World’s Top Search Engine Specialists Mark 20 Years of Web Search
Posted on: 01 August 2013
Dublin hosted the world’s largest gathering of search engine specialists at the ACM SIGIR 2013 conference organised by the CNGL (Centre for Global Intelligent Content) at Trinity College Dublin and Dublin City University.
The conference celebrated 20 years of Web search by bringing together pioneers of search engine technology. Among them was Jonathon Fletcher creator of what’s commonly considered to be the world’s first Web search engine – the JumpStation search engine. The conference took 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 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 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 included senior professionals from Google, Microsoft, Baidu, Yahoo!, AOL, IBM, Yandex, Facebook and LinkedIn.
Highlights of the conference included a panel discussion featuring creator of the JumpStation search engine, Jonathon Fletcher, and senior representatives of Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! focusing on web search twenty years ago and emerging innovations in web search today.
John R. Smith of the IBM Watson Research Center delivered the conference keynote address entitled ‘Riding the Multimedia Big Data Wave’ during which he addressed 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.
The fact that the conference was held in Ireland this anniversary year reflects Ireland’s prominent position in the information retrieval community. The event was 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”, commented 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.”