Lucene Revolution 2013 Presented by LucidWorks
November 30, 2012
Lucene Revolution is a yearly conference devoted to open source technologies, particularly Apache Lucene and Solr. For five consecutive years, LucidWorks has been the main sponsor of the event, beefing up it reputation for open source support for developers, committers, and end users. The Lucene Revolution Web site makes the announcement:
“LucidWorks is proud to present the biggest open source conference dedicated to Apache Lucene/Solr. We have have succesfully hosted five conferences in the US (Lucene Revolution) and in Europe (Lucene Eurocon). Lucene Revolution 2013 will be held at The Westin San Diego on April 29 – May 2, 2013. The call for speakers is now open.”
Two-day training workshops precede the conference, focusing on the topics of “Scaling Search with Big Data and Solr,” “Solr Unleashed,” and “Solr Under the Hood.” There are many reasons to attend Lucene Revolution 2013, not the least of which is the opportunity to network with and learn from other developers. LucidWorks continues to match their actions to their words by supporting the open source community in word and deed. Do not miss your opportunity to attend this flagship event.
Emily Rae Aldridge, November 30, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
The Future of Presentation Titles
November 24, 2012
Short honk: I sat through a presentation by a European futurist. I enjoyed the inclusion of the Gangnam horsey dance. But the highlight of the presentation by self described “futurist, author, and CEO of the Futures Agency” Gerd Leonhard was the title of the presentation:
Big Data, Big Mobile, Big Social. Big Bucks. Big Noise. Big Machines. The Future of the Internet.
In case you want to get the nuggets, click this link.
Other notable conference highlights included three fire alarms between 4 am and 5 30 am on November 20, 2012, interesting Internet connectivity, and the repetition of the phrase “big data”. I thought I was listening to a high-tech version of the non Gangnam style tune “99 Bottles of Beer.”
Big. Repetitive too.
Stephen E Arnold, November 24, 2012
LucidWorks Solr 4 Training
November 9, 2012
I learned yesterday that LucidWorks will host a one day intensive Solr training session. The full day session covers what’s new in Solr 4.0, including a functional overview and deep dive into SolrCloud, followed by an expert panel discussion and open lab/workshop. LucidWorks is the leader in enterprise open source search solutions. The company’s technology, engineering team, and customer service sets the company apart.
There will be a Boot Camp training event in Reston, Virginia, on November 14, 2012. Erik Hatcher and Erick Erickson to learn how Solr 4.0 dramatically improves scalability, performance, and flexibility. An overhauled Lucene underneath sports near real-time (NRT) capabilities allowing indexed documents to be rapidly visible and searchable. Lucene’s improvements also include pluggable scoring, much faster fuzzy and wildcard querying, and vastly improved memory usage. These Lucene improvements automatically make Solr much better, and Solr magnifies these advances with “SolrCloud.”
Paul Doscher, president of LucidWorks, told me:
Attendees will learn how to use SolrCloud to transform your existing Solr application into a highly scalable, fault tolerant solution with distributed indexing and search capabilities. The session will include demonstrations of SolrCloud in action. Some of the details covered will include configuring and tuning your own cluster. The presenters will detail how Solr 4.0 can be used as a NoSQL store, how to do near real time search at scale, and provide some tips and technical tips for maintaining a Solr cluster over the long term. This session will put the attendee on the path to becoming knowledgeable in SolrCloud configuration, scaling, monitoring and tuning. One of the highlights of the session is a review of the differences between the previous versions of Solr.
The training event features a breakfast in the morning and a happy hour after the session. You can sign up at http://goo.gl/voA7r. This strikes me as a must attend event.
Stephen E Arnold, November 9, 2012
Search Technologies Announces First Search Meet Up
October 2, 2012
If you are attending the Enterprise Search Summit at the Renaissance Washington DC hotel, you will want to check out Search Technologies’ search meet up. We learned that the meet up will consist of:
an open forum where members can share search experiences, challenges, and solutions. Members will also hear from search customers who will relate their enterprise search implementation stories. The Meetup will conclude with a Q&A session and networking opportunity.
Search Technologies is a specialized IT services company dedicated to enterprise search implementation, consulting, and managed services.
Kamran Khan, CEO of Search Technologies, said:
We are very happy to sponsor the first ever network for enterprise search professionals in the Washington, D.C. metro area. Being in an area saturated with government, high-tech, aerospace, and other industries so reliant on gaining a competitive advantage through enterprise search, we expect the D.C. Enterprise Search Network to grow into a premier networking and brainstorming event. We envision robust debate on important search related issues that will hopefully infuse participants with new ideas and strategies on how to help their organization thrive.
Additional information is available at http://www.meetup.com/DC-Metro-Enterprise-Search-Network/.
