Come to the "FOI Cafe" for advice!\n\nPlease note: you need to book a spot in advance. You can do it HERE.
CATEGORIES:NETWORKING
LOCATION:1.04\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:e22e43963c489df2be3061e6da066bee
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/e22e43963c489df2be3061e6da066bee
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260529T151500Z
DTEND:20260529T161500Z
SUMMARY:Exploring North Data registries: book a personalised consultation
DESCRIPTION:Do you want to untangle complex corporate webs\, uncover money laundering schemes\, or gain transparency into international business structures? Book a personal time slot to explore how to use North Data for your specific investigations.\nAs a versatile tool for OSINT and data analysis that journalists can use free-of-charge\, you gain access to 23 countries\, more than 86 million companies\, and 152 sources. Discover how to: * Dig Deeper: Navigate commercial registry files\, financial statements\, and patents._ * Spot Red Flags: Use CEO changes and network centrality as early warning signals._ * Avoid Pitfalls: Understand country-specific data quirks and registry landscapes._Sign up for a slot HERE and bring your specific research questions.
CATEGORIES:NETWORKING
LOCATION:3.09\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:87b539ae1b8e75fc33f7ee2b4323033b
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/87b539ae1b8e75fc33f7ee2b4323033b
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260529T151500Z
DTEND:20260529T161500Z
SUMMARY:Safety and Security café
DESCRIPTION:Do you have questions or considerations about digital security? Do you need help setting up your hard disk encryption\, or do you need advice on how to use a password manager? Would you like security advice on your personal software\, hardware\, or on precautions when traveling?\n\nBring your questions for a one-to-one session with our trainers. The individual consultations are suitable for small teams or individuals who have specific questions or face security concerns.\n\nWe will connect you with the digital security trainers\, who may contact you before the conference to learn more about your concerns.\n\nTopics:\nHardening your devicesSecuring your accountsSpyware concernsChecking your digital footprintWhatever else you'd like to discuss!\nPlease note: you need to book a time slot in advance! You can do it HERE.
CATEGORIES:NETWORKING
LOCATION:1.16\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:6db77289756da978347395caab1f9f70
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/6db77289756da978347395caab1f9f70
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260529T153000Z
DTEND:20260529T160000Z
SUMMARY:Meet up with Everlaw - learn more about our document review and discovery platform
DESCRIPTION:Everlaw's document review and discovery platform — free for journalists — helps reporters dig deeper into large document sets\, understand data\, surface insights\, and streamline their investigations to chart a straighter path to the truth. Join this 30-minute session to get more information about the functionalities of our platform and how to use it! You can learn more at: https://www.everlaw.com/forgood/
CATEGORIES:NETWORKING
LOCATION:Z2.01 - Mediadrôme\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:3f8e898734478950dc16fd639f9b3851
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/3f8e898734478950dc16fd639f9b3851
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260529T160000Z
DTEND:20260529T180000Z
SUMMARY:Walking tour: Historical Mechelen (sign up here)
DESCRIPTION:Did you know that Mechelen played an important political and economic role in the Burgundian period in the fifteenth century\, when the city was under the rule of the Dukes of Burgundy? Many historical buildings testify to this. Hold tight\, because it's a long list: St. Rumbold's Cathedral\, the former palaces of Austria and Margaret of York\, the Palace of the Grand Council\, etc.\, etc. So no dilly-dallying! Follow the guide through sixteenth-century Mechelen. The Historical City Walk now also takes in the newly discovered fourteenth-century wall paintings in St. John's Church. Unmissable! \n\nIf you want to participate\, please sign up HERE (we have 25 spots in total).&nbsp\; &nbsp\; &nbsp\; &nbsp\; &nbsp\; &nbsp\; &nbsp\; &nbsp\;&nbsp\;
CATEGORIES:NETWORKING
LOCATION:Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:0631500c21e9d6c07c28457389f5b025
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/0631500c21e9d6c07c28457389f5b025
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260529T160000Z
DTEND:20260529T180000Z
SUMMARY:Walking tour: Women of Mechelen (sign up here)
DESCRIPTION:This walk looks at the power of women and their influence on the city. It pays tribute to some of Mechelen's foremost women\, from the highest ranks to the lowest\, from the distant past through to the present day. Among other things\, you will visit Margaret of Austria's palace and what are now the law courts\, and you will have an outside view of Margaret of York's palace\, which now houses the municipal theatre. The walking tour takes 2 hours and will start at 18:00 at Schepenhuis - Grote Markt\, Vleeshouwersstraat 6\, 2800 Mechelen.\n\nYou need to register HERE to join the tour (we have 25 spots in total).
CATEGORIES:NETWORKING
LOCATION:Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:93e2da1914f702106fc496c850c2e738
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/93e2da1914f702106fc496c850c2e738
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260529T161500Z
DTEND:20260529T173000Z
SUMMARY:From the Soviet Union to the Moon – using OSINT on Tintin
DESCRIPTION:Comic-book hero Tintin is\, without a doubt\, the most famous Belgian journalist who never lived. In the course of his 24 albums\, which brought him from the early Soviet Union to the surface of the Moon\, Tintin did preciously little *actual writing*\, but there are still one or two lessons journalists can learn reading the adventures. ‘\n\nYour hosts for this session have set a "trail" through the Tintin stories\, and the legacy of Belgium's most famous boy adventurer. Come and compete in a light-hearted quiz which we hope will help you to fall in love with Herge's creation all over again - this time as a datajournalist!
CATEGORIES:NETWORKING
LOCATION:Z1.15 - Aula Donche\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:0cd321fb6d6e03ebdec73006802eb189
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/0cd321fb6d6e03ebdec73006802eb189
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260529T161500Z
DTEND:20260529T173000Z
SUMMARY:OSINT challenge 2.0
DESCRIPTION:Back by popular demand – and this time the hunt is designed by the people who beat you the last two years: the Scandinavian team. This isn’t a workshop. It’s a chase. No panels. No slides. Just clues\, dead ends\, and the creeping suspicion that someone else is faster than you. Follow the trail\, outsmart the others\, and prove your OSINT instincts still work outside your browser.
CATEGORIES:NETWORKING
LOCATION:Z0.10\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:f5ad5857e4ca610d21a244637a01addc
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/f5ad5857e4ca610d21a244637a01addc
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260529T161500Z
DTEND:20260529T173000Z
SUMMARY:✨ Dataharvest Ultimate Pub Quiz ✨
DESCRIPTION:Finally! The ultimate Dataharvest pub quiz is here! Come\, make a team\, and test your knowledge of journalism. Expertly done by Constanze and Max\, our great gamemasters 🪄&nbsp\;\n
CATEGORIES:NETWORKING
LOCATION:Mediaforum\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:cfe421472fb4a29d150b0197615a97c3
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/cfe421472fb4a29d150b0197615a97c3
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260530T070000Z
DTEND:20260530T073000Z
SUMMARY:Coffee
DESCRIPTION:Coffee is served in the Mediaforum (ground floor\, lobby area) and on the third floor.
CATEGORIES:ORGANISATIONAL
LOCATION:Mediaforum\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:073a426e9b471042b49ae9e28b1af87e
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/073a426e9b471042b49ae9e28b1af87e
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260530T073000Z
DTEND:20260530T084500Z
SUMMARY:Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service data buffet: find stories in the data
DESCRIPTION:Every human inhales 14 kg of air per day\, and air pollution caused by human (e.g.\, road traffic\, industrial process\, agriculture) and natural (e.g.\, wildfires\, dust storms) processes affects everybody on the planet\, contributing to a growing list of health impacts. The composition of the atmosphere also plays a critical role in the climate system. A wide range of observational and model data are available for analysing the distribution and timing of air pollution episodes and their possible impacts. Yet navigating these datasets and understanding what they can reliably show is not always straightforward.\n\nThe Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) provides a wide range of open datasets on emission sources\, atmospheric composition\, and air pollution covering past\, present\, and future conditions\, that can support your air quality reporting.\n\nIn this session\, you will be guided through the CAMS data landscape: where to find key datasets\, how they are built\, what they can (and cannot) tell you\, and common pitfalls to avoid.\n\n
CATEGORIES:CLIMATE/ENVIRONMENT
LOCATION:3.09\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:30b4a304ccd1ac09450b917b20fa6a06
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/30b4a304ccd1ac09450b917b20fa6a06
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260530T073000Z
DTEND:20260530T084500Z
SUMMARY:How to use Earth Index\, an AI tool for finding leads in satellite imagery
DESCRIPTION:This is a hands-on workshop introducing the practical use of Earth Index\, a tool that uses AI to search for user-defined patterns in satellite imagery across large areas\, anywhere on the planet. It is a game-changer for environmental journalism\, opening up major possibilities: from spotting hotspots of illegal mining\, to quantifying industrial farming in a region\, or mapping new roads pushing into forested areas.\n\nDuring the session\, we will do a guided walkthrough of the platform and work through step-by-step exercises to explore its core features: how to create a project\, define an area of interest\, generate positive and negative labels\, run predictions\, refine the results\, and export findings. We will also share practical tips and best practices based on the Pulitzer Center’s methodology for successfully integrating Earth Index into an environmental investigation\, including how to audit results\, reduce false positives\, and inform field reporting.\n\nBy the end of the workshop\, participants will have a clear understanding of Earth Index’s strengths and limitations\, and how to add it to their investigative toolbox.\n\nIMPORTANT:\n\nYou must&nbsp\;register in advance for this session to gain access to Earth Index. Please use this form to register:&nbsp\; https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe0CXmCcA3SZyVfDMHO3l9suLK_RwCJUqz_IU-oymMRAFVSuQ/viewformPlease bring a laptop with Google Earth Pro installed. You can download it here: https://maps.google.com/intl/es/earth/download/gep/agree.html \nNo previous experience or coding skills are required. Those who sign up will receive free access to the tool and will be able to keep it afterwards.
CATEGORIES:CLIMATE/ENVIRONMENT
LOCATION:3.02\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:ac84828557a59cba377082990c05fb0b
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/ac84828557a59cba377082990c05fb0b
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260530T073000Z
DTEND:20260530T084500Z
SUMMARY:Gambling on the beautiful game: Following the money and suspect sponsorships in European football
DESCRIPTION:Behind the polished facade of the multi-million euro football industry lies a darker reality. This presentation will take you inside two cross-border investigations into the opaque world of football sponsorships – tracking the unlicensed betting firms and crypto exchanges that now have a seat at the game’s top table.\n \n The first exposed the influence and lucrative partnerships betting operators have with teams in more than 30 European leagues. The second uncovered the increasing foothold that crypto and investment companies have\, revealing how unregulated sponsors infiltrated major sporting organisations.\n \n We will explain how we obtained the underlying data and turned it into compelling stories connecting countries across the continent. The presentation will offer insights into the different tools and techniques we used – from trawling corporate accounts and financial registries\, to exploiting Virtual Private Networks to assist with international research. We will discuss how these methods were used to build out investigative strands with international media partners and can be utilised for other cross-border projects.
CATEGORIES:CROSS-BORDER
LOCATION:Z1.15 - Aula Donche\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:d56292d8c7a9b12800072d1401f71c6e
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/d56292d8c7a9b12800072d1401f71c6e
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260530T073000Z
DTEND:20260530T084500Z
SUMMARY:How to investigate AI border surveillance in Europe
DESCRIPTION:The session will reflect on Swiss newsroom WAV Collective's year-long collaborative investigative projects – Invisible Walls and Big Business at the Borders – looking at automated border systems across Europe and asking who benefits from the push in AI in migration and border control.\n \nTheir reporting combined on-the-ground investigation in Greece with policy research in Brussels and institutional analysis in Switzerland and the U.K. They will give a step-by-step explanation on how they traced flows of money\, data and accountability across borders and institutions. \n \nWhat they'll cover in this talk:\n - how to understand the systems\, tools and implications of AI (even if you’re not a techie!).\n - how to distinguish between proposed capabilities\, funded projects\, and implemented systems when it comes to reporting on tech.\n - how to understand the functions of such systems\, instead of relying on labels.\n - And how to dissect the language that is often used to obfuscate real-world implications of tech.\n \n Participants will learn how cross-border\, collaborative teams can tackle investigations of complex\, opaque systems that operate in regulatory grey areas and are often deliberately fragmented. Insights from this session will not only be valuable to colleagues working on similar topics\, but useful to anyone investigating fragmented yet connected systems across different countries.
