The Web Scraping Club season 3!
Recharged from the holidays, with more energy and ideas for this new year.
September starts in a few days and the summer holidays are just a remembrance, but there’s no time for sorrow. The Web Scraping Club is here and I’ve got something to share with you. Starting this Sunday, the weekly schedule of the articles will be restored, with The Lab articles almost every Thursday and free articles every Sunday. On Tuesdays, instead, there will be some contributions from external companies that want to share their expertise in some field.
The first two Scraping Insights interviews are online
During July and August, I interviewed some key people in the scraping industry, both on the scraping and the anti-bot sides.
The first video is with Nick Rieniets, CTO of Kasada, an important anti-bot solution.
We discussed the ever-changing landscape of bot building and detection and the future challenges both sides need to tackle. It’s rare to see such a frank and open discussion about anti-bot technology so I think it’s worth watching.
Continuing on the anti-bot side, I’ve interviewed also Antoine Vastel, VP of Research at DataDome.
If you’ve been in the industry for some time, you’ve surely read at least one of his blog posts.
In the coming weeks, other videos will be released on the YouTube channel, so I suggest subscribing to not miss them.
Editing and working on these videos needs a dedicated team and resources, so thanks to all the paid subscribers to TWSC who made these videos possible.
More Web Scraping and more like a Club
During these days I didn’t just swim and sunbathe but also thought about how to make The Web Scraping Club a more interesting place where to stay.
The first thing is to create better content, so I’ve worked on (and still working on) a better writing pipeline.
I’ve created my Notion template, with some automation and integrations to other tools, to speed up the writing process and have a clearer long-term view.
But being in a club also means exchanging ideas, and in the past weeks, some of you asked me if they could write a post on some topics they’re willing to share.
For this reason, I’ve created this form for suggesting new topics, and eventually telling me if you want to write the article by yourself or not.
This is not the only form created. From now on, you will find in the articles a new button.
By filling out this 30-second form, I can have an idea of what to improve and if you liked the topic or not. It’s completely anonymous, let’s see what I can guess from the results!
Sorry to see you go e-mails
Substack asks automatically some feedback for paying users unsubscribing, but I’d like to know more about all the people who, for some reason, decide to don’t read anymore this newsletter.
For this reason, in the email you’ll receive after unsubscribing, both from the free version and the paid one, there will be another form for asking you the reason for it.
I don’t know how many of you will reply, but I’m giving a chance to it. Hope you’re appreciating my try to listen to you more and adjust the target.
As per tradition, September also opens the season of the conferences in the Web Scraping industry. The first one is Oxycon, happening the September 25 and here’s a recap of the agenda sent by the Oxylabs team.
Oxycon 2024
As back-to-school season approaches, OxyCon, a conference on web data collection, is entering its fifth anniversary with new expert topics and presentations. The full agenda can be found on the OxyCon page.
OxyCon 2024 is a FREE virtual event set to capture three focus areas:
Fueling businesses with public web data
Mastering AI & advanced web scraping techniques
Optimizing web data extraction operations
What to expect from the event?
The conference will kick off with a session on scalability in data collection, led by Žydrūnas Tamašauskas, CTO at Oxylabs.
Next, Vilius Visockas, CEO of City Now, will share how City Now manages large datasets with a small team.
Then, Tadas Gedgaudas, Developer at Oxylabs, will dive into a technical presentation on mimicking user behavior with realistic mouse movements.
After a break, we’ll come back with a discussion on legal compliance in the age of AI by Nerijus Šveistys, Senior Legal Counsel at Oxylabs.
Then, Aleksandras Šulženko, Product Owner at Oxylabs, will give a live demo of Scraper API, an AI-powered web data platform designed to address web scraping challenges.
In the final part, Paul Felby, CTO at Adthena, will deliver an insightful presentation on harnessing generative AI for data-driven insights.
Lastly, Juras Juršėnas, COO at Oxylabs, will host a panel discussion on advanced unblocking strategies.
OxyCon kicks off on September 25, 12 PM BST (British Summer Time).
All registered participants are invited to join the OxyCon Discord community, a platform to connect and network with other attendees. It will be your go-to place for conference updates, sharing essential information, and discussions.
Don't miss your chance to learn, network, and innovate with like-minded professionals.