Building AI-Powered Search & RAG Systems with Elastic: From Logs to LLMs

Join the Elastic Chicago User Group on Thursday, February 26th for a meetup. Terry Dupureur (Elastic) and Saurin Patel (Data Scientist) will present, followed by networking, refreshments, and pizza.

Thank you to Improving for hosting our meetup. Improving is a modern digital services consulting firm focused on solving business problems with innovative technical solutions.

RSVP Instructions:
Please provide your email when you register for this event. Please bring an ID to the event for check-in.

📅 Date and Time:
Thursday, February 26th from 5:30-8:00 pm

📍 Location:
Improving - 222 S Riverside Plaza 15th Floor, Chicago, IL 60606

🚗 Parking:

• SpotHero is a great option to resvere parking in advance
• Improving recommends the following parking garages: 229 S. Desplaines St (which is also the 625 W. Adams building), 500 West Monroe, and the outdoor lot at 718 W Monroe.

📝Agenda:

• 5:30 PM – Doors open, grab a seat, and enjoy some pizza!
• 6:00 PM – Welcome & Introduction by Improving
• 6:05 PM – Building AI-Powered Search & RAG Systems with Elastic: From Logs to LLMs - Saurin Patel (Data Scientist)
• 6:30 PM – Lightning talk & demo on Elastic Workflow Terry Dupureur (Elastic)
• 7:00 - 7:30 PM – Networking & refreshments

Arrival Instructions:

• Please bring an ID for check-in
• Upon arrival at 222 Riverside, check in at the Improving table
• Take the elevator to the 15th floor - the meetup will be in the common area through the doors.

💭Talk Abstracts:
Building AI-Powered Search & RAG Systems with Elastic: From Logs to LLMs - Saurin Patel (Data Scientist)
Modern AI systems are only as good as the data they can retrieve. In this talk, I’ll walk through how I’ve used Elastic as the backbone for AI-powered search and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) systems — combining logs, documents, and real-time signals with LLMs. We’ll cover practical indexing strategies, vector + hybrid search, relevance tuning, and lessons learned from deploying Elastic-backed AI systems in production.