CATEGORIES:CROSS-BORDER
LOCATION:Z0.10\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:393672035230de7dd9f88775848db94c
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/393672035230de7dd9f88775848db94c
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260530T073000Z
DTEND:20260530T084500Z
SUMMARY:How the hell did they make that?: Creating a collaborative inventory of data viz tools
DESCRIPTION:Have you ever come across a striking data visual and wondered: "How the hell did they make that?" Your follow-up question may be: "Can I achieve that too with the resources I have?" In this session\, we start with a deep dive into the (technical) production of two data visuals. Then\, for the third visual\, it's your turn to figure out how it might have been made. Finally\, we launch our online inventory and subjective guide of data visualization tools - a work in progress you can contribute to! \n\nHeads up: we won't teach any tool in depth\, but we'll highlight a range of options so you can find an approach or tool that best fits your needs and constraints (e.g.\, limited budget\, small team\, learning curve…).\n\n
CATEGORIES:DATA JOURNALISM
LOCATION:1.04\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:4a39046541c8b952d358c5e48d3443b0
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/4a39046541c8b952d358c5e48d3443b0
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260530T073000Z
DTEND:20260530T084500Z
SUMMARY:AI-Assisted OSINT: Automating the investigative workflow
DESCRIPTION:Most investigative workflows still rely on manually juggling dozens of tools. In this session\, we'll walk through a live demo of a semi-automated pipeline built for real casework: web search and archiving with Playwright\, face extraction\, reverse image search\, database cross-referencing with Telegram bots\, social media analysis\, and structured reporting via Obsidian mcp. All of this is orchestrated by Claude\, an AI layer you can teach your own investigative methodology. At the end\, participants will work through a simplified case using a workflow of their own. \n\nBefore the session\, please install: Python\, Claude Code. This session will teach participants to combine several smaller OSINT tools so they work together efficiently without requiring much manual effort. No special tools needed
CATEGORIES:DATA SKILLS
LOCATION:3.05\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:ce87e2413a5243485593a7924eb9a6d4
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/ce87e2413a5243485593a7924eb9a6d4
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260530T073000Z
DTEND:20260530T084500Z
SUMMARY:Scraping with a browser emulator
DESCRIPTION:You need to harvest data from a Web site. But there's no download button. It's time to scrape! There are many options\, but one of the most consistently effective is launching an automated browser. You tell the browser where to go and what to click\, and when to ingest the content. To follow along\, participants should have some knowledge of coding in any language. \n\nParticipants will come away from this class knowing the basics of Web scraping with a browser emulator. To follow along\, participants should have R Studio installed https://posit.co/download/rstudio-desktop/\, create a new project\, download this file selenium-server-standalone-3.5.3.jar into the project directory\, and have the appropriate Chrome binary downloaded into the directory https://googlechromelabs.github.io/chrome-for-testing/last-known-good-versions-with-downloads.json
CATEGORIES:DATA SKILLS
LOCATION:3.04\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:e1c4009414711a83098c368664dfca5b
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/e1c4009414711a83098c368664dfca5b
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260530T073000Z
DTEND:20260530T084500Z
SUMMARY:Showcase your work online: Build a portfolio with GitHub pages
DESCRIPTION:Many journalists have published investigations\, data stories\, and visualizations across different outlets\, but no single place to display all their work. In this hands-on session\, participants will build a simple\, professional portfolio website using GitHub Pages\, creating a central hub where their work can live together\, even without previous web development experience. By writing and modifying small pieces of HTML and CSS together\, participants will see how a simple page can gradually become a polished portfolio. \n\nTo attend this session\, no prior coding knowledge is required. Familiarity with GitHub or basic HTML is helpful but not necessary. After attending this session\, participants will have a live portfolio website that they can continue improving and use immediately for job applications\, pitching stories\, or showcasing investigative work. \n\nParticipants should create a free GitHub account before the session: https://github.com/join. It is also useful to install Visual Studio Code: https://code.visualstudio.com/
CATEGORIES:DATA SKILLS
LOCATION:Z0.15\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:81b48448516b82c8321465c91707752d
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/81b48448516b82c8321465c91707752d
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260530T073000Z
DTEND:20260530T084500Z
SUMMARY:Reclaiming the (old) public square: from data and digital to journalism with and for our communities 
DESCRIPTION:Independent newsrooms operate in a landscape full of contradictions. Digital journalism has the potential to reach large audiences\, yet people today are overwhelmed by a constant stream of online content – much of it shaped by opaque corporate algorithms and polluted with disinformation. At the same time\, funders increasingly ask newsrooms to demonstrate measurable audience reach\, impact\, and engagement. \n\nAgainst this backdrop\, in-person events offer a powerful opportunity. By reclaiming the spirit of the public square\, live gatherings allow newsrooms to meet their audiences face-to-face\, build community\, and create deeper\, more meaningful reporting and engagement. Yet organising such activities and integrating them into editorial work can also be time-consuming and resource-intensive. \n\nIn this session\, speakers will share practical ways independent newsrooms are combining audience data with in-person events to better listen to the public and co-produce journalism with their communities. What tools and spaces can make this possible? What are the advantages – and limitations – of small\, intimate gatherings vs large public events? What works\, and what doesn't? Join us to explore practical strategies for using in-person engagement to strengthen journalism\, deepen audience relationships\, and support the long-term sustainability of independent newsrooms. \n\n
CATEGORIES:ENTREPRENEURIAL
LOCATION:2.03\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:c18f37eb9c4cf01c022931d3122cd7d0
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/c18f37eb9c4cf01c022931d3122cd7d0
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260530T073000Z
DTEND:20260530T084500Z
SUMMARY:How we uncovered an international rapist network through undercover online research
DESCRIPTION:In our digitally connected world\, perpetrators feel so safe online that they build their networks openly: on public-access porn websites and messenger apps such as Telegram. Our investigation for STRG_F/NDR in Germany&nbsp\;uncovered an international rape network that had formed on porn websites and in dozens of private chat groups on Telegram. One group had more than 70\,000 members.\n\nUsers exchange detailed information on how to drug and rape women who are already close to them\, such as their wives\, girlfriends\, sisters\, or mothers\, without them noticing. The rapists share videos and photos of the assaults online. One man from Germany drugged and raped his wife for more than 15 years and generated millions of views with the footage. Our investigation triggered a police investigation\, and he was stopped.\n\nWe'll share how we began investigating these networks\, how we gained access to them\, how we investigated the users for years by also going undercover\, what tools we used\, what ethical and moral challenges we have faced\, and how we kept an overview of all the footage we documented and saved over the years. \n\nWe will address:\n- How do you conduct online research in criminal networks? (Structures\, dynamics\, and mechanisms)\n- How do you gain access to them?  (User's communication and behaviour) \n- What opportunities and limitations did we encounter? (Laws and journalists' rights\, ethical and moral responsibilities)\n- When should you consider undercover research\, and what can it look like? (Journalistic standards and guidelines)\n- How do you protect your own mental health when confronted with disturbing content?\n\n
CATEGORIES:INVESTIGATIVE METHOD
LOCATION:Z1.13 - Aula Hanswijk\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:19d7a9b519ed48fb3b28e11a7bce6b15
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/19d7a9b519ed48fb3b28e11a7bce6b15
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260530T073000Z
DTEND:20260530T084500Z
SUMMARY:Investigating arms producers
DESCRIPTION:Following Russia's invasion of Ukraine\, many European countries have increased their defence spending and awarded large new contracts to arms companies. Beneficiaries include US corporations such as Lockheed\, as well as European firms such as BAE Systems\, Airbus\, Rheinmetall\, or Leonardo. At the same time\, these companies are making money by exporting weapons to authoritarian regimes\, and their weapons could end up on the battlefields of Libya or Yemen. Some of these companies have continued to support Israel in its destruction of Gaza by selling weapons to the country. \nHow can such companies be investigated? Whistleblowers can occasionally help journalists to expose dubious deals and hidden manoeuvres. But arms deals can also be investigated without the help of an insider. Videos showing military vehicles can be geolocated. Satellite pictures reveal the locations of naval vessels. Tracking websites allow you to follow the routes of warships and aeroplanes. Company employees reveal the military projects they are working on on LinkedIn. \n\nThis presentation will demonstrate how open-source methods can be used to investigate the arms industry. Drawing on specific examples from recent investigations\, it will show how these methods can be employed to shed light on the activities of companies such as a European missile-maker that supplied Israel with bombs used in Gaza\, German engine manufacturers whose products are being used in Russian and Chinese warships\, Turkey's breaches of the arms embargo in Libya\, and the role of Airbus\, as well as French-made warships in the war zone around Yemen. The presentation will also highlight the activities of a German arms giant Rheinmetall\,\, which sent personnel through an embargoed port in Eritrea to assist with the repair of Emirati naval guns in the Red Sea.\n\n
CATEGORIES:INVESTIGATIVE METHOD
LOCATION:1.16\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:ff1d0b4ab17fcfd1ad6690110de60528
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/ff1d0b4ab17fcfd1ad6690110de60528
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260530T073000Z
DTEND:20260530T084500Z
SUMMARY:R and AI - so many options. What works for you?
DESCRIPTION:Over the last 12 months or so\, ways of getting LLMs to help you write R code have multiplied. The Ellmer package is one solution. Then Posit tested their Databot\, and later the Posit Assistant. There's also GitHub CoPilot. So what have you tried? What has worked? What have you learned? Are you happy using AI in R code? Are you still waiting to take the plunge? Come to this roundtable session to learn from each other's experiences in this rapidly developing field.
CATEGORIES:NETWORKING
LOCATION:Z2.01 - Mediadrôme\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:7823061cf8922df2454bb1c88f366708
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/7823061cf8922df2454bb1c88f366708
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260530T073000Z
DTEND:20260530T084500Z
SUMMARY:Handling leaks and source protection in a changing technological environment
DESCRIPTION:Leaks remain a &nbsp\;powerful source of investigations\, but they are becoming harder to handle\, authenticate\, and secure in an era of mass leaks\, AI-generated forgeries\, surveillance\, and legal pressure on newsrooms.\n \nThis hands-on session offers a practical\, step-by-step methodology for journalists working with data leaks today\, from first contact with a source to post-publication decisions. Based on real investigative cases and newsroom practices\, the session focuses on decision-making\, security\, verification\, and workflow\, rather than theory.\n \n The session walks participants through the full lifecycle of a data leak\, using concrete examples and tools:\n\n - How to evaluate a leak: source motivations\, credibility\, red flags\, and public-interest tests\n - How to decide whether to investigate (or walk away) without wasting newsroom resources\n - How to verify authenticity in an era of AI-generated documents and manipulated leaks\n - How to protect sources\, data\, and journalists throughout the investigation\n - How to make smart editorial\, ethical\, and legal decisions under pressure\n- What to do with data after publication (retain\, restrict\, destroy\, or share)
CATEGORIES:SAFETY AND SECURITY
LOCATION:2.02\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:b3d4486bb2a41a16169af1f92f726d7f
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/b3d4486bb2a41a16169af1f92f726d7f
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260530T084500Z
DTEND:20260530T091500Z
SUMMARY:Coffee break
DESCRIPTION:Coffee is served in the Mediaforum (ground floor\, lobby area) and on the third floor.\n\n
CATEGORIES:ORGANISATIONAL
LOCATION:Mediaforum\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:55ed69fa17dbf5a2258a59e621207953
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/55ed69fa17dbf5a2258a59e621207953
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260530T091500Z
DTEND:20260530T103000Z
SUMMARY:50 shades of the housing crisis – in data
DESCRIPTION:For more than eight years\, we have been covering the housing crisis – locally and in a European-wide comparison. We investigated big corporate landlords\, calculated rent affordability for key workers\, explained how real estate speculation works\, and investigated the complicated relationship between the climate crisis\, energy costs\, and housing unaffordability. We collected numerous datasets\, interviewed scientists\, politicians\, and investors\, and found ways to translate the data and abstract financial schemes into engaging and compelling stories for readers.\n \n Now we want to share this knowledge with other journalists.\n\n Come to our hands-on session where we will show you the most interesting datasets and modes of visualisations you can use for your own local reporting. We will explain different data-driven ways and methodologies for approaching the housing issue\, which can be replicated in any European city\, discuss different themes within the housing topic and what pitfalls to avoid\, as well as what issues the current reporting is lacking and could be dug deeper.
CATEGORIES:CROSS-BORDER
LOCATION:1.04\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:121bcf0f1b20ed5140036ed2ae14fe44
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/121bcf0f1b20ed5140036ed2ae14fe44
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260530T091500Z
DTEND:20260530T103000Z
SUMMARY:Cancer Calculus: Investigating big pharma's dirty tricks
DESCRIPTION:Big pharma is responsible for inventing and manufacturing hundreds of life-saving innovative drugs\, but often those medications come with a hefty price tag. The Cancer Calculus is a global cross-border investigation into how Keytruda\, a life-saving cancer drug\, is unaffordable for millions across the world and how pharma giant Merck protects their billions in revenue from it.\n\nThis session will examine the different tools pharma companies use to protect their revenues\, from creating an impenetrable fortress of patents around their drug\, to promoting higher doses that boost revenues and wild variation in prices worldwide.\n\nThe speakers will walk you through how they approached this complex investigation\, the difficulties in unraveling the pricing knots\, and what they learned along the way.
CATEGORIES:CROSS-BORDER
LOCATION:3.09\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:12deff3a6bcd7d58d2d10373cf69b1d8
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/12deff3a6bcd7d58d2d10373cf69b1d8
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260530T091500Z
DTEND:20260530T103000Z
SUMMARY:Designing stories on maps: A practical guide to map-driven scrollytelling
DESCRIPTION:Description to follow
CATEGORIES:DATA JOURNALISM
LOCATION:2.03\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:6fcdf672866132f9c75a48c560587c4e
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/6fcdf672866132f9c75a48c560587c4e
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260530T091500Z
DTEND:20260530T103000Z
SUMMARY:Choosing the right web scraping strategy
DESCRIPTION:Web scraping is a powerful way to access otherwise unavailable data\, but it’s becoming more complex as websites deploy defenses like Captchas and anti-bot systems. At SWR Data Lab\, we’ve tackled this across investigations ranging from Google price comparisons to healthcare platforms and social media scraping\, each requiring a different approach. In this session\, we share a practical decision framework for choosing the right scraping strategy based on robustness\, cost\, and maintainability. \n\nIn this session\, we will present a decision framework for selecting the right scraping strategy based on our learnings. Rather than promoting a single tool\, we want to focus on choosing the right approach for your use case\, considering robustness\, cost\, and maintainability in a newsroom context. Using real examples\, we walk through our workflow: from analyzing sites with dev tools to selecting between HTTP scraping\, browser automation\, and advanced tools—along with best practices and when paid services are worth it. \n\nTo follow along\, you should have some experience in scraping and\, ideally\, Python. The participants will be able to extend their toolkit\, make smarter choices in their scraping workflow\, and handle real-world obstacles efficiently. No special tools are required to follow along
CATEGORIES:DATA SKILLS
LOCATION:3.04\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:e78a57cb02456cfc94c96e2d04559dce
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/e78a57cb02456cfc94c96e2d04559dce
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260530T091500Z
DTEND:20260530T103000Z
SUMMARY:Embracing agents with Pydantic AI
DESCRIPTION:"Agentic AI" is all the rage\, but what does it offer beyond traditional LLM workflows? In this hands-on session we'll answer this question (and more) while leveraging Python's Pydantic AI library to build a start-to-finish agentic AI workflow. \n\nParticipants will learn how agents work\, when they're useful\, how to build custom tools\, and options for tracing and evaluation. You'll leave able to write agentic workflows to extract information from texts\, do semi-autonomous research\, and deliver clean\, structured results. \n\nBasic experience with Python/LLMs is helpful but not required. After attending this session\, participants will be able to understand when and how to apply agentic approaches to problems. Participants should have Python/Jupyter installed or a Google account for working in the cloud.
