By Udo Kruschwitz on July 24, 2017

Summer, Sake, SIGIR
Welcome to the summer 2017 issue of Informer! It is always such a pleasure to be reminded by you, our readership, that it is time for a new compilation of stories from the world of search and information retrieval, in fact more like two worlds — the one that practitioners operate in and the academic world (we aim to cover both!). And this is what we have prepared for you — a bit of an unusual mix, but hey, it’s summer and we would hate nothing more than you getting bored and turning away from us.
Read more…
By Tony Russell-Rose on July 23, 2017
As you may recall, last year we launched the inaugural Search Industry Awards programme, which attracted nominations from across the globe and culminated in a memorable awards ceremony at Search Solutions 2016. My colleagues and I are delighted therefore to launch this year’s Search Industry Awards, celebrating the best search innovations of 2017. Presented by the Information Retrieval Specialist Group of the BCS, these awards recognize people, projects, and companies that have excelled in the design of search and information retrieval products and services.
Read more…
By Jon Chamberlain on July 22, 2017
Games4NLP was an independent symposium co-located with the 15th European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics (EACL) Conference that took place on 4 April 2017 in Valencia, Spain.
The symposium aimed to promote and explore the possibilities for research and practical applications of using games and gamification for Natural Language Processing (NLP). The main objective was to provide a forum for researchers and practitioners to discuss and share ideas regarding how the NLP research community can benefit from using game/gamification strategies. For example, games can be used to collect large numbers of annotations of human language provided that there are sufficient numbers of players who are motivated to play, and these annotations, when aggregated, can be used as labels that replace or compliment the effort of expert annotators.
Read more…
By Giorgio Maria Di Nunzio on July 22, 2017
The aim of the Italian Information Retrieval (IIR) workshop is to provide an annual meeting where Italian researchers, and especially early stage researchers like PhD students, of the area of IR and related disciplines can present ongoing works and projects as well as results and innovative developments, and exchange information and ideas in an informal way.
Read more…
By Katherine Allen on July 22, 2017
17-18 October 2017, Olympia London
25% discount for BCS-IRSG members
Last year’s inaugural Taxonomy Bootcamp London (TBCL) was a terrific success as taxonomy people from dozens of countries came together to share their stories and experiences. Now we’re doing it all over again. This year’s conference is all about showcasing the best ideas from the community for making taxonomies a powerful business asset, with the aim of making TBCL an essential event for anyone working with taxonomies, content tagging, ontologies, text analytics and more.
Read more…
By John Tait on July 21, 2017
The BCS IRSG can support events in four different ways:
- We can provide Sponsorship. We can provide financial support for suitable IR-related events. There are restrictions on how our money can be used due to the status of our parent body, the British Computer Society, as a British Registered Charity. For example, we can provide funds to support student travel and attendance, but not, for example to underwrite basic running costs of a conference outside the UK.
- We can also be an official Supporter. For supported events we provide publicity on our web site, through our mailing list, and our Quarterly Newsletter, Informer, which has over 1000 readers for each issue. The committee is also very happy to provide advice and assistance to ensure your event is a success.
- We can organise use of conference rooms in Central London for up to 120 attendees, at no cost to the event organisers, provided the event is a scientific or other legitimate not-for-profit event and is IR related.
- We can organise registration systems, including taking registration fees, again at no cost to the event organisers, provided the event is a scientific or other legitimate not-for-profit event.
We are always very interested in collaborations with other professional societies and with other groups and interested parties, but we normally expect event organisers to include at least one Affiliate or full Member of the IRSG on the event organising committee to act as a focus for liaison.
Read more…
By Andy Macfarlane on July 7, 2017
One Day Events
Search Solutions 2017. The annual practioner focused event for the IRSG held at the BCS offices in Covent Garden, together with a tutorial day on 28 November 2017, with the main event on 29th November 2017.
Read more…
Recent comments