I’m just back from Singapore: my first visit to this amazing, dynamic and everchanging city-state, at the kind invitation of Patrick Lambe, to speak at the first Innovations in Knowledge Organisation conference. I think this was probably one of the best organised and most interesting events I’ve attended in the last few years.
The event started with an enthusiastic keynote from Patrick, introducing the topics we’d discuss over the next two days: knowledge management, taxonomies, linked data and search, a wide range of interlinked and interdependent themes. Next was a series of quick-fire PechaKucha sessions – 20 slides, 20 seconds each – a great way to introduce the audience to the topics under discussion, although slightly terrifying to deliver! I spoke on open source search, covering Elasticsearch & Solr and how to start a project using them, and somehow managed to draw breath occasionally. I think my fellow presenters also found it somewhat challenging although nobody lost the pace completely! Next was a quick, interactive panel discussion (roving mics rather than a row of seats) that set the scene for how the event would work – reactive, informal and exciting, rather than the traditional series of audience-facing Powerpoint presentations which don’t necessarily combine well with jetlag.
After lunch, showcasing Singapore’s multicultural heritage (I don’t think I’ve ever had pasta with Chinese peppered beef before, but I hope to again) we moved on to the first set of case studies. Each presenter had 6 minutes to sell their case study (my own was about how we helped Reed Specialist Recruitment build an open source search platform) and then attendees could choose which tables to join to discuss the cases further, for three 20-minute sessions. I had some great discussions including hearing about how a local government employment agency has used Solr. We then moved on to a ‘knowledge cafe’, with tables again divided up by topics chosen by the audience – so this really was a conference about what attendees wanted to discuss, not just what the presenters thought was important.
I was scheduled to deliver the keynote the next day, having been asked to speak on ‘The Future of Search’ – I chose to introduce some topics around Big Data and Streaming Analytics, and how search software might be used to analyze the huge volumes of data we might expect from the Internet of Things. I had some great feedback from the audience (although I’m pretty sure I inspired and confused them in equal measure) – perhaps Singapore was the right place to deliver this talk, as the government are planning to make it the world’s first ‘smart nation‘ – handling data will absolutely key to making this possible.
More case study pitches followed, and since I wasn’t delivering one myself this time I had a chance to listen to some of the studies. I particularly enjoyed hearing from Kia Siang Hock about the National Library Board Singapore‘s OneSearch service, which allowed a federated search across tens of millions of items from many different repositories (e.g. books, newspaper articles, audio transcripts). The technologies used included Veridian, Solr, Vocapia for speech transcription and Mahout for building a recommendation system. In particular, Solr was credited for saving ‘millions of Singapore dollars’ in license fees compared to the previous closed source search system it replaced. Also of interest was Straits Knowledge‘s system for capturing the knowledge assets of an organisation with a system built on a graph database, and Haliza Jailani on using named entity recognition and Linked Data (again for the National Library Board Singapore).
We then moved into the final sessions of the day, ‘knowledge clinics’ – like the ‘knowledge cafes’ these were table-based, informal and free-form discussions around topics chosen by attendees. Matt Moore then gave the last session of the day with an amusing take on Building Competencies, dividing KM professionals into individuals, tribes and organisations. Patrick and Maish Nichani then closed the event with a brief summary.
Singapore is a long way to go for an event, but I’m very glad I did. The truly international mix of attendees, the range of subjects and the dynamic and focused way the conference was organised made for a very interesting and engaging two days: I also made some great contacts and had a chance to see some of this beautiful city. Congratulations to Patrick, Maish and Dave Clarke on a very successful inaugural event and I’m looking forward to hearing about the next one! Slides and videos are already appearing on the IKO blog.