CATEGORIES:DATA SKILLS
LOCATION:3.05\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:dffa443e13e32de3985f7d8eb8a6b68f
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/dffa443e13e32de3985f7d8eb8a6b68f
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260530T091500Z
DTEND:20260530T103000Z
SUMMARY:From data projects to pipelines
DESCRIPTION:Data journalism projects often rely on manually executed scripts\, spreadsheet updates\, or code running on private computers. As investigations become more complex\, span longer timeframes\, or require regular updates\, these methods become inefficient and unsustainable. Automated data pipelines offer a solution to these challenges. \n\nThis workshop provides an introduction to Apache Airflow\, an open-source platform for automating and managing workflows. The session demonstrates how Airflow can be utilized to efficiently automate data journalism processes—from scraping to creating and updating visualizations. Participants should have basic programming skills.\n\n After attending this session\, the participants will know why and when to use automated pipelines and understand the basics of Airflow.
CATEGORIES:DATA SKILLS
LOCATION:Z0.15\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:65751670ee102b6af2039cb863fb193c
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/65751670ee102b6af2039cb863fb193c
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260530T091500Z
DTEND:20260530T103000Z
SUMMARY:Lean\, not broken: How independent newsrooms adapt to uncertain funding
DESCRIPTION:Independent newsrooms across Europe are facing a tough reality: grant funding is becoming more competitive\, short-term\, and unpredictable. This panel will explore the challenges small newsrooms encounter when forced to downsize\, and how they can restructure teams\, workflows\, and output to continue producing quality journalism under financial pressure. We’ll also examine how one can try to secure new revenue streams - and how to pursue them without compromising editorial independence-and about the strain that sudden influxes of one-off projects and grants can place on already overstretched teams. Join us to discuss these challenges\, share experiences\, and learn practical\, transferable strategies.\n
CATEGORIES:ENTREPRENEURIAL
LOCATION:3.13\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:513e31ccfadd31d8c70faab05af06d6d
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/513e31ccfadd31d8c70faab05af06d6d
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260530T091500Z
DTEND:20260530T103000Z
SUMMARY:How to investigate China 101
DESCRIPTION:The Great Firewall\, censorship\, and language barriers make open source research on China really difficult\, if not impossible. In this session\, we aim&nbsp\;not only to make you aware of obstacles you may face\, but to show you solutions and strategies\, especially for journalists and researchers working from outside China who don't speak the language.\n\n We’ll show you the research resources\, toolbox and we'll share tips on:\n\n1) how to navigate Chinese social media: WeChat\, Douyin\, Rednote and others\,\n2) how to reconcile information inconsistencies in English and Chinese\,\n3) how to read the ownership of Chinese companies: private\, state owned and central government enterprises\,\n4) mobile device setup and translation applications.\n\n
CATEGORIES:INVESTIGATIVE METHOD
LOCATION:Z1.13 - Aula Hanswijk\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:4d60edc0426a9d511bcdf139ca9e4f83
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/4d60edc0426a9d511bcdf139ca9e4f83
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260530T091500Z
DTEND:20260530T103000Z
SUMMARY:How to spot a bot: Practical techniques and investigation ideas
DESCRIPTION:Do you know what the telling signs of "non-authentic behaviour" - bots - are on social media platforms? This practical\, hands-on presentation is for journalists interested in investigating bots across platforms - from Telegram and YouTube to TikTok. We'll use data research on bot networks and coordinated activity to learn how to identify bots\, and discuss practical stories one can develop based on the data found. We will also give practical examples stemming from our research in Ukraine and Moldova\, and present some insights into bot campaigns ahead of the June 2026 election in Armenia. \n\nA key part of the session will focus on how things are changing with the rise of generative AI and the early shift toward more agent-like systems: what this means for bots\, coordination\, and the limits of traditional detection methods. By the end of the workshop\, participants will have a clearer sense of how large-scale CIB operations can look in practice\, and how to start identifying and documenting them across different platforms. The goal is to leave the session with concrete story ideas\, investigative ideas\, and practical methodological knowledge. \n\nNo programming skills are required to take part in the workshop\, but prior experience with collecting and analyzing data from social media platforms will help participants get the most out of the session.\n\n
CATEGORIES:INVESTIGATIVE METHOD
LOCATION:3.02\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:440243a76757d489f2b3a38b5c189182
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/440243a76757d489f2b3a38b5c189182
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260530T091500Z
DTEND:20260530T103000Z
SUMMARY:Look what's flying there
DESCRIPTION:Everyone knows that you can track planes online. But how exactly do you use plane tracking tools\, and how can they help you with investigative research in particular? That's what this workshop is all about. It's aimed at journalists who have only ever tracked their vacation flights\, but it also offers tips and tricks for more experienced colleagues. (It can get a little nerdy at times\, but hopefully never boring.)\n\n This session will tackle questions such as: \n-How do you use flight tracking sites for research?\n-Can you really track all planes? And what do you do if they don't want a flight to be found?\n-What are the advantages and disadvantages of different platforms?\n-How does flight data help to verify other information from your research?\n-What are the biggest stumbling blocks\, and what do you need to watch out for?\n-How do you access older data?\n-And why are plane spotters your best friends...\n\n The tools of the trade are explained with practical examples from real research cases. These include Russian sabotage and hijackings\, kings on their travels\, and smuggled wild animals.
CATEGORIES:INVESTIGATIVE METHOD
LOCATION:1.16\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:1221006e21f6c257be07cc12262b869f
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/1221006e21f6c257be07cc12262b869f
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260530T091500Z
DTEND:20260530T103000Z
SUMMARY:The “perfect” MoU: an invitation
DESCRIPTION:Coordinators of cross-border investigations are welcome to join a session with Coordinators Without Borders\, a monthly meet-up for coordinators of cross-border investigations. This will be a social gathering for members of the group and those interested in joining. All are invited to revisit the group’s collaborative attempt to craft the “perfect” memorandum of understanding. This document is an essential part of any cross-border investigation\, marking an agreement between journalists over the many elements of the collaboration\, including the responsibilities of the coordinator.
CATEGORIES:NETWORKING
LOCATION:Z2.01 - Mediadrôme\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:84ff70580d79190e35a938b47275cf3b
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/84ff70580d79190e35a938b47275cf3b
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260530T091500Z
DTEND:20260530T103000Z
SUMMARY:Behind closed doors: Exposing human rights violations in prisons and psychiatric facilities
DESCRIPTION:Human rights violations in prisons\, psychiatric hospitals\, and correctional facilities are particularly difficult for journalists to uncover: those affected are isolated\, authorities are opaque\, and data is often fragmented or non-existent.\n \nHow can we investigate places that hardly anyone has access to? What methods can we use to get a glimpse behind the walls or fences of those facilities? How do we obtain data? What evidence can support our investigation?\n\n In this presentation we will explore ways to obtain information\, access those closed institutions\, strengthen the investigation\, and develop strategic approaches.\n\n The session will cover:\n - Strategies for gaining physical access as a journalist to prisons and detention facilities\n - Using Freedom of Information requests to obtain documents and datasets\n - Working with fragmentary or missing data and still finding a story in there\n - Building\, protecting\, and maintaining sources in highly sensitive environments\n \nThe presentation is aimed at investigative reporters\, data- and document-driven journalists\, and FOI enthusiasts who want to strengthen their ability to report on closed institutions and other hard-to-reach environments. Participants will leave with concrete tools\, workflows\, and ideas they can apply to their own investigations.
CATEGORIES:RIGHT TO INFORMATION/TRANSPARENCY
LOCATION:Z1.15 - Aula Donche\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:e0a1728c6d0fe45a0bac18eb3b112685
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/e0a1728c6d0fe45a0bac18eb3b112685
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260530T091500Z
DTEND:20260530T103000Z
SUMMARY:Risky research - protect yourself in high-risk investigations
DESCRIPTION:If you have been through the Digital Hygiene session at Dataharvest\, or are otherwise already aware of the baseline of digital security\, you are now ready to advance to the next level.\n\nIn this session\, we will dive deep into threat modelling as well as the tools and tactics to know about if your investigations involve a high degree of risk to your sources\, your collaborators\, or yourself.\n\nThe goal of the session is that you are able to make informed choices by assessing digital risks specific to an investigation and selecting the appropriate systems and strategies to manage them consistently.\n\n
CATEGORIES:SAFETY AND SECURITY
LOCATION:2.02\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:19153b570527cf44c9f61f3836868eef
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/19153b570527cf44c9f61f3836868eef
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260530T103000Z
DTEND:20260530T114500Z
SUMMARY:Lunch
DESCRIPTION:Lunch is served in Mediaforum on the ground floor (lobby area)\, and on the first floor (Z1.06 and Z1.07). Vegan food and special meals (gluten-free\, dairy-free\, and all allergies and special dietary requirements) are available on the first floor only.\n
CATEGORIES:ORGANISATIONAL
LOCATION:Mediaforum\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:ddb6cf45c002eee2a29f97194e8edc13
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/ddb6cf45c002eee2a29f97194e8edc13
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260530T103500Z
DTEND:20260530T113500Z
SUMMARY:Budgeting café
DESCRIPTION:Do you want to learn how to translate your ideas into budgets\, explore different financial scenarios\, draft budgets for grant applications\, and improve your financial reporting? Join the budgeting cafe to ask anything you’ve always wanted to know about journalism finance.\n\nPlease note: you need to book a time slot in advance. You can do it HERE.
CATEGORIES:NETWORKING
LOCATION:2.02\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:f810b60fa9077d936bfe548c79f37990
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/f810b60fa9077d936bfe548c79f37990
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260530T103500Z
DTEND:20260530T113500Z
SUMMARY:Cross-border café
DESCRIPTION:This cafe/clinic is intended as a safe space for individuals or teams involved in a cross-border investigation where they can receive custom support with specific challenges. Potential topics include pitching stories to editors cold-door\, finding colleagues to pursue a story\, managing and resolving team conflicts\, organising workflows\, beginning cross-border projects from scratch\, and tips for progressing when you find yourself stuck in an investigation.\n\nPlease note: you need to book a time slot in advance! You can do it HERE.
CATEGORIES:NETWORKING
LOCATION:2.03\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:a8b1083a45b7ba8222225d29449d3742
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/a8b1083a45b7ba8222225d29449d3742
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260530T103500Z
DTEND:20260530T113500Z
SUMMARY:Data helpdesk
DESCRIPTION:Stuck on something technical? Come talk it through.\n\n Maybe you've got a folder of 800 PDFs and no good way in. Maybe a source sent you a database and you don't know where to start. Maybe your scraper broke the night before deadline\, or you're staring at an Excel file with merged cells and dreams. Maybe you just want to know if the thing you're trying to do is actually possible\, before you sink three more days into it.\n\n Bring it to a one-to-one session with a data engineer. No prep required\, just show up with the problem.\n\n Things people often bring:\n Messy data that won't behave Scraping and extraction that's stuck An investigation idea where you don't know if the data exists A manual task you suspect could be automated When to use LLMs\, and when not to Whatever else you'd like to discuss! \nWe may get in touch before the conference to learn more\, so we can hit the ground running.\n Please note: you need to book a time slot in advance. You can do it HERE.\n\n
CATEGORIES:NETWORKING
LOCATION:Z0.15\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:5c9ccc92d0ece48afc0550aa344f7a09
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/5c9ccc92d0ece48afc0550aa344f7a09
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260530T103500Z
DTEND:20260530T113500Z
SUMMARY:EU/FOI café
DESCRIPTION:Do you need help drafting an FOI request\, writing a complaint about your FOI request being rejected\, or understanding EU legislation? Are you looking for specific EU databases\, experts\, and sources? Come to the "Eu Cafe" for advice!\n\nPlease note: you need to book a spot in advance. You can do it HERE.
CATEGORIES:NETWORKING
LOCATION:1.04\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:83c721f2aa38d77d39a0b9c69a19b4f3
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/83c721f2aa38d77d39a0b9c69a19b4f3
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260530T103500Z
DTEND:20260530T113500Z
SUMMARY:Safety and Security café
DESCRIPTION:Do you have questions or considerations about digital security? Do you need help setting up your hard disk encryption\, or do you need advice on how to use a password manager? Would you like security advice on your personal software\, hardware\, or on precautions when traveling?\n\nBring your questions for a one-to-one session with our trainers. The individual consultations are suitable for small teams or individuals who have specific questions or face security concerns.\n\nWe will connect you with the digital security trainers\, who may contact you before the conference to learn more about your concerns.\n\nTopics:\nHardening your devicesSecuring your accountsSpyware concernsChecking your digital footprintWhatever else you'd like to discuss!Please note: you need to book a time slot in advance! You can do it HERE.
