This year was my first visit to the FastForward conference. The theme of the conference was “Engage your user”, something which has been on my mind for the last couple of years.
The conference was held at the Mirage Hotel in Las Vegas, a place where they certainly try their best engaging their users. A well chosen spot indeed (I lost but $40 bucks, slot machine sounds is not what makes me fuzzy and warm).
Travelling 17 hours each way is a strain, but it was worth it. Talking to FAST customers and others working with search technology was very inspiring, and we all agree that things are moving in the right direction. More and more information is accessible for search, and people are going at great lengths to create search driven applications and interfaces which are intuitive for the end-user. Seems like Enterprise 2.0 might finally be around the corner.
2009 might just be the best year for search yet!
