During February's NY Enterprise Search User Group, Michael Himelstein presented: Using Search to Create a Unified View of Information - The Roadmap to Creating Search Based Applications. Michael is the Director of Search Consulting for BA Insight, and he provided valuable information on how we should all think about Search.
In his abstract, he described the misconception of search as, A Search Box, A Search Button...and 10 Blue Links. However my great take away from his talk were the Search visuals that we don't think about. I'm getting a bit ahead of myself, let's first talk about how we view Search today.
Mike H. referenced Eric Schmidt's famous quote, "Every two days now we create as much information as we did from the dawn of civilization up until 2003." That’s something like five exabytes of data, he says. But what does this really mean? A host of of unstructured data, terabytes of information that is unclassified, information that lives in totally different silos. And this growing number is increasing exponentially because new sources of information are added daily.
This is where Search comes to play. Search is when you realize the need to find a platform to bring all this information together in a unified view. However what is usually missing when you think of Search as bringing necessary information together? Context. When you bring a large source of information together without context, the obvious description would be "Information Overload."
So to avoid this and to add value to search means to find your company's individual context, understand the context that is important to your users and develop a solution based on your findings. The great example Mike used was Zagat Survey, this site successfully took their selected topic of Restaurants & Dining and built a contexual view around different pieces of relevant information.
With Search you can build significant applications today, the trick is to place your relevant information in one structured unified view, utilizing the power that is context. Great job Mike, thank you for bringing your talk to the New York Enterprise Search User Group! Join us for our next meeting: Adding *Your* Business Value With FAST Search for SharePoint Pipeline Extensibility.
In his abstract, he described the misconception of search as, A Search Box, A Search Button...and 10 Blue Links. However my great take away from his talk were the Search visuals that we don't think about. I'm getting a bit ahead of myself, let's first talk about how we view Search today. This is where Search comes to play. Search is when you realize the need to find a platform to bring all this information together in a unified view. However what is usually missing when you think of Search as bringing necessary information together? Context. When you bring a large source of information together without context, the obvious description would be "Information Overload."
With Search you can build significant applications today, the trick is to place your relevant information in one structured unified view, utilizing the power that is context. Great job Mike, thank you for bringing your talk to the New York Enterprise Search User Group! Join us for our next meeting: Adding *Your* Business Value With FAST Search for SharePoint Pipeline Extensibility.
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