9/9 Search & Marketing SIGs: Intelligent Business Search

On September 9^th, join FirstRain’s President and CEO Penny Herscher for a presentation on how they are improving the world of business search with their new approach called “Intelligent Business Search” in a joint meeting of both the Search and Marketing SIGs.

FirstRain’s Intelligent Business Search technology turns the hours spent on research online into minutes and delivers insightful, dynamic intelligence that supports smart decision-making and early mover advantage to businesses. The technology allows businesses to spot emerging trends, quickly and easily, grasp their significance, develop deep customer knowledge that enables you to accelerate revenue and sell more.

Penny Herscher will discuss and present on this search technology that uses the web as its database and sorts information and relationships specific to a given business or industry and transforms the web into a “Database of Actionable Insights”, those key actions, incidents, junctures that taken and filtered collectively from all the billions of bits and pieces of information create new insights, often before the searcher is aware to ask.

Penny Herscher is a seasoned executive with extensive leadership experience, having previously guided Simplex Solutions, Inc. through a public offering and subsequent acquisition by Cadence Design Systems. Penny serves on the boards of JDSU, Rambus, the Anita Borg Institute and Planned Parenthood Mar Monte.

She holds a BA with honors in mathematics from Cambridge University.

Agenda

6:30 – 7:00pm – Registration/Food & Drink

7:00 7:05 a few words about the Search & Marketing SIG

7:00-9:00 pm – Program

Venue

LinkedIn

Price

$15 at the door for non-SDForum members
No charge for SDForum members

5/13 Search SIG: Search Intent Marketing

On May 13th, join start-up Adchemy‘s SVP Anurag Wadehra for a discussion on how they’re improving the world of paid search marketing through their new approach called Search Intent Marketing which is complementary to existing bid management and campaign management tools.

Search Intent Marketing allows the advertiser to organize campaigns, including keyword selection, ad groups, ad copy, and landing pages around areas of consumer intent and create highly targeted content. This intent orientation delivers highly relevant experiences that most closely match the advertiser’s offerings with what the consumer is looking for. The result is higher search campaign ROI from dramatically improved click through and conversion rates.

Adchemy’s Anurag Wadehra, Senior Vice President, Product and Marketing, will present and discuss.
Anurag is a seasoned business executive with experience in marketing, product management and new product launches at both enterprise software companies and the major brand advertisers. He recently led marketing and product management at Siperian, a data integration company targeting Fortune 500 companies. Anurag founded and served as CEO of Chingari, a software company that manages consumer feedback; and he has held product management positions at supply chain software firm i2 Technologies. Anurag also worked for many years as brand manager at Procter & Gamble and Kraft Foods.

Anurag holds an MBA from the University of Chicago and bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi

Agenda
The now well established Search SIG Agenda format will be used:
6:30-7:00pm – Registration / Food & Drink
7:00–7:05pm – A few words about the Search SIG
7:00-9:00 pm – Program

Price
$15 at the door for non-SDForum members
No charge for SDForum members

3/30 Search SIG. Social Search Goes Big: Google Acquires Aardvark

Please join us for an evening of conversation with Damon Horowitzer, co-founder and CTO of Aardvark which was acquired by Google in February.

Aardvark is social search: ask any question and Aardvark will discover the perfect person in your network to answer in minutes. Aardvark launched a private beta in March, 2009, and has been growing rapidly since. Today people use Aardvark via vark.com, the Aardvark iPhone App, IM and email. Over the past few months Aardvark has had amazing reception by the industry and press, appearing in the New York Times, Time’s 50 Best Websites of 2009, TechCrunch, and winning runner-up as the Best New Product or Startup of 2009 at the Crunchies awards.

About Damon:

Damon Horowitz is a leading thinker at the intersection of technology and the humanities.

Horowitz was co-founder and CTO of Aardvark, the popular social search engine, overseeing product development and research strategy. Prior to Aardvark, Horowitz built several companies around applications of intelligent language processing. He co-founded Perspecta (acquired by Excite), was lead architect for Novation Biosciences (acquired by Agilent), and co-founded NewsDB (now Daylife). Currently, Horowitz is a Director of Engineering at Google.

Horowitz teaches courses in philosophy, cognitive science, and computer science at many institutions, including Stanford, NYU, University of Pennsylvania, and San Quentin. He has spoken at conferences ranging from TED to AAAI to Web2.0, and his work has been featured in media ranging from the New York Times to Discovery Channel to TechCrunch. Horowitz was recently named one of the AdAge “Creativity 50” most inspiring thinkers and innovators of 2010.

Horowitz earned his B.A. from Columbia, M.S. from MIT Media Lab, and Ph.D. from Stanford.