CATEGORIES:NETWORKING
LOCATION:1.16\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:4dce66a78d4563f69fa8ffd6e50d873d
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/4dce66a78d4563f69fa8ffd6e50d873d
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260530T114500Z
DTEND:20260530T130000Z
SUMMARY:Climate data for non-data journalists
DESCRIPTION:You don't necessarily have to be a data journalist to report on climate change using data. As data journalists\, we will explain options available to non-coders. This session is intended to give you a feeling for what you can do yourself with temperature measurement data\, emissions figures\, and tables showing the damage caused by extreme weather events\, and to overcome your fear that working with data is “too complicated.”\n \n In the session\, we will discuss existing databases\, some of which already have built-in filtering and visualization options. Where they don't\, we will explain what the first steps might look like if you can't or don't want to code yourself. We also will address the questions that are important for assessing the quality of a data set. \n \n This session is explicitly not aimed at data journalists\, but at climate journalists who have little or no experience with data but want to know what is possible and what they can do themselves.
CATEGORIES:CLIMATE/ENVIRONMENT
LOCATION:1.04\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:cc66deab4b81a8ad0d1fea1f659f32bc
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/cc66deab4b81a8ad0d1fea1f659f32bc
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260530T114500Z
DTEND:20260530T130000Z
SUMMARY:Copernicus climate change service data buffet: find stories in the data
DESCRIPTION:Behind headlines about record-breaking temperatures\, extreme events affecting millions\, and long-term climate trends reshaping ecosystems and our environment lies a wealth of datasets used to track how our planet is changing and better make sense of these events. Yet navigating these datasets and understanding what they can reliably show is not always straightforward.\n\nThe Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) provides a wide range of open climate datasets covering past\, present\, and future conditions that can support your climate reporting.\n\nIn this session\, you will be guided through the C3S data landscape: where to find key datasets\, how they are built\, what they can (and cannot) tell you\, and common pitfalls to avoid.\n\n
CATEGORIES:CLIMATE/ENVIRONMENT
LOCATION:3.09\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:a4543837b40e70baa987f16f3e4931a4
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/a4543837b40e70baa987f16f3e4931a4
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260530T114500Z
DTEND:20260530T130000Z
SUMMARY:How to pitch biodiversity stories in a news ecosystem that rarely has space for them
DESCRIPTION:This panel explores why biodiversity stories often struggle to find a place in general newsrooms and how to pitch them more effectively.\n\n Two experienced journalists will share practical\, replicable strategies\, including reframing biodiversity as political\, economic\, or investigative stories\; grounding pitches in data\, regulation\, and accountability\; and targeting beyond environmental desks.\n\n If you have had difficulty getting your biodiversity or environmental stories published\, this session offers a chance to exchange experiences\, ask questions\, and learn from journalists who have successfully persuaded editors of the importance of these stories.
CATEGORIES:CLIMATE/ENVIRONMENT
LOCATION:2.04\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:d01c998bfc4bec9cee4a8db825c4a1fd
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/d01c998bfc4bec9cee4a8db825c4a1fd
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260530T114500Z
DTEND:20260530T130000Z
SUMMARY:How to save the planet with nerds
DESCRIPTION:As environmental and climate crises grow more complex\, journalists are evolving to meet the challenge. Across Europe\, reporters are increasingly working alongside scientists - not just as sources but as collaborators- to strengthen their investigations\, boost their methodologies\, and create more impact. This shift is the core of “expert-reviewed journalism” and this panel will explore how it actually works in practice.&nbsp\;\n \n Drawing from investigative projects they were part of\, three seasoned journalists will share how journalism-scientist partnerships are built\, how trust is established\, and how the roles are defined so the day-to-day work is fruitful and dream projects are done. The speakers will discuss practical realities\, nerdy secrets and their lessons learned: how they managed data and workflows\, navigated tensions between disciplines\, and developed shared work practices where both sides work to reach the finish line while respecting each other’s professional lanes.&nbsp\;\n \n Some of the projects that will be mentioned in this talk:&nbsp\;\n\n The Forever Lobbying Project: https://foreverpollution.eu/lobbying/&nbsp\;\n The Green to Grey Project: https://greentogrey.eu/&nbsp\;\n Swampower: https://facta.eu/focus-on/swampower/&nbsp\;\n\n
CATEGORIES:CLIMATE/ENVIRONMENT
LOCATION:Z0.15\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:6818a866e55ef13f24940f14dfde5be9
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/6818a866e55ef13f24940f14dfde5be9
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260530T114500Z
DTEND:20260530T130000Z
SUMMARY:The Fueling Ecocide project: how we handled a mapping exercise of epic proportions
DESCRIPTION:“Fueling Ecocide” is a cross-border\, collaborative data investigation coordinated by EIC (European Investigative Collaborations) and EIF (Environmental Investigative Forum). Over the course of a year\, 13 media outlets across four continents joined forces\, asking a simple but crucial question: how much protected land and sea have we lost globally to oil and gas extraction?\n \n To answer this question\, we embarked on a mapping exercise of epic proportions. Using QGIS and Post-QGIS\, we compared 315\,000 protected areas from all over the world with 15\,000 extraction blocks\, spanning 120 countries.\n \nFor the first time\, this work provides a clear global picture of the damage: 7\,021 protected areas in 99 countries overlap with oil and gas projects. This represents a surface of approximately 690\,000 km²\, just over the size of France\, most of it under internationally recognized protection statuses. Through extensive reporting\, they also identified 763 oil and gas companies involved\, with the largest contributors headquartered in Europe.\n \n In this session\, the reporters involved in the project will take you through the makings of a data-driven global investigation. They will talk you through the trial-and-error process of handling and harmonising an immense geospatial dataset: which tools they used\, which methodological choices they made\, and which obstacles proved the hardest to overcome. They will explain how the team turned this data into impactful stories\, collaborated across the globe\, and what lessons they learned.\n \n&nbsp\;To read more on the project and the story\, go here: https://ecocide.reportersunited.gr/
CATEGORIES:CLIMATE/ENVIRONMENT
LOCATION:3.02\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:92cc592b3ff0b6fc611df29c691e49b6
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/92cc592b3ff0b6fc611df29c691e49b6
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260530T114500Z
DTEND:20260530T130000Z
SUMMARY:Naming the Unsaid: How to navigate the power dynamics in collaborative investigations
DESCRIPTION:Journalists taking part in collaborations want equity and respect alongside impact\, according to a 2025 poll by Lighthouse Reports. But what does that mean on the ground\, and how can journalists advance equity in practical ways? \n\nIn this session moderated by journalist Hazel Sheffield\, Lighthouse managing editor Hui Yee Tan will be joined by journalist and researcher Ruona Meyer. Together they will share the highlights of the survey and discuss its implications as well as practical needs of journalists in collaborations\, and solutions to overcome inequitable relations in collaborative journalism projects. \n\nCome with your own experiences and questions to share with experienced journalists in a safe\, peer-to-peer environment\, and openly discuss the things everyone else might be feeling are better left unsaid.&nbsp\;\n\n
CATEGORIES:CROSS-BORDER
LOCATION:2.03\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:c8b8af4d62fead8a514f77839737f918
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/c8b8af4d62fead8a514f77839737f918
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260530T114500Z
DTEND:20260530T130000Z
SUMMARY:How to use court decisions to build multimedia narratives that enhance human rights
DESCRIPTION:Court decisions are treasure troves of verified facts—but they're often locked in dense legal documents that the public never sees. This session will present a specific methodology for extracting\, contextualizing\, and translating judicial findings into compelling multimedia narratives that serve human rights advocacy\, accountability\, and education. \n\nWe want to present the methodology we developed in the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network in Bosnia and Herzegovina - BIRN BiH - on how to connect court findings into coherent narratives\, translating court-verified facts into accessible\, informative\, and educational content.\n\nWe will use three BIRN BiH developed databases to demonstrate our methodology. Additionally\, we want to present how we used court facts to develop educational tools. Many journalists and human rights documentalists treat court records as supporting evidence for stories. This session will show how court decisions themselves can be the primary story—and how systematic extraction creates accountability infrastructure that outlasts individual articles or projects.
CATEGORIES:DATA JOURNALISM
LOCATION:2.02\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:5bbaef2c298a39c055553e9a76a32319
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/5bbaef2c298a39c055553e9a76a32319
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260530T114500Z
DTEND:20260530T130000Z
SUMMARY:Data Magic made simple: three ways to crunch numbers in spreadsheets
DESCRIPTION:We know that thousands of lines in a dataset can be intimidating\, especially if you’re not a programmer. Spreadsheets can do the heavy lifting — and mastering them is easier than you expect!\n\nIn this session\, we will walk you through three different ways to dive into data using nothing but spreadsheet tools. Along the way\, we’ll show you how to cross-check your calculations\, ensuring your findings are accurate and reliable. Whether you’re a complete beginner or have already used spreadsheets in your work\, you’ll leave with practical skills to handle data confidently without ever touching a line of code.\n\nBring your laptop and join us to discover how easy and powerful data analysis can be! \n
CATEGORIES:DATA SKILLS
LOCATION:Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:2dfdf7a11b41271fe680362a77527db2
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/2dfdf7a11b41271fe680362a77527db2
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260530T114500Z
DTEND:20260530T130000Z
SUMMARY:How to manage mass FOI projects using AI\, vibe coding and verification
DESCRIPTION:Projects involving FOI requests to multiple bodies often create significant challenges\, from different file formats and data trapped in PDFs\, to organisations providing data in different structures and different levels of detail. To get the big picture often requires data extraction\, cleaning\, reshaping\, and checking. \n\nIn this session\, we will share a series of tips and tools used to manage one project — including vibe coding with AI — which can be used to make any multi-response FOI project more efficient and accurate. No prior knowledge is required. By the end of this session\, attendees should be able to design a data structure for an FOI project\, use a range of tools\, including AI\, to extract\, reshape\, clean\, and combine data from FOI responses\, and design a data validation process to check AI outputs. \n\nYou will need a laptop with Google Drive and an account with an AI tool such as ChatGPT\, Gemini\, Claude\, or Copilot. Installing Tabula and Open Refine will help you get more out of the session.
CATEGORIES:DATA SKILLS
LOCATION:3.05\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:e7eac6eb49266d5c017f982193cdaf2c
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/e7eac6eb49266d5c017f982193cdaf2c
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260530T114500Z
DTEND:20260530T130000Z
SUMMARY:Turning raw data into reliable sources: Python for journalists
DESCRIPTION:Have you ever tried to investigate how much groceries or rent in your city really impact people’s budgets? Journalists don’t always get all the data in one place. Often\, we find it in ads\, public announcements\, or different sources\, then clean\, structure\, and track it over time\, compare it with other datasets\, or monitor changes to uncover trends. \n\nThis hands-on workshop teaches journalists how to clean\, transform\, and structure real newsroom data using Python. Participants will learn practical techniques to handle messy data\, including changing data types\, filtering by values or dates\, splitting columns\, labeling and recoding\, calculating averages and percentages\, and extracting quantities from text fields. The session also covers tasks specific to regional datasets\, such as converting scripts from Cyrillic to Latin. \n\nWith these skills\, journalists can analyze grocery prices and compare them with income data or calculate meal costs to report on rising food prices\, examine traffic accident data near schools\, or track public officials’ gifts and benefits. By the end of the workshop\, participants will have concrete tools and workflows to turn raw data into reliable sources ready for investigation and reporting. \n\nTo follow along\, participants should have some experience with Python basics and working with datasets. After attending this session\, participants will be able to turn messy data into clean\, reliable sources\, compare thousands of entries\, and extract insights for investigative stories using Python. Participants should have Python installed on their own computers to follow along. This tutorial can also be accessed via Google Colab\, where most of the steps are similar\, though Python installed locally is the recommended option for a smoother experience.
CATEGORIES:DATA SKILLS
LOCATION:3.04\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:8cdeaf8f42a01334911eef4bc7d51d64
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/8cdeaf8f42a01334911eef4bc7d51d64
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260530T114500Z
DTEND:20260530T130000Z
SUMMARY:Tourism on stolen land: How we found tourist accommodations on Israeli settlements
DESCRIPTION:This talk will show the methodology behind The Guardian’s exclusive investigation into properties advertised as tourist destinations on Airbnb and Booking.com located in Israeli settlements that are illegal under international law. The Guardian found 760 rooms being advertised in hotels\, apartments\, and other holiday rentals in illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank\, as NGOs and activists warned that these companies are violating international law and profiting from war crimes.\n\nIn their investigation\, they used geospatial tools\, like PostGIS and QGIS\, to localise accommodations on a specific geographical area\, and to join these accommodations with shapefiles representing the borders of illegal settlements to identify those based within settlement boundaries. Using OSINT methods and Google Sheets\, they designed a methodology to solve data challenges like duplicate and multi-platform listings\, and listings with approximate locations. \n\nIn this session\, attendees will come up with a robust methodology to find tourist accommodations in any geographical area\, so they can reproduce the method for new stories.
