Over the last two decades most of my search-related projects have been with large multi-national companies so an invitation to participate in a NATO working on enterprise and federated search in March 2019 was irresistible. The fact that it was to be held in a 5 star hotel on the Adriatic Sea at Split, Croatia… Continue reading NATO Conference on federated search
CHIIR 2019 Student Review
Despite a snowy start to the day, attendees were not deterred from arriving in Glasgow, to break records for the highest number of registrations at the ACM SIGIR Conference on Human Information Interaction and Retrieval (CHIIR), totalling 165 people. As a fairly new PhD student native to Glasgow, I was eagerly excited to attend my… Continue reading CHIIR 2019 Student Review
Events: Spring
One Day Events KidRec 2019: 3rd International and Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Children & Recommender and Information Retrieval Systems. Of interest to members working on applications targeted Children. One day workshop as part of the IDC 2019 conference 12-15 June. http://idc.acm.org/2019/
And finally..
Editors always like to have the final say. One of the challenges of digital columns is getting people to read to the end. So each issue you will find something a little different at the end of Informer which may inform you, challenge you or amuse you. Let me tell you a story. As you… Continue reading And finally..
Editorial
Welcome to a new issue of Informer! Has it really been 7 years since we relaunched Informer? Then this must in fact be Editorial number 29 … it feels like it was just twenty minutes ago that I wrote the first one. Time flies when you are getting old. So perhaps it’s time to step down… Continue reading Editorial
My week: Natasha Chowdory, a CEBIS Specialist at a large hospital in the West Midlands
Our work is fairly constant, with large influxes in September and January from people gearing up for conference submissions. However, it’s not just conference submissions but also applying for research grants. A fair amount of the research we do, will contribute to bids that individuals make for the hospital – some of which that have… Continue reading My week: Natasha Chowdory, a CEBIS Specialist at a large hospital in the West Midlands
FIRE 2018 Conference Review
The 10th annual meeting of the Forum for Information Retrieval Evaluation (FIRE 2018) took place in Gandhinagar, India. The conference took place at the Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology (DA-IICT). Several participants dubbed the venue as a mini zoo because of the varied wildlife, especially monkeys, squirrels and peacocks on the campus.… Continue reading FIRE 2018 Conference Review
What's wrong with Boolean strings?
In our previous posts we explored some of the challenges involved in formulating complex Boolean strings and expressions, and reviewed six of the more innovative alternative solutions. Each of these offers its own unique perspective on how to solve such problems, and their pioneering efforts provide us with a rich set of design insights and principles. In this brief… Continue reading What's wrong with Boolean strings?
Search Solutions 2018 Review
Search Solutions is an important event in the world of search & information retrieval that is held in London every November. Search Solutions is comprised of sessions, keynote talks, panels, tutorials and unconference sessions like Fishbowl from top-notch researchers and influencers in search and information retrieval. Search Solutions was held at the BCS just off… Continue reading Search Solutions 2018 Review
1959 – the dawn of relevance and the benefits of IR
There was a remarkable amount of interest in the publication of a belated obituary of Karen Sparck Jones in the New York Times on 9 January 2019. I was delighted to see that the University of Cambridge obituary for Karen (published at the time of her death in 2007) has now been updated with the… Continue reading 1959 – the dawn of relevance and the benefits of IR