I’ve been very pleasantly surprised by the number of registrations that have already been made for the first-ever Enterprise Search Europe conference.  We took a conservative view on how many people might want to spend two days in London at not only the first-ever ESE conference but the first conference in Europe ever totally devoted to enterprise search.  Already the room we have is about half-full so there is no better time than this week to register as you get an early bird discount up to the close of business on Friday 16 September.  The opening keynote is being given by David Hawking, who has a great deal of experience in both enterprise search and in information retrieval, and one of the aims of the conference is to bring together the best of both worlds.  As well as the conference sessions there will be a first-class opportunity to network with other delegates, speakers and some invited guests at a social event in the evening.  Bring plenty of business cards!

There is certainly a lot to talk about. HP and Autonomy for a start! For the last three months I have been working on a very detailed study of the EU enterprise search market, trying to develop some indications of the size and potential of the market, and have come up with an analysis that goes totally contra to that of Ovum in their recent report. As part of the study I also ran a Delphi study among vendors, analysts and integrators, and was rather interested in the different viewpoints on the market from the three groups.

If the speed at which sponsors signed up for the event is any indication of the importance of the conference I would recommend a touch of “Action this day”. The discounts for bringing a colleague are very attractive as well. Your search team don’t exactly see a lot of people in the course of the average day so they won’t be missed for a couple of days at a nice hotel and a great conference.

See you on 24 October

Martin White