CATEGORIES:INSTANT INSPIRATION
LOCATION:Z1.13 - Aula Hanswijk\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:dc6eb2ccf470f4e2a5969f3719e4d91a
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/dc6eb2ccf470f4e2a5969f3719e4d91a
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260530T114500Z
DTEND:20260530T130000Z
SUMMARY:How to investigate conflicts of interest in science
DESCRIPTION:Industry biases science by funding research projects and organisations\, as well as individual scientists. In this session\, we will explore how to investigate this bias\, presenting different approaches\, story angles\, data sources\, and methods. We will focus on investigations covering food\, tobacco\, environment\, and medicine. The attendees will get an understanding of the importance of commercial influence on science\, ways to investigate the subject\, as well as possible pitfalls.&nbsp\;
CATEGORIES:INVESTIGATIVE METHOD
LOCATION:0.10\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:81e7bab052bfb8f10d89233be280390a
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/81e7bab052bfb8f10d89233be280390a
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260530T114500Z
DTEND:20260530T130000Z
SUMMARY:Who's behind this website?
DESCRIPTION:Reporting online today\, journalists have to battle astroturf campaigns\, fake news sites and sketchy shell companies to find out who is behind the story. It frequently leads to a frustratingly common question: who is behind this website?\n \n Popular tools and approaches to investigating websites have been less reliable lately. There's more opaqueness in areas where there should be more transparency\; crypto payments add a layer of confusion\, and generative AI makes it easy for adversarial actors to operate hundreds of websites.\n \n Using a range of OSINT tools and real-world investigations\, we will walk you through investigating the provenance and ownership of websites: identifying the scope and scale of the network it belongs to — if any? Who’s behind the site\, now and in the past? Who are the main actors promoting this website? Is it AI slop? Are foreign actors likely behind the domain?\n \n While it is not always possible to fully unmask the owner of a site\, using a thorough checklist of tools and techniques that we have used in real-world investigations we can help you make sure to reveal as much as possible about a website\, and potentially uncover important clues. We will also walk you through how to conduct these investigations safely depending on your threat model\, and how to document your findings reliably.\n \n&nbsp\;This session is suitable for beginners and doesn't assume existing technical knowledge.
CATEGORIES:INVESTIGATIVE METHOD
LOCATION:Z1.15 - Aula Donche\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:eaea0a00e19ac28da3da14659c6074df
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/eaea0a00e19ac28da3da14659c6074df
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260530T114500Z
DTEND:20260530T130000Z
SUMMARY:How to FOI in difficult contexts
DESCRIPTION:This presentation will examine various methodologies and share practical tips — as well as common challenges — when working with freedom of information (FOI) requests in “difficult” contexts. These include investigations into closed institutions such as the police or prison system\, requests made under time constraints\, or cases complicated by non-transparent governmental bodies.\n\n Drawing on examples from the presenters’ work in Portugal and Turkey\, we will discuss how to craft precise and effective FOI requests under pressure\, handle incomplete or evasive responses from authorities\, and leverage the human connection to follow up informally and obtain information.\n\n We will also discuss how strategic litigation\, formal complaints to state regulatory bodies\, and public pressure campaigns can be used to compel institutions to release information. We invite FOI practitioners and FOI-curious participants to attend the session and share their own examples of successes (and failures) during the discussion.
CATEGORIES:RIGHT TO INFORMATION/TRANSPARENCY
LOCATION:3.13\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:31ebf317cfc06d3745cfd3552ddf0a17
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/31ebf317cfc06d3745cfd3552ddf0a17
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260530T114500Z
DTEND:20260530T130000Z
SUMMARY:Digital security networking roundtable
DESCRIPTION:Calling all tech‑savvy reporters\, newsroom technologists\, digital‑security and IT staff\, emerging‑threat analysts\, and forensic investigators to connect\, share recent trends\, and swap practical solutions from the field in this casual Dataharvest meetup. Bring a brief update on your (newsroom’s) biggest security challenges or a tool/technique that’s helped your work. Conversations will focus on real‑world risks\, incident response\, and collaboration opportunities. Ideal for anyone responsible for team security\, sensitive reporting\, or infrastructure who wants to build peer relationships and leave with actionable ideas.
CATEGORIES:SAFETY AND SECURITY
LOCATION:Z2.01 - Mediadrôme\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:5f6a00a3a39a93c873de4c3b850f3104
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/5f6a00a3a39a93c873de4c3b850f3104
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260530T114500Z
DTEND:20260530T130000Z
SUMMARY:Not a chatbot: A hand-drawn case for putting primary sources first in designing AI tools for investigative journalism
DESCRIPTION:Every slide in this presentation is hand-drawn. So is the thinking behind Cheatsheet\, The New York Times' AI tool built from scratch for investigative reporters. We'll show what we built\, in which cases we ditched off-the-shelf AI\, and how we tested it with non-technical journalists. \n\nThe presentation will offer a practical roadmap for use cases (needle-in-a-haystack document search\, mass translation\, statistical analysis) plus an honest Dos and Don'ts list for AI in journalism and a first look at our open-source plans.
CATEGORIES:STORYTELLING
LOCATION:1.16\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:71455e7279f4abb791231a9f9df4d11e
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/71455e7279f4abb791231a9f9df4d11e
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260530T130000Z
DTEND:20260530T133000Z
SUMMARY:Coffee break
DESCRIPTION:Coffee is served in the Mediaforum (ground floor\, lobby area) and on the third floor.
CATEGORIES:ORGANISATIONAL
LOCATION:Mediaforum\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:16a5751b1b450ecef2453b4965bac439
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/16a5751b1b450ecef2453b4965bac439
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260530T133000Z
DTEND:20260530T144500Z
SUMMARY:I tracked how the EU’s €26 billion Just Transition Fund is really being spent (saunas! axe-throwing!) – find stories for your country\, too
DESCRIPTION:We can all agree that Europe’s green energy transition is critical. But the transition has to be fair and not leave anyone behind. Therefore\, the EU’s €26.7 billion Just Transition Fund – which is intended to support communities shift away from fossil fuel industries\, such as coal mining\, to greener economies – is hugely important. But\, surprise\, surprise\, those crucial billions do not appear to be going where the EU promised they would. In this presentation\, we will explain how our cross-border team dug into the fund – FOIs\, sources in the European Parliament\, following the money – with the aim of helping you to do exactly the same and find your own exclusives.
CATEGORIES:CLIMATE/ENVIRONMENT
LOCATION:2.04\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:d366f18be3654cb0636614a0f5609c8d
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/d366f18be3654cb0636614a0f5609c8d
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260530T133000Z
DTEND:20260530T140000Z
SUMMARY:Tracking fire in a hotter Europe: Methods for long-term wildfire data
DESCRIPTION:As wildfires become more frequent and intense across Europe\, attracting growing public and media attention\, journalists need solid methods to analyze fire data over time. But building a dataset is only the beginning. This session goes beyond the story to explore how to sustain and adapt a data project over more than a decade\, using Civio’s Spain in Flames as a case study.\n\nIn this session\, we'll share best practices for long-term data journalism: designing datasets that can evolve\, working with fragmented official sources\, handling changes in definitions\, revising past data responsibly\, and deciding what comparisons remain valid over time. The talk covers both data processing workflows and visualization strategies that hold up as your project grows.\n\nIn the context of increasingly severe wildfire seasons\, this session offers replicable methods and tips for building climate data projects that last and that can inform responsible reporting for years to come.
CATEGORIES:CLIMATE/ENVIRONMENT
LOCATION:3.09\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:3e11d0a94b36f5b6acb1166f131160e0
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/3e11d0a94b36f5b6acb1166f131160e0
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260530T133000Z
DTEND:20260530T144500Z
SUMMARY:Bad practice: investigating medical malpractice across borders
DESCRIPTION:Trusting your doctor is something you should be able to take for granted. Bad Practice\, a collaboration co-led by OCCRP\, The Times of London\, and VG of Norway\, exposed a European health scandal that has brought that into question.\n\n The project identified at least 100 doctors who had been banned from practicing by medical regulators in one country but remained licensed to work in another. The stories have had a major impact\, with governments across Europe and the European Commission pledging to crack down on the issue. \n\nWhile a lot of cross-border projects rely on a central leak\, this project required us to build a dataset from scratch by obtaining as many lists of doctors' licenses and doctors' medical disciplines as possible. This session will set out how we were able to make these findings\, and the lessons we learned from building our database from fragmented records across jurisdictions\, and then\, once we identified likely matches\, how we proved these doctors were still practicing. We would explain what went well\, what didn't\, and our ambitions for the future of the project as we add more countries from around the world to our database.\n\n Attendees need no prior knowledge\, just an interest in how to build cross-border investigations into regulated professions.
CATEGORIES:CROSS-BORDER
LOCATION:Z0.10\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:a7f1c374621f185b5845d0551d28f0c8
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/a7f1c374621f185b5845d0551d28f0c8
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260530T133000Z
DTEND:20260530T144500Z
SUMMARY:Old trade\, new playbook: Investigating transnational narco-trafficking
DESCRIPTION:This panel will delve into the methods behind a months-long cross-border investigation that painstakingly revealed the industrialisation of the new “drop-off” method of cocaine trafficking in the Mediterranean.\n \n What began with a single (but very dramatic) 2022 police operation involving two vessels near Sicily evolved into the reconstruction by the journalists of a transnational criminal system linking Latin American suppliers\, Turkish traffickers\, and European mafia. The journalists will explain how they moved from isolated events to identifying a coordinated fleet and uncovering the logistical role of key actors operating across jurisdictions.\n \n The session will also focus on practical techniques: combining open-source maritime tracking data (AIS) with judicial records\, seizure reports\, and corporate registries to map connections between ships\, companies\, and individuals. Journalists will discuss how cross-referencing vessel movements with court documents and port data revealed patterns invisible to authorities at the time\, as well as how interviews with prosecutors\, law enforcement\, and sources in multiple countries helped verify findings and fill gaps.\n \n The panel will offer a step-by-step look at how to build a solid investigation that combines innovative data work with traditional reporting to expose complex criminal systems even before law enforcement fully connects the dots.
CATEGORIES:CROSS-BORDER
LOCATION:1.16\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:e2ded7b30bd7749dbd6801d2311ae00f
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/e2ded7b30bd7749dbd6801d2311ae00f
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260530T133000Z
DTEND:20260530T144500Z
SUMMARY:Uncovering the organized economy of image-based sexual abuse
DESCRIPTION:Non-consensual intimate content sharing is a growing problem\, disproportionately affecting women and marginalized people\, and increasingly amplified by deepfakes and automated tools. What looks like chaotic “leaks” online is often a structured\, organized\, and profitable ecosystem.\n\n In this session\, we’ll show how we uncovered networks that steal\, share\, and monetize image-based sexual abuse. You’ll see the technical approaches we use: tracking digital traces\, mapping channels\, analyzing hosting setups\, entering abusive groups safely\, and spotting patterns in offshore companies. We’ll also explain how to map networks of abusers by understanding their ecosystem of filehosters\, cloud services\, and CDN layers.\n \n Finally\, we’ll share practical tips to safeguard your well-being when investigating abusive material. By the end\, participants will be able to turn overwhelming\, chaotic content into actionable insights\, exposing the organized systems that enable and profit from abuse.
CATEGORIES:CROSS-BORDER
LOCATION:3.02\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:4b17ab9161e31b2aff2c457b6b3adc55
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/4b17ab9161e31b2aff2c457b6b3adc55
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260530T133000Z
DTEND:20260530T140000Z
SUMMARY:Hack your CMS (and the rest of the web!): Tampermonkey 101
DESCRIPTION:Tampermonkey is an age-old browser extension that allows you to inject scripts and stylesheets into any web page\, turning the web into your personal playground. We'll look at how to customize your CMS with DIY features\, add "Download all" buttons to paginated websites\, automate tedious processes like filling out forms and redesign websites however you'd like. Best of all\, Tampermonkey scripts are saveable and sharable\, allowing you to give other members of your newsroom superpowers without fiddling with distributing extensions or asking them to run Python scripts. To follow along\, participants should be able to install extensions in their web browser of choice.
CATEGORIES:DATA SKILLS
LOCATION:3.05\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:273d06b1f169ff78b440c429e7ee0358
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/273d06b1f169ff78b440c429e7ee0358
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260530T133000Z
DTEND:20260530T140000Z
SUMMARY:Make a publication-ready static map with QGIS
DESCRIPTION:In this demo\, participants will learn how to create a static map in QGIS that is ready for publication. The session will cover setting map dimensions\, selecting a basemap\, adding geospatial data\, and incorporating key design elements such as text annotations\, a north arrow\, a scale bar\, an inset map\, and images. Participants will also learn how to export the finished map as a JPG.\n\nDownload and install QGIS on your laptop before the session and confirm that it opens properly. MacBook users who run into security warnings when opening QGIS can follow the workaround here
CATEGORIES:DATA SKILLS
LOCATION:2.03\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:543ff4725e39c26127ebab3621226eeb
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/543ff4725e39c26127ebab3621226eeb
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260530T133000Z
DTEND:20260530T140000Z
SUMMARY:One template\, many stories: Parameterized reports with Quarto
DESCRIPTION:Learn how to build reusable report templates in Quarto that generate multiple outputs (PDF\, HTML\, Word documents) from a single source document. By defining parameters — such as a region\, time period\, or data source — you can produce dozens or even hundreds of tailored reports without duplicating code or copy-pasting results. \n\nThis is especially useful for cross-border investigations\, where partners share a common dataset\, but each team needs a report focused on its own country. Build the analysis once\, then render a customized version for each partner with only their slice of the data. \n\nTo follow along\, participants should have basic familiarity with Quarto\, R Markdown\, or Jupyter notebooks\, and some experience writing code in R or Python.
