Some of you, despite President Obama’s admonition, may have enjoyed FASTForward in Las Vegas last week. Others may be spending $2,295 to attend the Omniture Summit in Utah this week, which includes skiing at Snowbird and a Maroon 5 concert. I certainly hope that those of you who are Endeca customers and partners will be able to attend the more modest Discover ‘09 in Boston this June, despite the lack of showgirls, skiing, or “neo-soul” pop bands. I’ll be there, and I promise there will be lots of hands-on sessions, as well as presentations specifically targeting the hot topics in enterprise and site search.
But no one needs to wait that long to get a preview of the upcoming industry search conferences.
As a preview for the Infonortics Search Engine Meeting, which will take place April 27-28 in Boston, Stephen Arnold, known for his Beyond Search blog, has been publishing interviews with some of the speakers. You can find mine here. I’m partial to this format, since I find text a more efficient medium for this sort of content than audio or video. Of course, the latter makes more sense when there’s more to see than one or two talking heads (e.g., my Reconsidering Relevance video).
But some people prefer podcasts (especially people will long commutes!), and those will be happy to know that the Enterprise Search Summit, which will take place May 12-13 in New York, is offering interviews of some of its speakers to give attendees (and potential attendees) a taste of what to expect. Only a few are up there now, but Michelle Manafy tells me that there will be more coming up over the next days.
I’ve toyed with trying to do something similar for the SIGIR ‘09 Industry Track (mark your calendars: July 22 in Boston). If I do, I promise that you will be the first to know.
