Between consulting engagements I've been involved in running events for over 20 years. Here's some tips on running your first tech conference thesearchjuggler.com/how-to-run-y... - hope you find it useful!

How to run your first tech conference - Charlie Hull - The Search Juggler

So you need to grow your community, develop conversations around search and AI, showcase key customers and their implementations, talk about what’s coming next with your platform or even just… Read Mo...

thesearchjuggler.com

Last Wednesday we ran a joint Meetup between London Search & AI and London Information Retrieval groups - Piotr Kobziakowski talking about vector-native faceting, Ravindra Harige on patterns from shipped migrations and Radu Gheorghe on making HNSW fast again. Watch at www.youtube.com/@thesearchju...

It's been exciting helping the Vespa team plan their first major conference- last chance to join us in London next week! Tickets are still available for one of the training sessions (Vespa 101) and the conference, and there are also two free Meetups on the evenings of the 8th & 9th. www.vespaai.live

Vespa.ai Live

vespaai.live

I was very pleased to be asked by Dmitry Kan to join his Vector Podcast at Berlin Buzzwords - covering everything from AI & search, how I work with clients why I like attending and running events, accessibility & marginalisation - it was lots of fun! Watch our chat at www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8D0...

Berlin Buzzwords 2026 - Charlie Hull on role of Search in AI era

YouTube video by Vector Podcast

youtube.com

Am I the only one who thought "Two soups" ?

badly drawn bee 🐝@soapachu.bsky.social · 2mo ago

perfect dead drop 10/10 no notes (the shrouds really make this)

Searchandizing (merchandizing by modifying search results) is a common practice in e-commerce - but what happens when it goes too far? Here's my talk from Mix Camp Ecommerce Search (MICES) in Berlin a few weeks ago featuring HIPPOs and a little bit of juggling www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9fJ...

How much searchandizing is too much searchandizing? - Charlie Hull - MICES 2026

YouTube video by MIx-Camp E-commerce Search

youtube.com

*Don't wait until after the summer!* One of the trainings is nearly full already, and conference tickets are going fast. Join us in London on 9/10 September for the very first Vespa conference featuring Walmart, Etsy, Ravenpack and search luminaries Doug Turnbull & Trey Grainger www.vespaai.live

As many of you will have seen, search engine company Elastic just laid off 7% of staff - here's some tips on what to do if affected and some thoughts on what this means for the wider search sector thesearchjuggler.com/elastic-layo...

Elastic lays off 7% of staff - what to do if you're an ex-Elastician or end user - Charlie Hull - The Search Juggler

After the recent Elastic layoff what should ex-Elasticians do and what does this mean for the search market - what are the options?

thesearchjuggler.com

Musings on agentic search from conferences vs the real world thesearchjuggler.com/is-everyone-...

Is everyone really moving to Agentic Search? - Charlie Hull - The Search Juggler

Is everyone actually building agentic search? Or is it tomorrow's problem? My perspective from conferences and the real world.

thesearchjuggler.com

Haystack US 2026 Session Videos have been released. great sessions to learn about #AI / Search / #Agents: www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...

Haystack US 2026 - YouTube

Haystack US 2026 took place in Charlottesville, Virginia on the 6th and 7th of May 2026. Haystack is the conference for improving search relevance. If you’re...

youtube.com

Very glad to see the latest speaker announcement for Vespa AI Live in London this September: Dr. Cem Ünsal of Walmart will describe his personal search journey with Vespa starting in the early 2000s - get tickets at content.vespa.ai/vespa-live . More speakers and associated events soon.

Vespa.ai Live

content.vespa.ai

Very excited to announce the programme for Vespa AI Live this September 9-10! Talks from Etsy and Ravenpack, insights from the Vespa team, Trey Grainger, Doug Turnbull & Alessandro Benedetti. Get your tickets to join us in London or online now content.vespa.ai/vespa-live

Vespa.ai Live

content.vespa.ai

Just added a few more search & AI events to my Conference Calendar - hope to see you at some of the European events in June and later in the year at Vespa.ai Live and Search Solutions in London! thesearchjuggler.com/conferences/

I'll be talking at Mix Camp E-commerce Search (MICES) in Berlin on June 10th on "How much searchandizing is too much searchandizing" - when it should and should not be used, techniques to apply and how to make results explainable both internally and externally. Free tickets on sale now! www.mices.co

Effective search applications (and by extension, AI systems like RAG) are hugely dependent on *context*.This context can be complex and multidimensional - so how can we improve how we store and manipulate it? thesearchjuggler.com/search-ai-in...

