Online 2006 - brief report

I've actually managed to get to a few sessions at Online, so I thought that I'd do a brief outline report.

Nic Newman from BBC Search gave a very interesting view of how the BBC is looking at and using Web 2.0 resources. The deluge of digital data is making it difficult for people to find the content that they want, so user based tagging makes a lot of sense, particularly with the BBC plans to open up 75 years of archives. He also said that serendity was important in the search process and people should be surprised and delighted with unexpected finds. The BBC Web 2.0 strategy is based on content being the most important thing, and each element needs appropriate tagging. The people element is also very important both in terms of tagging but also sharing content. BBC content particularly difficult given the amount of data types available - text, programmes, forums, other user 'play lists' etc. There is a need to combine editorial skills with the 'wisdom of the crowd'.

Geoffrey Bilder from Scholarly Information Strategies UK gave a very interesting presentation on the implications of Web 2.0 for publishers, libraries and users. He made a few points that I really liked, such as the fact that the 'edge' is the new centre, with an application being at the centre, with everyone outside that, feeding data into it, rather than it working the other way around. I also liked the way in which he referred to RSS, as he pointed out that it allows you to subscribe to someone's brain, or to subscribe to a collective brain.

I moderated a session myself on 'What's new in search?'. Chris Sherman gave a good overview of the latest from Ask, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo, then went on to list some good Web 2.0 search tools (some of which I was unaware of, so I'll be looking and them and blogging them in the next few days).

Chris also talked about social search in a bit more detail, looking at 'why now?', problems of social search, what he sees as working models for the future, and future trends.

Amelia Kassel gave a good overview of the revenue models for search engines and the implications for information professionals.

Stephen Arnold gave a paper on the latest search trends with emphasis on enterprise search.

The next session was on search V discovery. I gave a paper entitled 'Death of Search' (not a title I chose myself) in which I talked about how search is evolving.

Amelia then gave another talk on New tools for discovery, looking at older tools like Furl, then moving on to social search and social bookmarking, library trends and innovation.

Tor Crockett from Microsoft looked at their version of advertising and gaining revenue, and I found this probably the most interesting talk of the day (mine included and with respect to the other speakers). She talked about what keywords are, keywords V concepts, different types of keywords, 9 concepts of keywords, such as Quality, Price, Product, Vendor, Location, Intended Action/Use. Although her talk was really aimed at people using adverts to make revenue there was a lot there of interest to a searcher, particularly with respect to that basic concept - what is a keyword?

Day 2 started for me by giving a 30 minute masterclass on developing websites, and I'm moderating a session at the end of today looking at - yes you've guessed it - social search and Web 2.0

Apologies if the format of this entry doesn't come out too well, but I'm writing it on my PDA with a keypad attached, so it's all a bit basic, but I hope that it'll do the job!

Comments

[Wow!ter]

It does fine to sniff the flavour.
Thanx Phil