Last updated 24 April 2000
To view the presentations, click on the 
link. There is also available a good, in-depth
write-up of much of the conference by Chris Sherman at the
About.com site.
Danny Sullivan (Search Engine Watch, US / England)
Web
search engine trends and achievements since the April 1999 Boston
Search Engine Meeting
Carol Hert (Syracuse University, New York)
Water,
water, everywhere but not a drop to drink: what (and how) we can
learn about users to inform design decisions
10.20-10.45 Break
Wim Albus (Port of Rotterdam Authority, The Netherlands)
The
Rotterdam method : constructing effective filters for news feeds
using known retrieval tools
Doran Howitt (Thunderstone Software, Ohio)
Integration of text-searching and relational databases
Knut Magne Risvik (FAST Search & Transfer, Norway)
Scaling
with the Web - search engine challenges
12.30-14.00 Lunch
Bill Bliss (Microsoft, Washington)
Classic
IR techniques meet human common sense
Chris Buckley, (SABIR, Maryland)
The
secrets of TREC
David Hawking (CSIRO Mathematical and Information Sciences, Australia)
Measuring the quality of
public search engines
15.45-16.10 Break
Chairman: David Evans (Claritech, Pennsylvania)
What
improvements have been made in the last few years, and what improvement
plans can we expect in the forseeable future?
Marc
Krellenstein (Northern Light, Massachusetts)
Andrei
Broder (Altavista, California)
Stephen Arnold (AIT, Harrods Creek, Kentucky)
Review:
The leading edge in search and retrieval software
Eric Brewer (Inktomi, California)
The
continuing evolution of internet searching: one stop, many sources
Anders Hyldahl (Mondosoft, Denmark)
The searchers' question versus the search engines' query
An examination of the contrast between the ideal search (a
question and its ideal answer) and the practical reality search
(a question put to a search engine that gives an answer set).
Some mathematical models are introduced that suggest new paths
for search development.
10.15-10.40 Break
David Evans (Claritech, Pennsylvania)
Filtering
as the gateway technology for e-information management
Paul
Kantor (Rutgers University, New Jersey)Alison
Huettner (Claritech, Pennsylvania)12.25-13.45 Lunch
Claude Vogel (Semio Corp, California)
Taxonomy
building as an alternative corporate solution for metadata management
Lisa Braden-Harder (Butler Hill Group)
Linguistics
and precision
14.55-15.15 Break
Chairman & Speaker: Susan Feldman (Datasearch, New York)
Intelligent Agents are the missing piece to making today's static
information systems dynamic and adaptable. This panel presents
three well known researchers in agent technologies: Alper Caglayan,
author of "The Agent Sourcebook", and developer of Open
Sesame; Sundar Kadayam, Chief Technology Officer for Intelliseek;
and Armand Prieditis, of Unconventional Wisdom. Topics include
descriptions of the technologies and discussions of their uses
in information systems, including filtering, decision support
and interface agents. We also raise and discuss the issue of privacy
and intelligent agents. Moderator for the session is Sue Feldman
of Datasearch, whose article, "Intelligent Agents: A Primer"
can be found at <http://www.infotoday.com/searcher/oct/feldman+yu.htm>
Alper Caglayan (B2e Co, Massachusetts)
Armand Prieditis (Unconventional Wisdom, California)