March 24-28, 2025: Five-Day In-Person Workshop in New York, NY, US
Register for this workshop here.
This workshop is a five-day in-person training that will teach digital investigation techniques and provide extensive guided, hands-on practice. The workshop will run over a full week on March 24-28, 2025. Each day, the workshop will run for approximately eight hours (9am-5pm, including lunch and breaks) in New York, NY, US. All participants must attend in-person. Only 22 seats are being sold for this event.
At least two Bellingcat trainers will be present throughout the week.
Our in-person workshops are split into two segments: approximately three days (~24 hours) of hands-on training developing approaches and techniques of digital investigation, and approximately two days (~16 hours) of guided project work. We also have at least one “guest appearance” of other researchers working on digital investigations, either appearing in-person or virtually.
The course’s content over the first three days will include:
- Introduction to open source investigation
- Creative search fundamentals
- How to conduct (nearly) traceless and anonymous/pseudonymous research
Beginner to intermediate verification topics, including:
- Verification of user-generated materials
- Intuitive reverse search techniques in digital investigations
- Geolocation & chronolocation of visual materials
- Using mapping and satellite services in investigations
Beginner to intermediate social media topics, including:
- Fundamental techniques and creative search strategies on individuals & groups
- How to archive digital materials for open source investigations
- Tracking transportation services (e.g. naval vessels, aircraft) for investigations
After confirmation of registration and payment, we will send the precise workshop venue location, time, and other logistical details to workshop participants in the week before the event. The venue is easily accessible within New York. Please note that the location on the map on the Eventzilla page is not the actual venue — this is just the default location for New York on the site. Coffee, tea and light lunches will be provided to participants at the venue.
The price for the workshop is 3,200.00 EUR per participant, including all fees and transaction costs. Please contact us at workshops@bellingcat.1eye.us if you have any questions.
We are looking forward to seeing our participants in person!
The next round of online workshops will be held in late April – June 2025.
We will also be organising two in-person workshops in Europe in May – June 2025.
If you’re not on our workshops mailing list, please feel free to subscribe to it to receive early announcements about our training.
Screening
We manually approve all applications after registration on Eventzilla. We do basic due diligence checks on our participants to be sure that our trainers and other participants are comfortable with their participation.
Members of any military or intelligence service are not permitted registration at our workshops, and we allow government employees in on a case-by-case basis to be sure there aren’t any serious ethical issues.
We also restrict access to our workshops from members of police forces, but make some exceptions depending on participants’ areas of responsibilities.For example, in past workshops, we have approved the participation of government employees working on issues around election integrity and security, while we have rejected the participation of those working for state migration services. We very rarely approve members of police forces, but have made some limited exceptions for those working on issues of child exploitation and trafficking.
We also conduct basic due diligence for non-government employees to be sure both the participant and their employer do not have a track record that would clearly make our trainers and other participants uncomfortable with providing training in research techniques that could be abused.
That said, the vast majority of participants are approved without any issue.
Payment Note
If you register and we approve your participation, and you select credit card or Paypal, you must pay when you start the payment process, otherwise Eventzilla will lock you out and we will have to manually delete and restart your registration. Wait to open the payment tab until you have your card or Paypal information ready to go!
Alternatively, you can choose “bank transfer” and pay later — many of our participants being sponsored by their employers choose this option.
Cancellation
Please look closely at the cancellation and event policies in Eventzilla before you take the leap.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I receive a certificate for the workshops?
Sure! Just email us (workshops@bellingcat.1eye.us) before or after the workshop, and we’ll send you a PDF certificate showing your participation after completing the training.
Can I receive a recording of a workshop?
We do not record our workshops or allow others to record them. However, we do provide copies of our training slides to participants after the completion of the training for their personal reference.
Who usually attends your workshops?
We have around 20-25 participants per workshop, and among those between a third to a half come from private companies or the corporate world. Among those we have plenty of information security researchers, corporate security investigators, lawyers, due diligence experts, and other professions. Journalists are the next-most popular profession for our workshops (around a fourth or third of participants), and then we have a mix of human rights/NGO researchers, academics and students, and even retirees just curious about what this whole OSINT thing is all about (although we prefer to leave the acronym at home and stick to “open source).
Can I gift a workshop seat to someone else?
Sure! We have had quite a few people buy workshop attendance for a loved one as a birthday or Christmas gift. Just let us know the name of the person who you are buying the seat for when registration so that we can do a basic due diligence check on them (see the Screening section up above). Feel free to email us at workshops@bellingcat.1eye.us to make sure we have their proper contact details so they get all of the invitation information on time.
Register for the New York in-person workshop on March 24-28, 2025, here.
Feel free to send us an email to workshops@bellingcat.1eye.us if you have any questions.