Web search - past, present and future
Dublin is this week (28 July – 1 August 2013) hosting the world’s largest gathering of search engine specialists at the ACM SIGIR 2013 conference. The event, organised by the CNGL centre for global intelligent content at Trinity College Dublin and Dublin City University, celebrates 20 years of Web search by bringing together pioneers of search engine technology. Among them is Jonathon Fletcher, creator of what’s commonly considered to be the world’s first Web search engine. The conference takes place at Trinity College Dublin and the Mansion House Dublin.
Conference general co-chairs Dr Páraic Sheridan and Dr Gareth J.F. Jones of CNGL at Dublin City University won out in a competitive bid process with four other European cities to host this year’s SIGIR conference in Dublin.
The ACM SIGIR conference is the premier international forum for the presentation of the latest research results and the demonstration of new systems and techniques in the field of information retrieval and Web search. More than 500 information retrieval experts from industry and academia have travelled from 35 countries to reflect on how the Web search field has developed, and to celebrate the continuing innovation in what has become a multi-billion euro sector.
Alongside academic leaders from top universities, the speaker line-up includes senior professionals from Google, Microsoft, Baidu, Yahoo!, AOL, IBM, Yandex, Facebook and LinkedIn.
Celebrating 20 years of Web Search
SIGIR 2013 kicked off on Monday with an Opening Session celebrating the 20th Anniversary of Web search engines. The Panel, held at the Mansion House Dublin, saw search engine pioneers discuss the evolution of Web search over the last 20 years and look back over the history of information retrieval research.
By most accounts, a search engine called JumpStation was the first Web search engine that behaved, and appeared to the user, the way current Web search engines do. Hosted at the University of Stirling in Scotland, it started indexing on 12 December 1993.
The creator of the JumpStation search engine, Jonathon Fletcher, joined senior representatives of Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! on this SIGIR 2013 panel, to recall Web search twenty years ago and discuss emerging innovations in Web search today. The panel was hosted by Professor Alan Smeaton of DCU.
On Tuesday 30th July 2013, John R. Smith of the IBM Watson Research Center will deliver the conference keynote address on ‘Riding the Multimedia Big Data Wave’. Today, multimedia (images, video, speech, etc.) makes up 60% of internet traffic and 70% of mobile phone traffic. Multimedia content is increasingly becoming a valuable source for insights and information. The keynote talk will address why multimedia content requires highly sophisticated algorithms for content analysis and is spurring on tremendous amounts of research and development of techniques to enable effective multimedia information extraction and retrieval.
Ireland’s Leadership in Information Retrieval
The fact that the conference is being held in Ireland this anniversary year reflects Ireland’s prominent position in the information retrieval community. The event is organised by the Science Foundation Ireland-funded CNGL academia-industry consortium, which is co-hosted at Trinity College Dublin and Dublin City University. The euro 58 million CNGL research centre has an ambitious research agenda focused on adapting digital content to the needs and preferences of global users, including the delivery of personalised information retrieval across platforms, media types and languages.
“CNGL’s research agenda towards Global Intelligent Content underpins a future vision for information search and discovery in an increasingly connected and mobile world”, says Dr Páraic Sheridan, Associate Director of CNGL and SIGIR 2013 General Co-Chair. “Our hosting of ACM SIGIR 2013 in Dublin is a great showcase for the research and innovation happening here in Ireland through the collaboration of academics and industry. It provides an opportunity for us to highlight our leadership in areas such as digital content, platforms and applications through centres such as CNGL, as well as with the many companies with a strong information retrieval base in Ireland including Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, LinkedIn, IBM, AOL, Facebook and Twitter.”
Industry Track – 31 July 2013
SIGIR 2013 includes a dedicated industry track on Wednesday 31 July 2013. This track promises an exciting and varied programme of talks delivered by foremost practitioners in information retrieval, including senior staff from Yahoo!, LinkedIn, IBM, and Microsoft. The keynote speakers are Stefan Weitz, Senior Director, Bing Search, Microsoft Corporation, and Ricardo Baeza-Yates, Vice President of Yahoo! Research Europe and Latin America.