Web developer / researcher needed (freelance)

I am looking for a highly skilled, articulate researcher/developer for a short engagement to investigate the options in migrating an existing desktop software application to the cloud. I need someone who understands the complexities involved in making an application that was built in Java FX work seamlessly on the web.

The deliverable will be a technical report that outlines the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats associated with each option, along with a set of practical recommendations for next steps and the costs associated with each.

To succeed in this role you will need to be:

• highly educated, technically literate and open-minded
• able to rapidly understand the requirements embodied in an existing desktop application, and anticipate future requirements and scalability concerns
• willing to ask intelligent questions to make sure you understand the subtleties, trade-offs and complexities of the project and are doing the best possible job for your client
• skilled in researching different technical options and critically evaluating them
• able to form robust and defensible recommendations based on your research
• experienced in communicating those recommendations in the form of credible and detailed technical report
• prepared to sign an NDA governed by English law.

Lots more information available on request. Principals only please (no agencies). Can you recommend anyone?

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Designing Search – tutorial at Search Solutions 2016

Last month I announced the line-up for Search Solutions 2016, to be held at BCS London on November 30. This year we’re also offering a Tutorial Programme, which will run the day before. The programme consists of four half day-tutorials:

• 09:30-13:00 Designing Search (Dr. Tony Russell-Rose, UXLabs)
• 09:30-13:00 Query Log Mining for Inferring User Tasks and Needs , (Emine Yilmaz and Rishabh Mehrotra, UCL)
• 14:00-17:30 Text Analysis with GATE (Diana Maynard, University of Sheffield)
• 14:00-17:30 Enterprise search evaluation – good practice in action, (Paul Clough, University of Sheffield and Martin White, Intranet Focus Ltd)

I’ve appended further details of my tutorial below. Full details of pricing and registration are available on the Search Solutions website. Note that the closing date for bookings is Friday 25th November 2016. Hope to see you there!

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Search Strategy Formulation: A Framework For Learning (part 2)

As promised, here is the second instalment of our paper on search strategy formulation, which Andy MacFarlane presented at 4th Spanish Conference in Information Retrieval in Granada last week. Andy has been teaching IR and search strategies for many years, and this paper represents a synthesis of his framework and my research insights. It describes a structured way to think about search strategy development and (hopefully) offers some valuable advice on how best to teach such skills. As always, comments & feedback welcome!

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Search Strategy Formulation: A Framework For Learning

Regular readers of this blog will know that over the past few months I’ve been researching professional search strategies in the workplace as part of an InnovateUK-funded research project. A fortuitous side effect of that is the following paper, which is the output of a collaboration with Andy MacFarlane of City University London. Andy has been teaching IR and search strategies for many years, and this paper represents a synthesis of his framework and my research insights. The paper itself is due to be presented at 4th Spanish Conference in Information Retrieval in Granada next week. I hope Andy won’t mind too much if I describe the work as slightly more academic than my usual blog posts, but it does offer a structured way to think about search strategy development and offers some valuable advice on how best to teach such skills. For now, here is just the first half. You’ll have to wait till next week for the second instalment!

 

ABSTRACT

Healthcare information professionals perform systematic literature reviews to gather the evidence needed to answer specific research questions and formulate policy. However, performing a systematic review is a resource-intensive and time consuming undertaking, often taking years to complete. Moreover, the output relies heavily on the quality of the initial search strategy in ensuring that the scope is sufficiently exhaustive and not biased by easily accessible studies. In this paper we introduce a structured methodology and a framework for learning which together aim to embody best practices from the community and provide support for many of the common issues in search strategy development.

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Searching for talent: The information retrieval challenges of recruitment professionals (part 3)

And finally… here’s the third installment of my trilogy of posts on the information retrieval challenges of recruitment professionals. The background to this (in case you missed the previous two) is that a few months ago I published a post describing our InnovateUK-funded research project investigating professional search strategies in the workplace. As you may recall, we surveyed a number of professions, and the one we analyzed first was (cue drum roll)… recruitment professionals.

It’s a profession that information retrieval researchers haven’t traditionally given much thought to (myself included), but it turns out that they routinely create and execute some of the most complex search queries of any profession, and deal with challenges that most IR researchers would recognize as wholly within their compass, e.g. query expansion, optimization, and results evaluation.

What follows is the final post summarizing those results. In part 1, we focused on the research methodology and background to the study. In part 2, we discussed the search tasks that they perform, how they construct the search queries and the resources they use. Here, we focus on how recruiters assess and evaluate the results of their search, and their views on the features of an ideal search engine. The published paper can be downloaded from Sage journals (Russell-Rose, T and Chamberlain, J. “Searching for talent: The information retrieval challenges of recruitment professionals”. Business Information Review, March 2016, vol. 33 no. 1 40-48).

As usual, comments and feedback are welcome – particularly so from the recruitment community who are best placed to interpret and contextualize these findings.

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Searching for talent: The information retrieval challenges of recruitment professionals (part 2)

Better late than never… here’s the long-delayed follow up to my original post on the information retrieval challenges of recruitment professionals. The background to this (in case you missed the first post) is that a few months ago I published a post describing our InnovateUK-funded research project investigating professional search strategies in the workplace. As you may recall, we surveyed a number of professions, and the one we analyzed first was (cue drum roll)… recruitment professionals.

It’s a profession that information retrieval researchers haven’t traditionally given much thought to (myself included), but it turns out that they routinely create and execute some of the most complex search queries of any profession, and deal with challenges that most IR researchers would recognize as wholly within their compass, e.g. query expansion, optimization, and results evaluation.

What follows is the second in a series of posts summarizing those results. In part 1, we focused on the research methodology and background to the study. Here, we focus on the search tasks that they perform, how they construct the search queries and the resources they use.

As usual, comments and feedback are welcome – particularly so from the recruitment community who are best placed to provide the insight needed to interpret and contextualize these findings.

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Thinking outside the search box

A little while ago I posted a piece examining some of the shortcomings in the way that search strategies are currently expressed; arguing that the approach essentially hasn’t changed in decades. Moreover, it is predicated on a rather primitive notation that owes much to first generation basic, relying on arbitrary concepts such as line numbers to convey structure and organisation.

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