Keynote Speakers

• Andrei Broder
  Yahoo! Research, USA
  "From query based Information Retrieval to context driven Information Supply"
  

  Abstract

  In the past decade, Web search engines have evolved from a first generation based on classic Information Retrieval scaled up to web size and supporting only informational queries, to a second generation supporting navigational queries using web specific information (primarily link analysis), and then to a third generation enabling transactional and other "semantic" queries based on a variety of technologies aimed to directly satisfy the unexpressed "user intent." What is coming next? In this talk, we argue for the trend towards context driven Information Supply, that is, the goal of Web IR will widen to include the supply of relevant information without requiring the user to make an explicit query. The information supply concept greatly precedes information retrieval. (Newspapers, or even the "Acta Diurna" of ancient Rome.) What is new in the web framework, is the ability to supply relevant information specific to a given activity and a given user, while the activity is being performed. A prime example is the matching of ads to content being read, however the information supply paradigm is starting to appear in other contexts such as social networks, e-commerce, browsers, and others.

  
  
• Raghu Ramakrishnan
  Yahoo! Research, USA
  "Community Systems: The World Online"
  

  Abstract

  The Web is about you and me. Until now, for the most part, it has denoted a corpus of information that we put online sometime in the past, and the most celebrated Web application is keyword search over this corpus. Sites such as del.icio.us, flickr, MySpace, Slashdot, Wikipedia, Yahoo! Answers, and YouTube, which are driven by user-generated content, are forcing us to rethink the Web.
  
  The Web is no longer just a static repository of content; it is a medium that connects us to each other. What are the ramifications of this fundamental shift? What are the new challenges in supporting and amplifying this shift
  
  Raghu Ramakrishnan, Ph.D., is vice president and Yahoo! research fellow, helping define and execute the strategy behind Yahoo!?s social search platform. He joined Yahoo! from the University of Wisconsin-Madison where he served as a professor of computer science and a co-founder of the Data Mining Institute. His experience and interest is in privacy, data mining and online community systems.