How To Improve Search When You Don’t Have A Search Team

A full day workshop led by the OpenSource Connections team

Search is broken! You hear this a lot. Search is part of your responsibilities as a product manager – but how can you even begin to fix it, especially if you hardly have a search team? 

In this workshop we will start with a core process for search quality improvement, which focuses on the measurability of search quality, on experimentation and on the establishment of the accountability of search towards the organisation’s business objectives. 

While it can be challenging to establish this process without a dedicated search team, its principles can still be applied in most organisations, helping the management and the entire organisation build trust into their ability to provide a good search experience. As part of this workshop, participants will be encouraged to discuss their experience in setting up the elements of this process and the OpenSource Connections team will share some case studies.

A second part of this workshop will introduce practical tools and approaches for measuring and improving search quality, focussing on solutions that can be implemented easily within organisations without a search team.

Who should attend? 

This workshop is for you if you are working as a search product manager or in a different role that is responsible for search and if you are trying to make search great without a sizable search team. If you are new to search, this workshop will also introduce you to important concepts that you will hear about during the Haystack conference. 

Eric Pugh is the co-founder and CEO of OpenSource Connections.  Today he helps OSC’s clients, especially those in the ecommerce space, build their own search teams and improve their search maturity, both by leading projects and by acting as a trusted advisor.

Fascinated by the craft of software development, Eric Pugh has been involved in the open source world as a developer, committer and user for the past fifteen years. He is a member of the Apache Software Foundation and an active committer to Apache Solr.  He co-authored the book Apache Solr Enterprise Search Server, now on its third edition.  He also stewards Quepid, an open source platform for assessing and improving your search relevance.