Agenda
The now well established Search SIG Agenda format will be used:
6:30-7:00pm – Registration / Food & Drink
7:00–7:05pm – A few words about the Search SIG
7:00-9:00 pm – Program

Price
$15 at the door for non-SDForum members
No charge for SDForum members

Google, Kosmix and the Exploration of the Deep Web

Google, Kosmix and the Exploration of the Deep Web Welcome to the Deep Web, the portion of the Internet not accessible to traditional search engines. Social networks, media-sharing sites for photos and videos, library catalogs, airline reservation systems, phone books, and all kinds of scientific databases lurk inside the Web, practically invisible today’s search tools. The volume of this hidden content is enormous: some estimates have pegged the size of the Deep Web at up to 500 times larger than the slice of the Web we see on search engines today.Ironically, the Deep Web hides some of the richest content on the Internet. The Web 2.0 revolution has enabled an explosion of sites dedicated to user-generated content, including Wikipedia, YouTube, Flickr, TripAdvisor and Yelp. Content on these sites grows so rapidly that it’s nearly impossible for Web crawlers to keep up. Social media sites like Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter pose the same challenge, and often add privacy protections that permit only “friends” to view certain information. In this session, Kosmix Co-Founder Dr. Anand Rajaraman and Dr. Alon Halevy of Google Labs will explore the mysteries of the Deep Web.  Prominent experts in this field, Rajaraman and Halevy will examine how the Deep Web will change the business of Search, offer insight into what content creators should expect as the Deep Web becomes more accessible, and comment on what this shift might mean for the end user. They will also address the question of whether the Deep Web will someday be fully exposed, and if not, why not.   Agenda The now well established Search SIG Agenda format will be used: 6:30-7:00pm – Registration / Food & Drink 7:00–7:05pm – A few words about the Search SIG 7:00-9:00 pm – Program Price $15 at the door for non-SDForum members No charge for SDForum members Date:  November 12, 2009 Location: Cubberley Community Center 4000 Middlefield Rd., RM H-1 Palo Alto, CA Agenda The now well established Search SIG Agenda format will be used: 6:30-7:00pm – Registration / Food & Drink 7:00–7:05pm – A few words about the Search SIG 7:00-9:00 pm – Program

Search UX Innovations with Bing and Google — SDForum Search SIG

On Tuesday, September 29th, join Bing, Google, Yahoo! and your fellow Search SIG members and guests for a lively conversation on innovations in search user experience.

Time: 6:30 – 9 pm. Location: Microsoft Silicon Valley Conference Center, 1065 La Avenida Building 1, Mountain View, CA

Free for SDForum Members. $15 at the door for non-members.

Dinner will be provided at no additional charge by Microsoft.

Confirmed Panelists:

Sean Suchter [quasi-German for “searcher”] runs Microsoft’s Search Technology Center – Silicon Valley. Sean has nearly eleven years experience in web search and previously ran the Yahoo! Search Technology team, where he was responsible for all aspects (engineering, research and product management) of the algorithmic side of Yahoo! web search. Previously to working on web search, Sean did speech recognition research. Sean holds a Bachelor of Science in Engineering and Applied Science from the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, CA.

Johanna Wright is the Director of Product Management responsible for Web Search.  She oversees the development of Google‘s search user interface and features and was the initial product lead on Universal Search, having driven it from inception to launch. Prior to Google, Johanna worked at a number of software start-ups in New York City. Johanna holds an MBA from UCLA and a BA in Mathematics from Barnard College.

Dr. Larry Cornett is the vice president of the Yahoo! Search consumer products division. In this capacity, he is primarily responsible for the Yahoo! web search experience and heads up a multinational team of product managers, designers, and developers focused on creating a world-class search experience.

Prior to this role, Dr. Cornett was a Director at eBay, where his team focused on multiple products for Tailored Shopping Experiences, Platform, and International sites. Earlier in his career, he was a designer at Apple Computer, where he worked on the Finder, OS, and International software; and IBM, where he worked on database and development tools. He was also the principal consultant for MindSpan Design, an interaction design agency where he worked on desktop, web, and mobile solutions for a variety of clients.

Dr. Cornett received his Ph.D. from Rice University, where he designed and developed a coaching system for training software users. He holds multiple patents, which include design work on web-based products and hardware solutions.

Safa Rashtchy

Moderator Safa Rashtchy is well known for his expertise on search and for hosting the teen panel at Web 2.0 Summits and for his prescient investor analysis on the search space as Piper Jaffrey’s Managing Director for Global Internet Media.

Real-Time Search. May 12th Search SIG. SDForum

The basic premise of real time search is to answer the simple yet important question: “What are other people saying about my query right now?” The result is an intriguing blend of news, trends, navigation and discovery, all powered by information users are creating in ever-increasing quantities. Some recent examples of real-time search utility have been around news events (“plane in hudson“), national sentiment (“AIG“) and research on products (“Canon EOS“). As the usage of real-time search starts to vector towards the mainstream, there are important questions to be answered. These range from its integration with web search to eliminating spam and improving overall relevance. This panel features experts in the field who will attempt to provide an overview of the space and its future evolution.

