2020 Call for Speakers

New Visions and Versions of Search

Deadline is April 26

We understand this is a difficult time for everyone due to the current health crisis and that you have many other things on your mind, however, our team is still working hard to provide the best ever events in November: KMWorld 2020 & its co-located events Taxonomy Boot Camp, Enterprise Search & Discovery, and Text Analytics Forum.

If you find you have a few minutes to think of messages, experiences, and expertise that you want to share, please do consider sending us a proposal to speak. We understand that you might not know what your organization has planned regarding travel in the fall, so we are happy to have a conditional response to participation now. We plan to confirm speakers in June (or perhaps earlier) as we will hopefully all have a better view of the future at that point. We appreciate your flexibility and look forward to receiving your proposal.

Now that it’s 2020, it’s time to see search through a new lens, to find a new vision of what search and discovery should look like for the enterprise. New technologies and enhancements to existing technologies maximize the value of enterprise search. Increased functionality empowers people to discover information and data that leads to new knowledge. Insights that lead to actionable outcomes are the goal.

With a 2020 perspective, this year’s Enterprise Search and Discovery conference considers the basics of relevancy, findability, and user experience. But beyond that, a 2020 view could mean a new platform, a negotiation with an existing vendor, an exploration of new ways to leverage data, or a completely new approach to search and discovery. Relying on open source, recognizing the importance of voice search, realizing evolving differences in searcher and customer behavior, refining the concept of enterprise search and discovery, evaluating analytics—all these play a role in 2020 search. Then there’s apps, bots, graph technology, semantic search, predictive analytics, machine learning, the Internet of Things, neural networks, and natural language processing. These, too, have changed over time and hold promise for affecting the efficacy and efficiency of knowledge discovery. As collaborative work environments become the norm, those also affect search and discovery.

Now in its 16th year, the Enterprise Search & Discovery conference is looking for your expertise and your lessons learned with search and discovery.

What is your take on new visions and versions of search? What are you doing to create intuitive user interfaces? How are you meeting user expectations regarding discovery? How does multimedia figure into your search implementations? What about management’s demands for an ROI that proves search is vital to success? How is enterprise search in your organizations delivering impactful insights? Given that end users may not truly understand the underlying complexities, it’s up to search professionals to examine developments in search technology that will not only satisfy but delight users. How can we enhance enterprise knowledge through search?

Whether you equate enterprise search to insight engines, cognitive search, knowledge discovery solutions, enhanced discoverability, or something else, we want to hear from you. New technologies, next-generation information access, innovation acceleration, and novel approaches to search and discovery are on the agenda for 2020. Got some ideas on improving search speed and relevancy, how search results should look, or choosing one technology over another? What about your thoughts on information governance or the effect of mobile devices and the cloud on search and discovery?

Be part of Enterprise Search & Discovery 2020!

We seek dynamic speakers who can discuss the technical aspects of enterprise search and discovery as well as the business implications of successful deployments. We are also looking for people to present half-day workshops.

Share your knowledge and submit a proposal to speak at Enterprise Search & Discovery 2020!

We invite you to submit a proposal to participate in this exciting conference. Click here to submit your proposal. The deadline for submitting a proposal is April 26, 2020.

The audience at Enterprise Search & Discovery is well-informed and tech-savvy. We're looking for speakers who can “wow” this audience with their insights into designing enterprise search and discovery so that it empowers business operations, enhances user experience, and allows workplace innovation to occur. We would like a mix of formal presentations and interactive panel participation. Case studies of search (both internal and customer-facing), social networks, ecommerce, or any combination thereof are particularly welcome. Feel free to suggest something different from the normal conference presentation.

Possible topics (but don't let this limit your imagination!):

How to Submit a Proposal

If you would like to be considered as a speaker, please submit your ideas here. We will review submissions as they arrive, so don't delay in submitting your ideas! If you are a search/discovery vendor, please contact us about sponsor presentations and other sponsorship opportunities, or please pass this along to one of your customers to encourage them to present their case study using your products.

We look forward to receiving your ideas and suggestions before the submission deadline of April 26, 2020.

Marydee Ojala
Program Director, Enterprise Search and Discovery
Editor-in-Chief, OnlineSearcher
marydee@xmission.com