CATEGORIES:DATA SKILLS
LOCATION:1.04\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:5fc8a7c8e4c947f5d440112d4db86056
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/5fc8a7c8e4c947f5d440112d4db86056
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260530T133000Z
DTEND:20260530T144500Z
SUMMARY:When numbers are missing: Building your own datasets to investigate the police
DESCRIPTION:Police work is notoriously difficult to investigate. While police actions directly affect fundamental rights and guide politics and law-making\, official data on their influence is scarce.\n \nIn this session\, we will share some tools and methodologies on how to investigate the police sources. We will draw on more than ten years of investigations into different aspects of police violence and state abuse of power in Germany. We will also show how the data-driven journalism tools can help to make the underlying structures more visible\, and present our recent investigation into police unions in Germany: who they are\, want they stand for and how they influence the public debate and politics. We pieced together data from different sources and combined it with investigative journalism to draw the full picture.\n \nWe want to show how it is possible to do a data-driven investigative story despite missing data. We will focus on the following questions:\n \n - How to build your own datasets when no official statistics exist? Which public data sources about the police are available? Which data can we get from ministry inquiries? What about social media? \n - How to clean up\, classify and analyze the data? Which tools are helpful in combining manual and automated workflows? \n - How to tell a complex data-driven story without this one headline? What are judicial and editorial hurdles when publishing a sensitive topic? \n - What can investigative and data journalists gain from close collaboration? What worked well? What would we do differently?
CATEGORIES:INSTANT INSPIRATION
LOCATION:Z1.15 - Aula Donche\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:20c9a56041e842c6a89c1e48b1c0da73
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/20c9a56041e842c6a89c1e48b1c0da73
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260530T133000Z
DTEND:20260530T144500Z
SUMMARY:So…you want to investigate crypto?
DESCRIPTION:Analysts estimate that at least $28 billion tied to illicit activity has flowed into cryptocurrency exchanges over the last two years. ICIJ's Coin Laundry investigation\, in collaboration with 37 media partners\, exposed part of this shadow financial system\, collecting dozens of cryptocurrency wallet addresses and uncovering hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of illicit funds linked to suspected criminals\, including a Cambodian conglomerate that facilitated money laundering for hackers and scam compound operators. \n\nIn this hands-on session\, the panelists will explain how any reporter can use open source resources as well as advanced techniques to investigate major crypto exchanges\, find leads\, and "follow the crypto." The session will blend an intro showing the kinds of stories you can do on crypto\, starting from scratch\, the kinds of tools you can use\, and then show how we use those tools to compile the data for analysis.
CATEGORIES:INVESTIGATIVE METHOD
LOCATION:Z1.13 - Aula Hanswijk\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:0fb6d1dc4006947b94909078f4dd53f6
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/0fb6d1dc4006947b94909078f4dd53f6
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260530T133000Z
DTEND:20260530T144500Z
SUMMARY:FOI meet-up: presentation of a cross-border guide
DESCRIPTION:This informal session is intended to bring together journalists who use access to documents procedures within European Institutions and member states. It is the second (in-person) meeting of the informal network of these journalists since it was launched at Dataharvest 2024\, but it is open to all journalists and researchers with knowledge of the right to information & access to documents anywhere in Europe. During the meeting\, we will present a cross-border guide\, a handy resource for journalists making access to information requests to governments and official bodies across borders in different European countries and with the European Union institutions. The guide is meant to provide basic information for each country\, such as how to make requests\, timelines\, and points of contact for each country if assistance is required.
CATEGORIES:RIGHT TO INFORMATION/TRANSPARENCY
LOCATION:Z2.01 - Mediadrôme\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:607e4123acc25ba665bafa5cb4c7d727
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/607e4123acc25ba665bafa5cb4c7d727
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260530T133000Z
DTEND:20260530T144500Z
SUMMARY:Crossing the borders safely: securing devices\, data and sources
DESCRIPTION:Are you working on cross-border investigations that lead you to physically cross a border? Are you crossing borders with devices that hold information on your sources? Do you know what data is stored on your phone and how it could be accessed at a border? If this is you and you want to find out how best to protect yourself\, then this session is for you!\n\nYour devices hold a significant amount of information on you and your sources. At a border\, this data could be accessed\, copied and stored\, putting you and others at risk. Join us for this 75-minute session\,&nbsp\;organised by ACOS Alliance\, where you will be given clear\, practical guidance to help you navigate the uncertainty around securing your data at the border.&nbsp\;
CATEGORIES:SAFETY AND SECURITY
LOCATION:2.02\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:454246b1e79bd9cc0f706205f87b73ab
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/454246b1e79bd9cc0f706205f87b73ab
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260530T133000Z
DTEND:20260530T144500Z
SUMMARY:You received a leak\, now what? A hands-on OPSEC simulation
DESCRIPTION:Receiving a noteworthy tip is an achievement in itself\, but it's almost never the end of the story. Where does your Signal application live? How can you safely share and store leaked documents? Oh\, and what if they are -- gasp --malware? This is where the concept of OPSEC (Operational Security) comes into play.\n\nHowever\, discussing OPSEC practices can sometimes feel too detached from the reality of a working journalist. In this session\, we will strive to make things more grounded. We'll conduct a live simulation of a leak throughout its lifecycle. We'll discuss OPSEC in practice and demonstrate how to use:- a hardened phone and PC OS (GrapheneOS / QubesOS)\, and- some lesser-known security and privacy tools (e.g.\, Dangerzone\, Orbot\, BlinkComparison)\nFinally\, we'll go beyond mere tool usage and share tips and lessons learned from past OPSEC failures and wins.\n\nThis is an intermediate session on the subject of security hygiene. We don't assume any background in engineering or security\, and it should be approachable to anyone familiar with some basic concepts (encryption\, anonymity\, threat modeling) and tools (Signal\, Tor)\, which we will use as the foundation for the rest of the demonstration.
CATEGORIES:SAFETY AND SECURITY
LOCATION:3.13\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:eb5677d94fbf49af8905bd3103903547
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/eb5677d94fbf49af8905bd3103903547
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260530T141500Z
DTEND:20260530T144500Z
SUMMARY:Beyond data cleaning: Enhancing OpenRefine with LLM
DESCRIPTION:Data journalism has always relied on clean\, structured data\; but cleaning messy datasets remains one of the most time-consuming parts of the workflow. Enter OpenRefine\, our old buddy for data wrangling\, now enhanced by Large Language Models (LLMs). \n\n In this 20-minute session\, we explore how combining OpenRefine’s powerful transformation capabilities with modern AI unlocks new possibilities for journalists. Using the open-source LLM extension for OpenRefine\, we’ll demonstrate practical workflows for: \n- Automated Enrichment: Extracting entities\, categorizing content\, and enriching records using natural language prompts. \n- Smart Disambiguation: Resolving inconsistencies and matching fuzzy data with AI-assisted reconciliation. \n- Rapid Prototyping: Turning raw\, unstructured text into structured datasets ready for investigation\n\nWhy This Matters Now: Journalists are increasingly working with large\, messy datasets\, from leaked documents to public records.\n\nWhile LLMs offer powerful analysis\, they often lack precision on structured data. OpenRefine provides that precision. Together\, they create a workflow that is both scalable and auditable\; critical for investigative reporting where accuracy is non-negotiable. \n\n What Attendees Will Take Away:\n- A clear understanding of how to integrate LLMs into existing OpenRefine workflows. \n- Practical examples relevant to journalistic investigations (entity extraction\, classification\, enrichment). \n\nTo attend this session\, participants should have experience with data cleaning
CATEGORIES:DATA SKILLS
LOCATION:1.04\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:feff88101e62c260e69486fc32fd7823
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/feff88101e62c260e69486fc32fd7823
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260530T141500Z
DTEND:20260530T144500Z
SUMMARY:From 007 to n8n - build your own no-code AI Agents
DESCRIPTION:With so-called low-code platforms like n8n\, you can quickly click together programs that would otherwise require tedious Python coding. And you can integrate LLMs at various points to\, for example\, extract information from texts or summarize content. This allows you to build complex workflows. Receive a Teams message from an agent when a nearby river level approaches extreme values? No problem! Automatically monitor the police website for accident reports and generate suggestions for brief news items? With n8n\, this can be automated quickly. This workshop provides an introduction to the free platform n8n. No prior knowledge is expected.
CATEGORIES:DATA SKILLS
LOCATION:2.03\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:9d34829d0e4c698171aeec3942305061
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/9d34829d0e4c698171aeec3942305061
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260530T141500Z
DTEND:20260530T144500Z
SUMMARY:No download button? Getting web data without writing a scraper
DESCRIPTION:Journalists often run into data that is visible on a website but impossible to download directly: a table buried in a government page\, a list of public records\, or search results that change with every query. Writing a full scraper can be time-consuming and technically demanding for what is often a one-time task.\n\n This session introduces three lightweight approaches that cover most of these cases: reading a table directly from a page using pandas\, downloading raw HTML and parsing it into a dataframe and pulling data through network requests. These techniques are practical tools for everyday newsroom situations. Participants will take home a GitHub repository with a working notebook to try on their own data\, though some adaptation will be needed to apply it to different websites.\n\nThe three approaches vary in complexity. Basic Python knowledge is enough to follow along\, but participants with more experience will be able to go further\, and the code can be adapted with the help of an LLM.
CATEGORIES:DATA SKILLS
LOCATION:3.05\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:274fdd9ceb2455787636e3fa49b8d3f1
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/274fdd9ceb2455787636e3fa49b8d3f1
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260530T144500Z
DTEND:20260530T151500Z
SUMMARY:Coffee break
DESCRIPTION:Coffee is served in the Mediaforum (ground floor\, lobby area) and on the third floor.
CATEGORIES:ORGANISATIONAL
LOCATION:Mediaforum\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:802e50c21125c11f38146254fd1ca9ee
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/802e50c21125c11f38146254fd1ca9ee
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260530T151500Z
DTEND:20260530T163000Z
SUMMARY:Which schools are the most exposed to pesticides in your country? How to investigate with data\, maps and scientists
DESCRIPTION:In this session\, we’ll show you how we approached a sensitive topic: mapping the potential exposure of all schools to the use of pesticides from surrounding agricultural activities. We will explain &nbsp\;how - working with scientists - we came up with a robust methodology\, &nbsp\;found the data we needed and then crunched it to tell us where to go to make truly data-driven reporting on the ground. &nbsp\;\n\nThis investigation\, published in Le Monde in December 2025\, has sparked a lot of national and local interest thanks to its interactive map. Attendees will leave the session with a clear step-by-step guide to get started and adapt the ambition of the investigation to their own capacity. Feel free to bring with you any datasets that would help to map similar issues in your country. \n\nYou can read the main story in English here\nFree access to the map in French here\n\n
CATEGORIES:CLIMATE/ENVIRONMENT
LOCATION:Z1.15 - Aula Donche\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:2939607011d2597e362621e045b5d41b
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/2939607011d2597e362621e045b5d41b
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260530T151500Z
DTEND:20260530T163000Z
SUMMARY:Academic complicity on Palestine: Crowdsourcing and maintaining an actionable database
DESCRIPTION:Across Europe\, university staff and students have been challenging their institutions' complicity in oppression and occupation in the Palestinian West Bank and genocide in Gaza. This has led to numerous research efforts from ad-hoc coalitions at universities across Europe uncovering their own university's ties to institutions engaging in and enabling this violence\, as well as an uptick in interest in existing research\, mostly done by actors not in establishment academia.\n\nAcademic Complicity (academiccomplicity.eu) is a mapping project collating the most recent research on this and displaying it in a form usable by journalists\, activists and the public. The first database was set up for the Netherlands in Summer 2024 and has since spread to Belgium\, Germany\, France\, and Norway. It is currently expanding to Denmark and\, in late May\, we will have published a new database on Horizon Europe collaborations across Europe.\n\nIn this session\, we will talk about how we ensured safety and anonymity of our sources and how this affected our decisions\; how we maintain the volunteer-run database\; how we verify the data. We will discuss our design decision and rationale based on these factors and what lessons we learned from maintaining a database like this. This session is useful to journalists working in the theme of activist repression as well as those who want to build up databases via crowdsourcing.&nbsp\;\n\n\n\n
CATEGORIES:CROSS-BORDER
LOCATION:2.02\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:8ed36bafc755e6d473c7b1c6275fd498
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/8ed36bafc755e6d473c7b1c6275fd498
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260530T151500Z
DTEND:20260530T163000Z
SUMMARY:Darcula Unmasked: Investigating Chinese cybercrime and scam operations
DESCRIPTION:Hundreds of thousands of Europeans were tricked after receiving text messages on their phone claiming they had missed a payment at a toll road or that they needed to pay a fee for a parcel they ordered. Who is behind it? \n \n In this session\, we will share the methods that led us to unmasking the person calling himself “Darcula” - the lead developer of one of the major Chinese phishing-as-a-service platforms. The software Darcula created\, called Magic Cat\, is used by hundreds of scammers worldwide. \n \n The presentation will also go into analysing a large throve of victim data shared by security researchers\, re-constructing the phishing software\, and infiltrating Telegram groups. The OSINT section will go into detail about using technical data sources and leveraging visual cues in photos shared by the criminals. \n \n This investigation was led by NRK (the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation) in collaboration with Germany's public broadcaster ARD and Le Monde. \n \n Come to this session to learn more about Chinese cybercrime and how to investigate it\, as well as hear more about the data trove the NRK journalists still have that might be relevant to your country. \n \n The stories (in English) can be read here: \n https://www.nrk.no/spesial/inside-the-scam-network-1.17399135\n https://www.nrk.no/spesial/the-hunt-for-darcula-1.17399157
CATEGORIES:CROSS-BORDER
LOCATION:Z1.13 - Aula Hanswijk\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:50ac6835a081005c404ed6b134d6fe38
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/50ac6835a081005c404ed6b134d6fe38
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260530T151500Z
DTEND:20260530T160000Z
SUMMARY:No data\, no story? Generate them. Citizen science and social research for investigative data journalism
DESCRIPTION:Investigating data-driven stories on environmental health\, long-term pollution\, or biodiversity loss often means facing a structural problem: the data don’t exist\, or have never been systematically collected\, not even by public institutions. In these cases\, the only option is to produce them from scratch.\n\nThis session presents a journalism-led methodology that integrates citizen science and social research as core tools of investigative data journalism. Developed through collaboration with scientists while preserving editorial independence\, the approach is grounded in concrete case studies and practical experience.\n\nDrawing on projects conducted with communities exposed to chronic industrial pollution\, environmental degradation\, and conflict\, the session shares practical tools\, workflows\, and lessons learned for designing\, collecting\, validating\, and using original data when datasets are missing.\n\nParticipants will learn how to:\n-design and run a citizen science project for investigative reporting\, from framing research questions and defining indicators\, to engaging and training citizen scientists\, data collection\, quality control\, and journalistic use of the data- establish effective collaboration with scientists during research design\, data collection\, and verification through shared protocols and a memorandum of understanding\n- design a rigorous social research process to investigate community needs and priorities using surveys\, interviews\, and qualitative methods\, including collecting and analysing texts to identify trends\, patterns\, recurring themes\, and undercovered issues\n- integrate community-generated data\, social research findings\, and scientific measurements into original investigations and engaging stories.\n\nThe session also demonstrates how this approach can generate multiple\, high-impact outputs: original investigative reporting based on co-produced data\, policy briefs grounded in empirical evidence\, and social research outputs in scientific journals.