Stephen E Arnold, October 2, 2012
Crowdfunded Library Unconference in UK
July 17, 2012
Is this bad news for traditional library-oriented conferences? BoingBoing announces, “Library Camp: Crowdfunded UK Unconference for Libraries.” If the initiative to fund this “unconference” succeeds, Library Camp 2012 will draw library workers from across the UK to (that country’s) Birmingham. The group successfully pulled off Library Camp 2011. The write up informs us:
“Library Camp brings together people who are interested in modernising and transforming libraries for one day of intensive debate, knowledge sharing and ideas. It’s an unconference so anyone can lead a workshop or facilitate a session and it’s free to attend. You don’t have to be a librarian or even work in a library, you just need to be passionate about the future of libraries. This year the unconference will be back in Birmingham in October and we want to invite 200 people so we need to raise £1000 to pay for a venue and feed the campers!”
Good luck to them; I enjoy seeing folks create their own realities. As of this writing, the Camp’s site states that they have raised half their target. They also emphatically promise cake—I wonder if that has anything to do with the fundraisers’ success?
Cynthia Murrell, July 17, 2012
Sponsored by PolySpot
Algorithms Can Deliver Skewed Results
April 18, 2012
After two days of lectures about the power of social media analytics, Stephen E Arnold raised doubts about the reliability of certain analytics outputs. He opined: “Faith in analytics may be misplaced.”
Arnold’s lecture focused on four gaps in social media analytics. He pointed out that many users were unaware of the trade offs in algorithm selection made by vendors’ programmers. Speaking at the Social Media Analytics Summit, he said:
Many companies purchase social media analytics reports without understanding that the questions answered by algorithms may not answer the customer’s actual question.
He continued:
The talk about big data leaves the impression that every item is analyzed and processed. The reality is that sampling methods, like the selection of numerical recipes can have a significant impact on what results become available.
The third gap, he added, “is that smart algorithms display persistence. With smart software, some methods predict a behavior and then look for that behavior because the brute force approach is computationally expensive and adds latency to a system.” He said:
Users assume results are near real time and comprehensive. The reality is that results are unlikely to be real time and built around mathematical methods which value efficiency and cleverness at the expense of more robust analytic methods. The characteristic is more pronounced in user friendly, click here type of systems than those which require to specify a method using SAS or SPSS syntax.”
The final gap is the distortion that affects outputs from “near term, throw forward biases.” Arnold said:
Modern systems are overly sensitive to certain short term content events. This bias is most pronounced when looking for emerging trend data. In these types of outputs the “now” data respond to spikes and users act on identified trends often without appropriate context.
The implication of these gaps is that outputs from some quite sophisticated systems can be misleading or present information as fact when that information has been shaped to a marketer’s purpose.
The Social Media Analytics conference was held in San Francisco, April 17 and 18, 2012. More information about the implications of these gaps may be found at the Augmentext.com Web site.
Donald C Anderson, April 18, 2012,
Sponsored by Pandia.com
MarkLogic Adds Big Data to Its Line Up
April 7, 2012
MarkLogic Corporation has specialized in XML databases for years, but now they have turned their attention to Big Data. Marketwatch.com reports in, “Big Data Takes Center Stage at MarkLogic World 2012” that on May 1-3, 2012 in the Ronald Regan Building in our nation’s capital, Big Data leaders and MarkLogic experts will be gathered in one place. The conference presents an excellent opportunity to meet and network with the experts, but it is also a chance to learn about industry trends, new ideas, and tips/techniques. We noted:
MarkLogic World 2012 will be keynoted by retired Adm. Mike Mullen, who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 2007 to 2011. Mullen will discuss “The Intersection of National Security and the Global Economy.” In his keynote, Mullen will talk about the challenges he faced while serving as the top military adviser to the president and the secretary of defense through two administrations. Mullen will also discuss the challenges facing America, looking at economic growth, infrastructure, education, and foreign and military policy.
Other nig names are three leading research analysts: Matt Aslett, research manager, 451 Research; Mark Beyer, research vice president, Gartner; and Noel Yuhanna, principal analyst, Forrester, who will give a rundown on major trends in Big Data at their panel. An award ceremony will also be held to honor leaders and innovators in the field. Conferences are always the best tools, outside of LinkedIn and other professional social networking web sites, to connect with potential collaborators and get ideas for future projects. However, these conferences surprised us—is it a marketing or technological reconfiguration of our favorite XQuery system with proprietary extensions?
The defense flavor is interesting. With the US budget gripping the scissors for some defense spending, is MarkLogic aware of a funding windfall in this sector? With the harsh actions taken toward inappropriate General Services Administration spending, the US government market may face as much turmoil as commercial sectors like book, magazine, and newspaper funding.