Some areas that will be covered:

– What are the primary use cases of real-time search?

– How does it fit in with classical web search?

– What kind of relevance mechanisms work well for this medium?

– Will it remain a niche service or will it reach the mainstream?

– Will traditional search advertising work in this medium?

Robert Scoble will moderate.
Facebook and Yahoo! are confirmed panelists. Invited panelists include Twitter and Google.

Date:	Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Time:	6:30pm – 9:00pm
Location:	Cubberly Community Center
Street:	4000 Middlefield Rd., Room H-1
City/Town:	Palo Alto, CA

Agenda

The now well established Search SIG Agenda format will be used:
6:30-7:00pm – Registration / Food & Drink
7:00–7:05pm – A few words about the Search SIG
7:00-9:00 pm – Program

Price

$15 at the door for non-SDForum members
No charge for SDForum members

The New York Times on How Patients are Using the Internet to Get Medical Advice

Earlier this week, the New York Times had an article that was very relevant to next week’s Search SIG on the “Search for Better Health.”  Their article “Logging on for a Second (or Third) Opinion” had a lot of interesting data points including (from their Pew Internet and American Life Project reference)

• “of those with a high-speed connection, 1 in 9 do health research on a typical day.
• And 75 percent of online patients with a chronic problem told the researchers that ‘their last health search affected a decision about how to treat an illness or condition”

According to this New York Times piece, “reliance on the Internet is so prevalent, said the report’s author, Susannah Fox, the associate director at Pew, that ‘Google is the de facto second opinion‘ for patients seeking further information after a diagnosis.”

In addition to describing all the useful health information that one can find on the Internet, it’s also intriguing to hear about the patient-to-patient information sharing. The New York Times shares an example of a lady in Oregon who used Twitter during her operation and recuperation. She attributes Twitter to helping her stop taking a certain antinasuea drug due to a friend’s warning her that her teeth chattering might be a side effect of the drug. She also put here surgery and tumor photos on Flickr.

Can we view someone in Oregon as American mainstream or are they still too close to the Valley?

The article also lists out a lot of sites that include

• General Interest ( WEbMD, Discovery Health, the Mayo Clinic)
• Medical Research ( PubMed, Clinicaltrials.gov, Psycinfo, Nccam.nih.gov )
• Patient Sites ( acor.org, e-patients.net, trusera.com)
• Disease-specific sites ( americanheart.org, cancer.org, diabetes.org, breastcancer.org, diabetesmine.com )
• Web Tools (sugarstats.com, drx.com, yourdiseaserisk.com )

Oct 9th. The Search for Better Health: Empowering Consumer Health

Panelists:

• Yahoo‘s Director of Product Management, Don Chennavasin
• RightHealth/ Kosmix‘s RightHealth Product Manager, Saumil Mehta
• Healthline‘s Chairman and CEO, West Shell

Moderator: Matthew Holt, The Health Care Blog and The Health 2.0 Conference

Date:	Thursday, October 9, 2008
Time:	6:30pm – 9:00pm
Location:	Microsoft Silicon Valley Conference Center
Street:	1065 La Avenida, Building 1
City/Town:	Mountain View, CA

From health search engines and widgets to social networks and web med journals, consumers have access to more medical information than ever before. A recent PEW report estimates 75-80% of all Internet users have searched online for health info. In fact, 75% of e-patients with a chronic condition say their last health search affected a decision about how to treat an illness or condition.

How consumers search for health data and interact with information in cyberspace is changing the way we live. From developing healthier habits to asking better questions with their doctors and controlling online medical records, the web is empowering patients around the globe.

In this discussion, Health 2.0 experts from Kosmix’s RightHealth, Healthline, Yahoo! and others will discuss the rising popularity of online health information sites, and its impact on the medical field. This panel, moderated by Matthew Holt of the Health 2.0 conference, will also provide insight into health user behavior, lessons learned and plans for the future.

Search SIG Tomorrow Night.

At least one of the panelists, plans to make a major announcement tomorrow night…

Join the lively discussion with Facebook, FriendFeed, Mahalo, and Wikia Search.

Date: July 8, 2008

Time: 6:30pm-9:00pm

Location: Cubberly Community Center, Room H-1, 4000 Middlefield Road, Palo Alto

Pizza will be served.

New Search SIG Co-Chair

Please join me in welcoming Aditya Agarwal as the new co-chair for the Search SIG. Aditya is Director of Engineering at Facebook, has deep experience in search, and brings great enthusiasm to the Search SIG.

Robert Tri, Co-Chair