1065 La Avenida St. Conference Center, Building 1
Mountain View, California 94043

Quick logistics note: the event requires a pre-registration (http://www.sdforum.org/SDForum/Templates/CalendarEvent.aspx?CID=1804&mo=11&yr=2005) and will be limited to 270 attendees, the capacity of the Conference Center of the Microsoft Silicon Valley Campus (Building 1, 1065 La Avenida St., Mountain View). We will only be able to accept sign-ups at the door based on the remaining capacity, so we suggest you do register in advance. This will also help us figuring out required food and beverages.

The topic of this month is ?The Search: A ten year perspective?, during which we will look back at the early days of the search industry, its key turning points, and discuss its short term outlook and its future.

John BattelleIn order to address that topic exhaustively, we could only invite one expert to be the host of our session: John Battelle, the author of the reference book: The Search. John has kindly accepted to share his views, and interesting anecdotes, in a fireside chat with Dan Farber, the Editor in Chief of ZDNet. John will then moderate a panel gathering founders or executives of new search engines, all having launched in the last few months. John will ask them about their aspirations, motivations, and potential concerns in entering this large market already counting a number of 800?pound gorillas.

Our panelists will be:

* Adam Beguelin, Truveo
* Pete Flint, Trulia
* Gautam Godhwani, SimplyHired
* Tony Gentile, Healthline

Here is the agenda:

6:30-7:00pm - Getting your pre-registered badge, and mingling over snacks and drinks
7:00?7:05pm - Welcome
7:05-7:55pm - Act I: John Battelle on ?The Search: A ten year perspective?, interviewed by Dan Farber
7:55-8:05pm - Intermission: Search Networking & Geeking Out
8:05-8:55pm - Act II: The vertical search market ? a SWOT analysis
9:00?9:20pm - Act III: Demos from Truveo, Trulia, SimplyHired and Healthline
9:20-9:30pm - Open Mike Geek: Announcements (30 seconds of fame & fortune)

Note: at the end of our meeting, we will provide audience members with the opportunity to make very QUICK 30-second announcements of community geek benefit. however, if you exceed the time limit, you WILL get the hook ;)

The charge ? Free for SDForum members, $15 for non-members ? paid during the pre-registration.

We look forward to seeing you on Thursday. Please note that we are also arranging for a book signing session of The Search at the beginning and the end of the event.

Any question ? Feel free to leave a comment, or send an email to searchsig [at] gmail [dot] com. And remember, there is a distribution list for Search SIG announcements ? if you want to join, send an email to [email protected]. And do pre-register!

Added by JeffClavier on November 8, 2005

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