Is the notion of big data the next golden goose. The farm yard is getting crowded. The number of azure chip consultants on the program is interesting as well. With MarkLogic a leader in XML, enterprise search, and big data, the company seems to be poised to grow rapidly. We’re looking for hard data about gross sales, margins, and market share in the company’s core markets.
Whitney Grace, April 4, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
No Joke: Upcoming MobileX Conference in Lexington, KY
April 1, 2012
For search enthusiasts that are interested in learning about the the potential impact of mobile devices on various industries, Awesome Inc recently reported on the upcoming conference in the article,”MobileX Comes Home to Lexington.”
According to the article, MobileX Lexington is a one day conference that will be held from 9:00 am to 5:30 pm on April 13 at Awesome Inc. The conference for entrepreneurs, investors, developers, industry professionals, and mobile enthusiasts that identifies opportunities, explores solutions, and provides technical education in the mobile & related industries.
When introducing the speakers, The article states:
Anthony Hand of Samsung, who will be giving a talk on “Opportunities for Mobile Innovation: A Designer’s Perspective”. He is a user experience designer at Samsung Research in Silicon Valley for mobile apps and services and has worked with all of the major smartphone platforms and mobile Java. Recently, he spent two years at Motorola as the lead UI designer for the Home Screen and most of the widgets on their Android devices.
This conference could be an exciting opportunity for those interested in learning about innovations in the mobile world.
Jasmine Ashton, April 1, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Text Analytics Gurus Discuss the State of the Industry
March 19, 2012
Text Analytics News recently reported on an interview with Seth Grimes, the president of Alta Plana Corporation, and Tom H.C Anderson, managing partner of Odin Text- Anderson Analytics, in the article “Infinite Possibilities of Text Analytics.”
According to the article, in preparation for the 8th Annual Text Analytics Summit East in Boston, Text Analytics News reached out to these influential thinkers in the text mining field and asked them some questions regarding the state of the industry.
In response to a question regarding the changes in the approach of analysis software for unstructured data, Grimes said:
The big changes in text analytics are the embrace of and by Big Data, the development of ever-more sophisticated algorithms, and a shift in the way user invoke the technologies. Enterprises understand that a high proportion of Big Data is unstructured: Variety is one of Big Data’s three “Vs.” Text analytics providers know they have to meet challenges presented by the other two “Vs:” Volume and Velocity.
Stephen E Arnold, publisher of Beyond Search, will discuss the implications of “near term, throw forward” algorithms. Mr. Arnold will describe how injections of content can distort the outputs of certain analytic methods. At the fall 2011 conference, Mr. Arnold’s presentation provided a reminder that “objective” outputs may not be.
This is an interesting interview that would be worth checking out for those who are interested in attending the conference or just finding out a little more information about how content is analyzed. For registration information visit the Text Analytics website.
Jasmine Ashton, March 19, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Social Media Analytics: What Are Social Media Data?
March 8, 2012
We have been following Text Analytics News, along with Useful Social Media, in its recent series of interviews with experts in the field of Social Media Analytics. The third installment focuses on what exactly social media data is and where it comes from.
“Social Media Analytics Expert Interview Series: Part 3” is conducted by the Chief Editor of Text Analytics news, Ezra Steinberg. The interviews are published as a lead-up to the Social Media Analytics Summit. The interview panel for this installment includes: Tom H. C. Anderson CEO, OdinText – Anderson Analytics; Nathan Gilliatt Principal, Social Target; Chris Moody COO, Gnip; and Kami Watson Huyse CEO, Zoetica Media. The interview covers experts’ definitions and interpretations of social media data and attempts to resolve confusion about how to use these data. Some insights from the interview follow:
“USM: When you think of “Social Media Data,” what do you think of first? Second?
Kami (Zoetica Media): Social media data is at the heart of understanding your community. Far from being cold and impersonal, data can tell a story that intuition alone cannot deliver. As much as we like to believe that we fully understand our community, what people say and what people do are often very different. Data can help to guide intuition.
For that reason, the second thing I think of when I consider social media data is its importance as a tool to diagnose, prioritize and evaluate what you are doing as an organization and use it to make course corrections.
USM: Do you think there is currently a common understanding as to what constitutes social media data?
Chris (Gnip): Definitely not. For example, some think of social media data as Twitter data because Twitter has done a better job than some other companies of making their data available in a full coverage, reliable, scalable format. The reality is that social media data comes in lots of different forms from lots of different sources. We’re working hard to help companies understand how different types of social data can be useful for different types of analysis.”
The interview focuses on understanding social media data and getting the most out of the analytics that it provides. Focus is also given to social media monitoring vendors and analytical tools, with opinions from the experts on which ones are valuable and how they work. Businesses are learning that considering these opinions and implementing social media is valuable when attempting to learn and understand customers and potential customers. The full interview can be found here and can give insight on this marketing tool and how it works.
Andrea Hayden, March 8, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
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