CATEGORIES:DATA JOURNALISM
LOCATION:1.16\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:11ecdb55f51a6a9dcf4e9d26ecfaf0ae
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/11ecdb55f51a6a9dcf4e9d26ecfaf0ae
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260530T151500Z
DTEND:20260530T154500Z
SUMMARY:"The Mechelen Connection" (Escape Room)
DESCRIPTION:There's a (genuine) story hiding in plain sight. Using a mixture of OSINT skills and clues hidden in the room\, you will have 30 minutes to get to the story. First come\, first served\, max 3-4 teams per session competing to get the exit code and get out!
CATEGORIES:DATA SKILLS
LOCATION:3.04\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:a0dc8318584585304a6500c613b7fca3
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/a0dc8318584585304a6500c613b7fca3
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260530T151500Z
DTEND:20260530T154500Z
SUMMARY:How to look up named entities in text – fast
DESCRIPTION:Have you ever stumbled at the problem "I have a bunch of documents\, give me all the politicians named in it"? If yes\, you know the hassle: NER is noisy\, and to qualify names (Is this a politician or not) requires external services\, APIs or a large language model.\n\nOr\, use "Juditha": It's an open source poor mans entity extraction and resolution tool. No external service required\, just put in your list of names and then extract them from arbitrary unstructured content. Works on any laptop\, super fast. Of course it works with names of criminals\, too. Or company names. Whatever you need.\n\n In this session I'll walk through how to use the "juditha" command line and how to populate it with names of interest. At the end\, anyone can take it home to detect the names that matter in your material.\n\nKnowledge about how to use a command line and install python packages helps. If you ever suffered the problems about named entity recognition\, you'll have even more fun.\n\n
CATEGORIES:DATA SKILLS
LOCATION:Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:b513ed279def16faa132f97987409279
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/b513ed279def16faa132f97987409279
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260530T151500Z
DTEND:20260530T154500Z
SUMMARY:Mining data from unstructured documents
DESCRIPTION:You have a folder of documents and you want to extract data points from each one. And the data isn't in a structured table with neat rows and columns either. Here's where string functions and regular expressions can help. The demonstration will be in R but the skills are generic to all languages.
CATEGORIES:DATA SKILLS
LOCATION:3.05\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:3373f11132e108a1baa72adb63d278b2
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/3373f11132e108a1baa72adb63d278b2
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260530T151500Z
DTEND:20260530T163000Z
SUMMARY:Investigating algorithms by land\, sea and air
DESCRIPTION:Algorithms are everywhere\, but they're still extremely opaque. They affect us more and more\, and often have a meaningful impact on our daily lives—especially when the public administration uses them. But it's incredibly hard to 1) get data and information about how they work\, 2) understand it\, and 3) explain it in a simple\, impactful way. \n\nIn this session\, we'll share different techniques that Civio has used to research and report on algorithms. We'll look into the ways in which one can crack open the black box of algorithms\, from FOIA requests to court battles\, reverse engineering to scientific reports. We will also explain how we analyse their outputs and how we make reporting that is often technical and complex more palatable for our readers. In the presentation\, we will mention some particular examples from our reporting on algorithms\, such as exposing facial recognition in doctor offices\, algorithm bias when it comes to cancer detection\, and a silly lie detector used by police. \n\nWe'll also talk about how we went to the Supreme Court to get the code of a system which decides -wrongly- who receives subsidies\, and who doesn't. This session is suitable for beginners - you don't need to have had any experience reporting on algorithms in order to attend and follow the session.
CATEGORIES:INVESTIGATIVE METHOD
LOCATION:3.02\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:41fda9c0cd5642701c9078b9ff8a05f9
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/41fda9c0cd5642701c9078b9ff8a05f9
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260530T151500Z
DTEND:20260530T163000Z
SUMMARY:Reporting from space: Using satellite images for investigations when access is limited
DESCRIPTION:In this session\, we will show how satellite imagery can support investigations into war\, militarisation\, and environmental changes. The methods discussed are applicable to climate investigations such as land-use change\, infrastructure expansion\, and environmental damage. \n\nWe will cover: \n -Getting the image: How to choose between open and commercial satellite imagery based on editorial needs\, such as resolution\, timeliness\, licensing\, and costs—and what to be aware of when downloading an image.\n-Analysing the image: Measuring distances and object sizes in images (e.g.\, airplanes)\, verifying the time an image was taken\, and merging different satellite images.\n-Presenting the image: Tools to tell stories with satellite images so that readers can understand them intuitively—for example\, through before–and–after comparisons\, annotations\, colour correction\, sliders\, GIFs\, and scrolly-telling\, with a focus on mobile-first presentation. \n\nThe session is intended for reporters\, editors\, and visual journalists. No prior experience with satellite imagery is required.
CATEGORIES:INVESTIGATIVE METHOD
LOCATION:0.10\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:16217a68ae89dc3a877c7ae3eee1281f
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/16217a68ae89dc3a877c7ae3eee1281f
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260530T151500Z
DTEND:20260530T163000Z
SUMMARY:Investigative journalism on health: networking roundtable
DESCRIPTION:Health is one of the most cross-border beats there is. Pharmaceutical companies\, regulators\, clinical trials\, food and tobacco lobbying\, environmental hazards\, patient harm – none of it stops at borders. Whether you've been on the health beat for years\, have just started chasing your first lead\, or are simply drawn to the topic and wondering where to begin\, come and meet others working in the same space. The goal is to leave the session knowing a few people you'd genuinely want to team up with on the next investigation.
CATEGORIES:NETWORKING
LOCATION:Z2.01 - Mediadrôme\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:bdcacc90cbf97172fddfa1d125390997
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/bdcacc90cbf97172fddfa1d125390997
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260530T160000Z
DTEND:20260530T163000Z
SUMMARY:"The Mechelen Connection" (Escape Room - 2nd session)
DESCRIPTION:There's a (genuine) story hiding in plain sight. Using a mixture of OSINT skills and clues hidden in the room\, you will have 30 minutes to get to the story. First come\, first served\, max 3-4 teams per session competing to get the exit code and get out!
CATEGORIES:DATA SKILLS
LOCATION:3.04\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:eaf9634375600415a06ce89f42ed35f0
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/eaf9634375600415a06ce89f42ed35f0
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260530T160000Z
DTEND:20260530T163000Z
SUMMARY:Bluetooth Trackers for Investigations
DESCRIPTION:Bluetooth trackers can help you develop interesting investigations. This team started using trackers while following two cars from Germany to Siberia\, then a parcel from Prague to Moscow. In late 2024\, they tracked more than 230 letters sent within Germany\, using up to 80 trackers simultaneously. For almost 18 months they tracked 24 items of electronic waste from Germany to places as far afield as Pakistan.\n\nIn this session\, the team will share the learnings and the technology behind all these projects and the scraping tools and software behind them. They will also bring some trackers and covers to inspire colleagues to use these devices\, and share lessons learnt from ongoing collaborations in various countries where other journalists and newsrooms licensed them to help them move their projects forward.
CATEGORIES:DATA SKILLS
LOCATION:Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:fae33256ab3bb40e4fe3201bad917799
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/fae33256ab3bb40e4fe3201bad917799
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260530T160000Z
DTEND:20260530T163000Z
SUMMARY:Modern document processing with Natural PDF
DESCRIPTION:Say hello to Natural PDF\, a new Python library for wrangling PDFs that's focused on usability and feature-completeness. Process PDFs with scraping-like selectors and spatially-aware queries\, asking for "the red alphanumeric string" or "the content below the big Summary header." Beyond the basics\, Natural PDF is also full of modern conveniences like table detection\, multiple OCR engines\, and citation-aware LLM data extraction.\n\nTo get the most out of this session\, participants should have experience with Python and struggling with terrible PDFs.
CATEGORIES:DATA SKILLS
LOCATION:3.05\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:49b8ad58a74a0ad5e87799ddac3218e2
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/49b8ad58a74a0ad5e87799ddac3218e2
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260531T070000Z
DTEND:20260531T073000Z
SUMMARY:Coffee
DESCRIPTION:Coffee is served in the Mediaforum (ground floor\, lobby area) and on the third floor.
CATEGORIES:ORGANISATIONAL
LOCATION:Mediaforum\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:337f57af8f5c0ef7eee42f04a00f9af4
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/337f57af8f5c0ef7eee42f04a00f9af4
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260531T073000Z
DTEND:20260531T084500Z
SUMMARY:From satellite Images to a story: How to visualise change and tell a story with Copernicus & Flourish
DESCRIPTION:Want to see change from space and turn it into an interactive story? In this hands-on session\, participants will use Copernicus Browser to locate areas of interest\, upload their borders\, and export high-resolution images. These images will then be turned into interactive sliders in Flourish to clearly show environmental changes\, infrastructure expansion\, or land-use transformations over time.\n\n Using a real investigative example from a mountain area in Greece that was untouched in 2022 and became an active wind farm construction zone by 2025\, participants will see how this workflow avoids common challenges\, simplifies the process\, and produces accurate visual comparisons.\n\n The session also shows how before-and-after sliders can guide field reporting and support verification\, helping journalists confirm that what is observed on the ground matches remote analysis. By the end of the session\, participants will have learned a practical\, reproducible workflow to turn satellite imagery into accurate visual comparisons that strengthen investigative storytelling and field verification\, without requiring complex satellite analysis skills.\n\n Prerequisites: \n\n- To attend this session\, no prior knowledge is required. Familiarity with QGIS\, Copernicus Browser\, or Flourish is helpful but not necessary.\n\n- Tools: Participants should create a free Copernicus Browser account: https://www.copernicus.eu/en\n\n- Participants should create a free Flourish account: https://app.flourish.studio/login\n\n Optional: install QGIS for further exploration of satellite imagery (not required for the workflow demonstrated): https://qgis.org/download/
CATEGORIES:CLIMATE/ENVIRONMENT
LOCATION:3.04\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:ceceb2a147b527c002adf15761618447
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/ceceb2a147b527c002adf15761618447
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260531T073000Z
DTEND:20260531T084500Z
SUMMARY:Update your google skills
DESCRIPTION:Google search is all the same since 1996? No\, Google does change over time\, but so slow that most people will not notice. The session will give you an update about recent changes (i.e. in the last 4-5 years)\, will point at workarounds where necessary and will show you what is really new and useful. Towards the end of the session it will give you some advanced Google dorks for immediate journalistic use\, but also inspire you to build your own dorks and how to combine LLMs and Google searches.\n\nTo follow along\, the participants should have used google operators before. After attending the session\, you will have an up to date knowledge of Googles web search and other tools for journalistic use.\n\nA Google account can be useful\, but is not a must-have.
