Search is so often terrible! We can improve it by Dan Roberts (Stack Overflow)

It is a privilege to welcome Liverpool's very own Dan Roberts to do a talk on improving search with semantic comprehension and some vector magic.

Live stream and recording
Dot Net Liverpool are pleased to announce that this event will be available for live stream and accessible via our YouTube channel. This will be our first attempt so we do apologise for any technical issues we may run into

Note, please only subscribe to this meetup if you can attend physically.

Streaming link here

Who is Dan?
Hi, I'm Dan! I'm technical lead of the team at Stack Overflow that is overhauling our search logic. I've been a C# developer for pushing twenty years now. I was a classic child geek and started programming in BASIC on an Amstrad when I eight. If you only ever access the public Stack Overflow sites, you probably get there through Google (or ask ChatGPT!), but if you work somewhere with a private Stack Overflow "Teams" instance then you'll have to rely on our search bar. I'm not going to sugar coat it, our search is really benefitting from some overdue, major, exciting improvements! The company is building various AI answer-generating facilities - built into both our application and other common dev tools - which all rely on search returning great results, so we're right at the centre of a lot of crucial but fun work, where ML and metrics and Data Scientists and Developers all come together!

Talk
Recent breakthroughs in search technology have flipped how search works on its head - but it's likely to become table stakes for many applications over the next few years in order to remain usable and competitive. I'll take you through the basic concepts (don't worry about any scary maths, we won't have to get into the complicated stuff!), look at an implementation or two in C#, then talk about the many challenges that you'll face if you want to then improve upon "v1". The fun thing with machine learning is that there's always more tweaking that you could be doing!

Food
We have a selection of food available including Vegan options but if you'd like to know more please drop one of our organisers a message before the event via the group message forum. (https://secure.meetup.com/messages/)
If you would need assistance to leave the building in the event of an evacuation then please let us know via the group message forum. (https://secure.meetup.com/messages/)

Schedule
Doors open from 18:00
Pizza at 18:30
Intro and welcome 18:40
Speaker from 18:50
Close ~21:00 (Don't feel bad if you have to leave early for a train/bus/lift home - no one will be offended)

Travel
Train - James Street station is a 2-minute walk from the Lab. Liverpool Lime Street is approx 15-20 minutes walking distance.
Driving - Underground parking available.
Bicycle - Cycle rack available.U