After a brief summer hiatus, Enterprise Search London is back in full swing! Join us at Skinkers on July 29 from 18:30 to 21:00 for stimulating talks from Udo Kruschwitz and Jan Van Hoecke.

We will also be giving away a few free copies of Peter Morville's "Search Patterns" book (thanks to Peter), as well several Lucene t-shirts (thanks to Lucid Imagination).

Jan Van Hoecke
A redux of Edward Tufte's "Beautiful Evidence" talk from back in May.

Udo Kruschwitz on "Moving Towards Adaptive Intranet Search"
Until now most search engines have focused on individual queries and their answers. However, it is increasingly recognised that the key to retrieval is interaction (even Google is now moving this way and has abandoned its simple user interface). This is even more true on intranets and local Web sites where information can be very hard to find (and often there is only a single document that satisfies a user's information need). What Udo is interested in is a form of guided search where the search engine proposes query modifications (this could be refinements, generalisations or other suggestions). What he does not want is a system that requires expensive manual customization. Instead, the system should be fully automated and improve its suggestions over time by learning from past user interactions with the system, it should also be able to adapt to changing user interests. Udo will talk about his ongoing research work in this area.

Drinks start at 6:30pm, with talks starting around 7:15. RSVP now!