Pride of place in this overview of the Spring issue has to be the report on ECIR 2022, which so elegantly and effectively integrated the on-site and virtual conference experiences that I for one felt that I had been transported StarTrek-style from Horsham to Stavanger. Dennis and Satya have contributed a such a comprehensive and engaging account of the event that Krisztian Balog decided that there was nothing he could add to it. The event was also the occasion for the Karen Spark Jones award presentation Work on ECIR 2023 in Dublin has already started so add the dates of 4-6 April 2023 to your diary. Udo Kruschwitz, Chair of IRSG comments on both ECIR 2022 and future events.
As usual Andy Macfarlane has contributed his list of forthcoming events, a valued feature of Informer for many years.
The ACM SIGIR CHIIR 2022 conference took place in March and Selina Meyer has contributed an excellent account of the event. There is also a report on a series of virtual lectures entitled Exploring Information Retrieval that took place in February and March. The lecture series was a joint venture between ISKO UK and the BCS IRSG.
I would encourage you to look at the December issue of SIGIR Forum, which appeared after the Winter Issue of Informer had been published. There are always interesting papers and conference reports of this very active community of the ACM.
Looking forward, Search Solutions 2022 will take place in London on 24 November and the Call for Proposals has now been published.
This issue also marks the start of what I hope will be a regular feature of Informer. Jochen Leidner came up with the idea of the Graduate Student Corner. As an enterprise search practitioner, I am aware that I may inadvertently bias Informer towards practice and away from research, so I was very eager to build on Jochen’s suggestion. Feedback on the concept would be very much appreciated. Pedro Ruas is the initial contributor, providing a very good template for future contributions.
Two news items for you. The first is the launch of the NeurodiverseIT Specialist Group of the BCS and I have commented on the very welcome and timely launch of this SG, suggesting some resources should you like to understand more about why I feel that this initiative is so important. The second item is about a new Enterprise Search Management on-site one-day training course that I am offering through Intranet Focus Ltd.
The book review in this issue took me some time to write as Information – A Historical Companion is 880 pages long and weighs 1.7Kg.
The Copy Date for the Summer issue is 18 July and 31 October for the Autumn issue.