We're back! After the smashing (let's keep it modest) success of Vertical Leap, the SDForum Vertical Search conference, Dave McClure and yours truly have agreed to co-chair the SDForum Search SIG, and we are excited to announce the first event - taking place on Sept 14th on the Yahoo campus in Sunnyvale: "Audio Search : Selling Picks & Shovels at the Podcast Gold Rush". If you don't understand Dave's English, it means that we'll talk about Podcasting Search and Directories.
For our readers outside of Silicon Valley, the SDForum is a key local non-profit that is organizing a large number of events around different technologies, and a SIG (for Special Interest Group) focuses on a given technology or market. The Search SIG is all about, well, Search... and its tag line will be (until we find something more catchy) “the Search for Search".
The purpose of the Search SIG is to offer a communication and collaboration platform to the Search ecosystem: search engines, marketers/advertisers, users and developers. Through a series of monthly events, the SIG will cover a large diversity of topics: from the latest developments in search to the needs of brands and advertisers, through the issues and key learnings of starting, funding, building, and exiting a search company.
We plan to use different formats for the SIG as well: fireside chats with key executives of the ecosystem, panels, presentations + Q&As, unconference - i.e the panel is the audience, etc. Once thing we request, demand, beg for, is the participation of the audience.
We also want to give companies the opportunity to introduce themselves, launch their products, in short segments of 5 to 15 minutes max. And at the end of each session, anybody having an announcement to make will be able to do so.
The Search SIG will take place at a few locations in Silicon Valley, and rotate amongst them, most likely on a quarterly basis.
We are set for the first two sessions, September and October (Mobile Search - a joint event with our friends of Mobile Monday) , beyond that we are welcoming your input.
- Fireside chat with a search engine Founder
- Unconference format + holiday bash (kind of what we have in mind for December)
- Search and the law of very large numbers - a look at the architecture of a search engine
So let us know what you think, topics you would like to see covered, and if you want to use the Search SIG as a launch pad for your Search startup, get in touch with us.
We can be reached through searchsig [at] gmail [dot] com.
Tag: SearchSIG
good initiative!!
Would be interesting to have a session on personalization (may be with Greg if he is around)
Posted by: Gerald | August 29, 2005 at 08:20 AM