Findwise celebrated its 10th birthday by hosting a Findability Day on 1 October in Gothenburg, its home city. There were over 200 delegates in the audience at the Brewhouse, a mixture of Findwise clients and others interested in learning more about search. The opening presentation from Mattias Ellison was a summary of the outcomes of the Findwise Enterprise Search and Findability Survey 2015. The report is not yet up on the Findwise website so you will either have to wait until it is or come to Enterprise Search Europe in a couple of weeks’ time when Mattais and co-author Carl Bjornfors will be giving a presentation. Next up was my keynote that highlighted areas where in my opinion organisations need search solutions and search-based applications but no-one (least of all commercial vendors) were offering them. These include collaborative search, significantly better search for colllaboration and ESN applications, mobile enterprise search and providing users with a range of search UIs.

Most of the other presentations were from Findwise customers, but as always at these events there is no ‘hard sell’ from Findwise. When there is a Findwise consultant on stage they are always in the company of one of their clients. For me two presentations stood out. One of these was  from Exalead,  which has transformed itself from an enterprise search provider into a provider of specialist product management applications for manufacturing companies, including a 3D search capability. The second was from Abby Covert, an IA specialist from New York, with an outstanding 50 minute presentation on the value of ontologies, taxonomies and choreography in providing effective access to information. The only disappointment was the final presentation from IBM that was notionally about information governance but was, as always of course, just a frenzy of PowerPoint slides.

The event was organised by Mirna Lenntun Zunic and Olof Belfrage. Timekeeping and food were spot on and the venue layout was ideal for continuing conversations over a coffee or (at the end of the event!) a beer. I would encourage anyone with an interest in enterprise search to consider attending the event in 2016. The support that Findwise gives to the enterprise search community from this event and from the sponsorship of the survey is highly commendable.

Martin White