CATEGORIES:DATA SKILLS
LOCATION:3.05\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:8fa78ff76ef93233c48e364a9571c0cf
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/8fa78ff76ef93233c48e364a9571c0cf
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260531T073000Z
DTEND:20260531T084500Z
SUMMARY:Tools\, methods and tips to track networks and influencers on TikTok\, from the elections to the incel networks
DESCRIPTION:Investigace.cz has been monitoring TikTok in the Czech Republic for foreign influence operations for several years. and has learned to track the Czech TikTok space systematically.\n\n In this hands-on session\, they will share the lessons learnt with the participants:\n \n-How to use scraping-as-a-service tools to collect TikTok data without coding\n-How to decode TikTok URL hashes to extract hidden metadata (such as exact publication timestamps)\n-How to work with the TikTok Research API\n-How to think beyond simple metrics (views\, likes\, followers) and understand what TikTok data can and cannot tell you about influence operations\n \n Participants will leave with practical skills and a realistic understanding of the limits of TikTok analysis. One doesn't need to be a data journalist to attend this session\, but an understanding of how scraping works and basic data skills will be helpful!\n\n\n
CATEGORIES:INVESTIGATIVE METHOD
LOCATION:Z1.15 - Aula Donche\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:0b87d74d5b0360f35b22c5c4bfc78e63
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/0b87d74d5b0360f35b22c5c4bfc78e63
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260531T073000Z
DTEND:20260531T084500Z
SUMMARY:Unlocking the apps: How can you scrap data\, trace leaks on mobile and turn it into stories
DESCRIPTION:Much of modern life is mediated through phones and apps. To investigate anything they touch\, you need to understand where these apps' data comes from\, what they're sharing\, and with whom. But while network forensics & scraping for the web have received plenty of attention\, the same isn't true for mobile\, where techniques can be more challenging and clear guides are harder to find. \n\nIn this talk\, we'll take a hands-on look at how HTTP Toolkit and other tools make it possible to easily capture\, inspect & modify network traffic on mobile. We'll explore real-world examples of these techniques in data journalism\, and you'll learn how you can use this to extract the datasets that power mobile apps\, expose privacy leaks & security issues\, and investigate exactly how apps do what they do.
CATEGORIES:INVESTIGATIVE METHOD
LOCATION:1.14\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:b8937641937f1f662def8f419e375795
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/b8937641937f1f662def8f419e375795
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260531T073000Z
DTEND:20260531T084500Z
SUMMARY:Using AIS data platforms to investigate shipping and shadow fleets
DESCRIPTION:This session provides a practical guide for using Automatic Identification System (AIS) data to investigate maritime irregularities. Our case study will be the Russian shadow fleet. The session is beginner-friendly\, while the second case study will also be interesting to advanced AIS users and people with programming skills.\n\n In the course of the session\, we will present two case studies demonstrating how AIS data can be used to investigate the Russian shadow fleet. \n\nThe first case study will show how to use AIS data and vessel metadata to evaluate the environmental risk of shadow fleet traffic. The second is a recent investigation of Greenpeace Italy exposing a new ship-to-ship (STS) transfer hub off the coast of Sicily\, revealing multiple sanctions breaches and a lack of oversight by Italian authorities. The investigation triggered two parliamentary inquiries and an investigation by the Chief anti-Mafia Prosecutor and was reported on extensively across national media. \n\nThis case study will showcase how the automatic STS detection in MarineTraffic\, combined with network analysis (JavaScript\, Gephi) and OSINT sources\, can be used to trace chains of transfers that bring Russian oil into European ports.\n\n Our session will offer a pro user's look into different proprietary and open-source AIS data platforms and evaluate their affordances (e.g.\, data export options\, alerts\, analytics functions)\, both with and without login. We will give an overview of additional data sources to cross-validate and enrich AIS data (Equasis\, ITF Seafarers\, IMRRA\, order books\, class society databases\, IGPANDI) and share an internal tool we developed to access these sources automatically.\n\n Participants will leave with practical knowledge of which AIS platforms to use for specific investigative needs\, what open-source alternatives exist\, and how to apply these tools in combination with network analysis and OSINT sources to uncover maritime irregularities.
CATEGORIES:INVESTIGATIVE METHOD
LOCATION:3.02\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:84221f0fa1cca124cf15a56e15f167a9
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/84221f0fa1cca124cf15a56e15f167a9
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260531T073000Z
DTEND:20260531T084500Z
SUMMARY:How to keep reporting on migration: Strategies from the field
DESCRIPTION:Investigating migration is becoming a difficult beat. Sources are vulnerable\, data is scarce\, and governments and agencies routinely block access to information.&nbsp\;\n\nIn this session\, two journalists with extensive experience on migration reporting will share how they navigate these barriers to still produce rigorous\, impactful reporting.&nbsp\;\n\nNidžara Ahmetašević from Bosnia and Lydia Emmanouilidou from Greece will bring complementary perspectives shaped by their respective contexts\, from the Balkan route to the Aegean.&nbsp\;Together\, they will walk you through their recent investigations (both nominated for the European Press Prize) that exposed systemic failures despite limited access. You will leave this session with strategies for investigating migration using alternative sources\, document trails\, and innovative reporting when official channels remain closed.\n\nStories that will be referenced in this session:&nbsp\;\nMines\, memory\, and migration on Bosnia’s perilous border\, by Nidžara Ahmetašević\nUnaccompanied children sleep on the floor in shifts in Greece’s ‘Model Camps’. The EU is aware. by&nbsp\;Lydia Emmanouilidou\, et al.
CATEGORIES:STORYTELLING
LOCATION:1.16\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:ae11a65ac0efe8719d68290b4fa5ed95
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/ae11a65ac0efe8719d68290b4fa5ed95
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260531T084500Z
DTEND:20260531T091500Z
SUMMARY:Coffee break
DESCRIPTION:Coffee is served in the Mediaforum (ground floor\, lobby area) and on the third floor.
CATEGORIES:ORGANISATIONAL
LOCATION:Mediaforum\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:97169df41edb75d7926fb2f982021638
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/97169df41edb75d7926fb2f982021638
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260531T091500Z
DTEND:20260531T103000Z
SUMMARY:Screenscraping: Stories before your very eyes!
DESCRIPTION:This session will explore a new method: scraping on-screen text\, using immense volumes of videos—from police dashcam videos to 24-hour news TV channels to fuel your investigation.\n\n Antoine Schirer\, a designer turned journalist\, will share the methods and scripts he used for a 2025 Reporters Without Borders investigation to dissect months of programs of the controversial French news channel CNews. \n\nUsing Python\, OCR\, and fuzzy string matching\, more than a million news banners were analysed to expose how the channel gets around broadcasting legislation.\n\n We will look at other examples and invite you to discuss how to be creative with unusual - even non-existent datasets.
CATEGORIES:DATA JOURNALISM
LOCATION:1.16\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:a887277441197cef5c61b5130fa0d1b5
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/a887277441197cef5c61b5130fa0d1b5
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260531T091500Z
DTEND:20260531T103000Z
SUMMARY:A map for every reader: how to generate hundreds of images for multiple audiences or partners using QGIS and Python
DESCRIPTION:The BBC Shared Data Unit wanted to generate a map image for each authority in the UK showing the state of flood defences in that area — so they turned to the mapping tool QGIS’s built-in Python functionality. \n\nIn this session\, you will learn how to generate and export dozens of maps in QGIS centred at different points\, and how AI can help speed up the process. \n\nTo follow along\, participants should have some basic knowledge of QGIS and be comfortable using Python or vibe coding.\n\n After attending this session\, participants should be able to understand how Python works in QGIS and use AI to help generate\, understand\, and adapt code. Participants should have QGIS and Python installed on the computer (qgis.org/download + python.org/downloads) and a free account with an AI tool such as ChatGPT\, Gemini\, or Claude
CATEGORIES:DATA SKILLS
LOCATION:3.02\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:2ffeeea4d73e37886ac0c105fb56a51a
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/2ffeeea4d73e37886ac0c105fb56a51a
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260531T091500Z
DTEND:20260531T103000Z
SUMMARY:Text embeddings: navigating text in high dimensions
DESCRIPTION:Most "big data" problems in journalism aren't really data problems\, they're reading problems: a big leak\, a ministry dump of 12\,000 pages\, or a FOI coming back as zip of PDFs. The instinct is to search\, but keyword search assumes you already know what you're looking for. Which sometimes is the thing you don't know yet.\n\n This session introduces embeddings: a technique that turns any text into a point in space\, positioned by meaning\, so texts with similar meaning end up close together. You stop searching a pile and start looking at it.\n\n To make the idea tangible\, we'll walk through a live semantic map we built of Google's "trending now" feeds from 125 countries\, projected into 3D. \n\n The method applies beyond trending searches and is applicable to TikTok captions\, YouTube transcripts\, court filings\, a scraped forum\, or years of parliamentary speeches.\n\n We'll cover the full workflow end to end: how to embed your corpus\, how to project it without losing what matters\, how to build a map you can actually navigate\, and where this approach breaks.\n\n To follow along\, participants should be comfortable running basic Python scripts on their laptop or in google collab.\n \nAfter attending this session\, participants will be able to take a large\, unstructured text corpus and turn it into a navigable semantic map.\n \nParticipants should have Python installed on their computer\, or have a google account where they can run collab. A Hugging Face account is recommended for generating embeddings. We will provide examples of text to work with\, but if you have your own collection\, feel free bring it\, but make sure it's in a text format\, as we won't cover how to convert PDF's into text.
CATEGORIES:DATA SKILLS
LOCATION:1.14\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:45c4463463b882ba0a3079259856852e
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/45c4463463b882ba0a3079259856852e
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260531T091500Z
DTEND:20260531T103000Z
SUMMARY:From OnlyFans to OnlyScams: Investigating online sex-work ecosystems
DESCRIPTION:What really happens behind the glossy surface of OnlyFans — and how do you investigate an industry built on secrecy\, money\, and blurred consent? After more than a year of reporting on the hidden economy around OnlyFans across five countries\, I will take participants inside a world of agencies\, chatters\, fake identities\, reseller servers\, and leaked-content markets that platforms never talk about.\n \n This session reveals how intimacy becomes a trap: how creators are manipulated by intermediaries\, how their content is redistributed through underground Discord and Telegram networks\, and how money flows through a web of crypto\, burner accounts\, and anonymous middlemen. Using findings from the cross-border investigation\, From OnlyFans to OnlyScams\, we will show how to uncover what the platform hides.\n \n What attendees will take away:\n - Investigating online sex-work ecosystems ethically and safely\n - Techniques for undercover reporting\, digital tracing\, scraping\, and mapping hidden networks\n - Following payment trails and linking them to real actors\n - Interviewing victims and insiders without causing additional harm\n - Turning a sensitive\, high-risk digital investigation into a powerful cross-border story\n \nThis is a practical session for journalists who want to explore one of the fastest-growing — and least understood — shadow economies on the internet.
CATEGORIES:INSTANT INSPIRATION
LOCATION:3.05\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:5dabbf9a6d480cfc460332942a10b6e0
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/5dabbf9a6d480cfc460332942a10b6e0
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260531T091500Z
DTEND:20260531T103000Z
SUMMARY:How to identify someone the state tried to hide: A step-by-step OSINT and AI workflow
DESCRIPTION:This session is based on a case from Serbia\, where we managed to identify a person whose identity Serbian authorities and pro-government media actively tried to hide. Starting from a blurred face in a leaked video\, we combined basic OSINT with business registries\, social networks\, geolocation\, face recognition tools\, dark web email searches\, and simple AI-assisted image analysis. We will walk the audience through each phase of the process\, &nbsp\;and explain what worked\, what failed\, and how one can verify findings when evidence is being altered or erased in real time. \n\nAttendees will leave with a practical workflow they can reuse in their own investigations: how to move from a fragment of visual evidence to a confirmed identity\, how to cross-check business data with social platforms\, how to use face search and morphological comparison safely\, how to track digital behavior after supposed arrests\, and how to document disappearing online traces before they are wiped. The goal is to share a method that can travel across borders and work in any country where power structures try to keep people invisible.\n\n
CATEGORIES:INVESTIGATIVE METHOD
LOCATION:Z1.15 - Aula Donche\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:3494618db116bd52c09c142693329057
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/3494618db116bd52c09c142693329057
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260531T091500Z
DTEND:20260531T103000Z
SUMMARY:Investigating workplace surveillance and algorithmic management
DESCRIPTION:According to the OECD\, 79% of companies use algorithmic management tools to automate recruitment\, manage human resources and\, above all\, monitor and control workers. Subjected to constant algorithmic surveillance\, salespeople in all sectors are always aware that their every move is being scrutinized. In digital professions\, particularly video gamedesign\, this digital activity tracking fuels burnout and workplace suffering. Delivery workers\, especially those on bicycles\, face even more serious consequences: the accelerated pace of their work leads to serious workplace accidents and even death. In France\, the press has documented more than twenty fatal accidents since the arrival of Uber&nbsp\;Eats and Deliveroo to the market in 2015.How are these technologies deployed? How can we bypass corporate communications to document their real impact? How can we identify the hundreds of small businesses worldwide that market these devices? In this session\, Clément Pouré\, who has published around fifty investigations on workplace surveillance in the Age of AI\, and a book on the same topic\, will shed light on the surveillance practices of numerous multinationals such as McDonald's and TP (a world leader in call centers)\, but also on the more insidious practices of smaller companies across all sectors.\nIn this session\, we'll briefly look into the history of workplace surveillance and its impact on employees\, and chart an overview of the current technologies and the risks they represent. We will review the methods and sources that can be used to investigate the subject. The session is suitable for beginners\, and no prior experience in algorithmic investigations is required to attend.\n
CATEGORIES:INVESTIGATIVE METHOD
LOCATION:3.04\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:c70f9c521b8116139da9ac48a9ecb0db
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/c70f9c521b8116139da9ac48a9ecb0db
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260511T190925Z
DTSTART:20260531T104500Z
DTEND:20260531T111500Z
SUMMARY:Goodbye - see you next year!
DESCRIPTION:Closing session!&nbsp\;
CATEGORIES:NETWORKING
LOCATION:Mediaforum\, Mechelen\, Belgium
SEQUENCE:0
UID:7a0696e61d72cf3d2439547dc5dacc7e
URL:http://dataharvest26.sched.com/event/7a0696e61d72cf3d2439547dc5dacc7e
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR