November 28, 2005

| Now That's a Beat >>

So I’m going to this conference on Saturday. Looks to be a room full of super-smart academics, lawyers, and technologists. And me.

We’re all to write a short position paper ahead of time, so as to facilitate a running start on the conversation; it’s only a day-long event. The papers were due today, and I got mine in, but without leeway to do what I really wanted to: post it here ahead of time.

That’s the new procrastination: not waiting until the last minute (although I did that too), but specifically waiting until it is no longer reasonable to call on your blog readership for comments and critiques.

Anyway, at the conference, I’m on Panel 1, which aims to

review the wide range of what search engines do and their importance in the information ecosystem.

Furthermore,

industry participants, computer scientists, and analysts will flag major trends in search engine technology and try to predict future developments, with the goal of pointing out those trends that will create new conflicts and new litigation.

I actually had a tough time with this; I didn’t want to just make a bunch of random, breezy predictions about video search or super-cool maps or whatever. So I spent the day on Saturday trying to come up with something that really got me excited.

Position paper after the break. It’s already turned in, but of course I’ll have to talk about it (and other things) on Saturday, so comment! Comment!

Robin Sloan, Panel 1: The Search Space

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