Enterprise Search Europe 2013 starts on 14 May with four workshops that set out the themes of the conference.
- Matt Aslett (451 Group) will be exploring the opportunities and challenges of Big Data
- Charlie Hull (Flax) will be talking about building search applications in Lucene/Solr and ElasticSearch
- Christian Vogt and Dr. Christian Gross (Raytion) will be sharing their experience with search in SharePoint 2013
- Tony Russell-Rose (UXLabs) will be offering advice on search interface optimisation
Picking up on SharePoint 2013 I’m pleased to be able to announce that Agnes Molar, a very experienced SharePoint 2013 consultant from Hungary, is giving a presentation on building search-based applications in SharePoint 2013. She will be taking the 16.25 slot in Track B on 15 May as Matthew Willsmore has now joined Search Technologies.
One of the programme innovations this year is a Panel Session entitled Five Decisions You Must Make in the next Six Months. This is being chaired by Alan Pelz-Sharpe (451 Group). Each of the five search experts will have five minutes to set out what they think are the decisions that delegates need to make over the next six months to take advantage of the benefits of effective enterprise search in 2014. At the end of the session the audience will be able to vote on what they feel are the most valuable suggestions so that everyone can go away with a short Action Tomorrow list based on a touch of crowd-sourcing. There will also be an opportunity to meet the five experts over lunch to continue the discussion. The aim of the Programme Committee is to ensure that delegates return to their organisations with as much practical advice as possible.
Over the last few years there have been many surveys that highlight the importance to organisations of making the best possible use of information as a corporate asset. The general consensus is that around 80% of organisations regard information as a core business asset but only around 20% feel that they are able to find the information needed to make good business decisions. What surprised me about a recent Aberdeen Group report was that the situation seems to be getting worse, not better, with the number of respondents reporting that they were not able to make effective use of unstructured information more than doubling in the space of a year.
Enterprise Search Europe remains the only conference in Europe that focuses on how to get the best from your current investment in search technology. Three days in London in May will not only make a substantial difference to the performance of your search applications but also make a difference to the performance of your organisation.
Martin White