Opening Keynote - Beyond Relevant Search
Doug Turnbull • Location: Theater 5 • Back to Haystack 2020
Search relevance consultant. Author of Relevant Search. Doug consults with organizations where search is key to their value: helping with strategic decisions on search relevance, information retrieval, and customer experience. Through writing and speaking Doug wants to humanize search and recommendations, making these topic less intimidating for everyone: developers, non-technical folks, and users. Doug loves building tools to help with search, including Quepid and Splainer. Doug created the Elasticsearch Learning to Rank plugin, used by dozens of organizations to build machine learning backed search. Doug is also contributing author to AI Powered Search and contributes to the Search Network industry guide.
In 2012, Doug saw relevant search would be central to client's customer experiences. Sadly, search relevance was a topic clouded esoteric mystery. Doug began to humanize this daunting field through blogging and speaking. In 2016, Doug's book “Relevant Search” woke the industry up to the importance of search quality. Doug now helps clients navigate their hardest search challenges. He leads the charge into new tools and techniques: pioneering Elasticsearch Learning to Rank, and contributing to Trey Grainger's upcoming AI Powered Search, all with an eye to demystifying and opening up a field increasingly central to every application's customer experience.