[Corpora-List] CFP SIGIR 2011 Workshop on "entertain me": Supporting Complex Search Tasks

[Jaap Kamps]

SIGIR 2011 Workshop on "entertain me": Supporting Complex Search Tasks
July 28, Beijing
http://staff.science.uva.nl/~kamps/entertainme/

Call for Papers: deadline June 3


* A Workshop on a Single Query ?!?

Searchers with a complex information need typically slice-and-dice their 
problem into several queries and subqueries, and laboriously combine the 
answers post hoc to solve their tasks.  This workshop invites discussion 
about any technique, knowledge representation, model or technology to 
integrate the search results into a coherent session on a level of 
abstraction which matches the original information need.

Consider planning a social event at the last day of SIGIR, in the 
unknown city of Beijing, factoring in distances, timing, and preferences 
on budget, cuisine, and entertainment.  A system supporting the entire 
search episode should "know" a lot, either from profiles or implicit 
information, or from explicit information in the query or from feedback. 
  This may lead to the (interactive) construction of a complexly 
structured query, but sometimes the most obvious query for a complex 
need is dead simple: "entertain me."  Rather than returning 
ten-blue-lines in response to a 2.4-word query, the desired system 
should support searchers during their whole task or search episode, by 
iteratively constructing a complex query or search strategy, by 
exploring the result-space at every stage, and by combining the partial 
answers into a coherent whole.

Although a SIGIR Workshop devoted to a single query may seem 
extravagant, this query is just one example of the general problem of 
supporting simple and common requests that express complex and dynamic 
needs.

* Social Evening Program

Many interesting ideas will come out of the workshop, but how do we know 
if they are any good?  We will have a special breakout group designing a 
mock-up for solving the "entertain me" query, charting out the 
background information (implicit and explicit context), the different 
sources (maps, web, social, news, ...), and the needed components and 
interaction.  A group of local Peking University grad students is 
available to serve as oracles for local information.

The scientific evaluation of the resulting "entertainment plan" will be 
done by executing it in the evening after the workshop, with all 
participants.

- Are you willing and able to sponsor the social event?  Please contact 
the organizers for details.
- Do you want to take part?  Read the Call for Submission and contribute!

* Call for Submissions

We invite the submission of papers that think outside the box, from any 
aspect of relevance to the workshop's theme, including:

- information seeking behavior, interaction, berry-picking;
- information needs and ways of articulating them;
- implicit and explicit feedback;
- exploiting collection structure and semantic annotations;
- exploratory search, HCI, UI and UX design;
- situated search (maps, Geo, customized, personalized, ...);
- entertainment search (broadcasters, content owners, network operators, 
device manufacturers).

We aim to bring together a varied group of researchers covering both 
user and system centered approaches, and together work on ways to make 
IR systems support searchers when interactively solving a complex task, 
such as the entertain me planning problem.

Help us shape the future of IR!

- Submit a short 2-page poster or position paper of relevance to 
supporting complex tasks, e.g., that identify specific research problems 
and use-cases, develop models/theory of complex tasks and interaction, 
discuss novel interfaces or system components, examine ways of 
evaluating, and/or report on preliminary experiments,

- and take actively part in the discussion at the Workshop.

The deadline is Monday June 3, 2011, submission details and further 
information are on http://staff.science.uva.nl/~kamps/entertainme/

Nick Belkin (Rutgers)
Charlie Clarke (Waterloo)
Ning Gao (Peking University)
Jaap Kamps (Amsterdam)
Jussi Karlgren (SICS)

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