Semantic Search panel at Alt Searche Engines Day on March 30

Charles Knight of RRW affiliate AltSearchEngines.com is hosting an Alternative Search Engine Day on Monday, March 30 (the day before Web 2.0) at the Interncontinental Hotel in downtown San Francisco.  If you're curious about innovation among smaller players in the search industry or you're just curious and here early for Web 2.0, considering joining us!  Tickets are only $30 in advance, so register now!

I'm hosting a great panel on Semantic Search from 11:00 - 11:45 a.m. with the following panelists:

• Powerset/Live Search, Mark Johnson, Senior Program Manager (Powerset Blog / Powerset Twitter)
• Truevert, Herbert Roitblat, CEO (Truevert Blog / Truevert Twitter)
• TextDigger, Tim Musgrove, CEO (TextDigger Blog / TextDigger Twitter)
• TrueKnowledge, William Tunstall-Pedoe, CEO (TrueKnowledge Blog / TrueKnowledge Twitter)

Each panelist will have about 5 minutes to demo their product and show off their technology, their product, and their user advancements.  After demos, we'll discuss some of the topics below and take questions from the audience.

• Defining "Semantic Search": What is semantic search?  Have we been trained by major search players to have a narrow-minded view of what "search" can mean?  What conditions does a search engine have to satisfy before it can be considered semantic?
• Business-model: As Charles has pointed out, major search engines have ~98% of the market.  Should a smaller player try to find a niche and own it?  What niche could that possibly be, considering users tend to use just a few major search engines?  Is it possible that a small company could rise up and challenge major players with deep pockets?  Is it enough to create a technology demonstration and hope to be gobbled up by a big company?
• User Experience: What sort of features can users expect from semantic search to improve their user experience?  What specific features does your product give to users?
• The Competition: What interesting innovations (other than your own company) have you seen in the past year?  What are you looking forward to this year?

I'll be sure to post my notes from the panel after, so if you have any burning questions about semantic search, drop them in the comments and I'll make sure that we address them.

Look forward to seeing you there!

(And, shameless plug: if you're interested in semantic technology, consider coming to the PAWS Meetup on 4/14: we have 8 semantic technology companies demoing!)

Comments

[Mark]

There's a typo in this article's Twitter link.

[Beth]

Has anyone blogged anywhere about how it went?

[François]

Has it been recorded?