Comments on: Upcoming Google NYC Talk: Reconsidering Relevance

By: Daniel Tunkelang

Daniel Tunkelang — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 15:26:20 +0000

Just in from my host: too late to set up a video conference. But I’ll post the link to the recording on my blog as soon as it’s available.

By: Daniel Tunkelang

Daniel Tunkelang — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 21:30:24 +0000

Patrick, I’ve asked them and hopefully will get an answer in time to post it here.

Meanwhile, I’m delighted to have you as a reader. I know I can be a tough critic of Google from time to time, but I hope my criticism is fair and constructive. Or at least entertaining.

By: Patrick Chanezon

Patrick Chanezon — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 20:41:34 +0000

You should ask your host to setup a Video Conf with Mountain View. I have a meeting at that time, so won’t attend, but I will definitely watch the video!

For the tech talks I hosted, the ratio of number of video views compared to actual attendees varied from 10 to 5000, so the video is your best vehicle:-)

Have fun at the NY office.

By: Daniel Tunkelang

Daniel Tunkelang — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 21:48:26 +0000

Ouch. Though I suspect that Google hires a lot more systems / software engineering generalists than IR or HCI researchers. IMHO, Google’s biggest computer science innovations have been outside of IR and HCI, e.g., Google File System, MapReduce, BigTable. Still, I’m surprised that relevance 101 (in which I’d include both relevance and pseudo-relevance feedback) isn’t part of basic training.

In any case, thanks for the heads up! I won’t assume that I just race through the basic IR material. Which may be so much for the better, since the online audience will probably be a bit broader than the live one.

By: jeremy

jeremy — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 21:25:18 +0000

A friend of mine gave a relevance-related talk at Google in the summer of 2008. While giving the talk and chatting with people after the talk, she found that most of the people in the audience had no idea what relevance feedback was.

Considering that relevance feedback is many decades old, and one of the oldest/most original forms of HCI in IR, I find it a bit disturbing that so many people at this search-focused company were clueless about it.

I’d be interested in hearing what your experiences are.