Search & AI in the right context - an unsolved challenge - Charlie Hull - The Search Juggler

Effective search must take account of many different contexts - and we need a better way to represent our multidimensional world

thesearchjuggler.com

"AI is here – time to throw away our search engines?" -I'm back hosting another fun and informative panel at Berlin Buzzwords with some of the world's leading lights in search & AI - come and join us for the last session on Monday 8th! 2026.berlinbuzzwords.de/session/ai-i...

AI is here – time to throw away our search engines

Why do we even need traditional search when AI can do everything? Or is it foolish to ignore simple, proven techniques for delivering great results? What's the best way to combine old and new? Join ou...

2026.berlinbuzzwords.de

Just a quick reminder to submit your talk to the very first Vespa.ai Live conference, to be held in London on September 10th! Find the link (and how to book tickets, early bird is £99) at content.vespa.ai/vespa-live - we're looking for talks with a Vespa theme or more generally about search & AI.

The videos from OpenSearchCon EU 2026 are out! You can watch my Unconference talk titled "A neat trick for protecting numbers when using fuzzy search" here youtu.be/YZJBdGO0LR4?...

Unconference - Part 1

YouTube video by OpenSearch

youtu.be

Tickets are now on sale for Vespa.ai Live in London on September 10th! Featuring talks on this highly scalable open source search & AI platform used by Yahoo, Vinted & Perplexity.ai amongst others - you can also submit a talk by April 30th. Get yours at content.vespa.ai/vespa-live

In advance of OpenSearchCon EU this week I've written about using fuzzy search for typo tolerance-using Aiven's new free tier for OpenSearch for my experiments. I also show you how to protect things you don't want to be fuzzy - product numbers, sizes for example! thesearchjuggler.com/fuzzy-search...

Fuzzy search for typo tolerance on a free OpenSearch cluster - Charlie Hull - The Search Juggler

Fuzzy search helps your search to be typo tolerant - here's how to do it on a free OpenSearch cluster - also, a neat trick for protecting things you don't want to be fuzzy!

thesearchjuggler.com

I enjoyed working with Alexei Atavin and the Aiven team on this blog - it's sometimes the very simple things that break aiven.io/blog/how-a-s...

I'll be in Prague next week - looking forward to meeting up with old friends from OSC, Aiven & AWS OpenSearch,acting as an OpenSearch Ambassador, showing off some fun experiments I've been doing with OpenSearch & learning lots! events.linuxfoundation.org/opensearchco...

OpenSearchCon Europe | LF Events

OpenSearchCon is the annual conference uniting the OpenSearch community. Users, admins, and developers connect, solve real-world problems, and explore the future of search.

events.linuxfoundation.org

Very happy to announce we'll be bringing Vespa.ai Live to London on September 10th! I've been working with the team at Vespa to put together an awesome day of talks, discussions, networking and more. CFP open until April 30th, Vespa training the day before. content.vespa.ai/vespa-live

External plugins fill the gap between what search platforms provide and users actually need - I wrote about how OpenSearch & Elasticsearch adopt third party plugins & how it could be done better thesearchjuggler.com/embrace-or-r...

Embrace or replace: the different ways OpenSearch & Elasticsearch adopt third party plugins - Charlie Hull - The Search Juggler

How OpenSearch and Elasticsearch work - or don't - with external plugins

thesearchjuggler.com

Community over Code (which used to be ApacheCon) is coming to Glasgow this October - and the CFP is open until March 20th. There's a Search track so if you've got a talk that fits do submit it! communityovercode.org/call-for-pre...

Call for Presentations

The call for presentations for Community Over Code Glasgow is now open! Submit proposals by 23:59 UTC on March 20, 2026. Please do not wait until the last minute. Submit your talk proposal to this …

communityovercode.org

Want to get together with others to talk about Search & AI? Join (or start) a Search Meetup! I've created a zoomable map of over 180 events across the world, with health indicators, member numbers and locations. Let me know what I've missed! thesearchjuggler.com/the-world-of...

The world of Search Meetups - Charlie Hull - The Search Juggler

I love a Search Meetup! The chance to get together in an informal setting with others enthusiastic about search engine technology, hear some talks, grab a slice of pizza and… Read More »The world of S...

thesearchjuggler.com

Here's the talk I gave last week on how to connect Vespa.ai to Quepid, the search workbench - including how to get an example news search application stood up, BM25 ranking and how to see which parts of each search result generated scores. maven.com/p/771bd9/off...

Very happy to announce a partnership with www.Vespa.ai ! I've been getting to know the team there over the last year & learning more about this impressive technology.Great to add Vespa to the list of search technologies I'm able to advise clients about

Quick reminder that I'm giving a free class with Trey Grainger this Friday on how to get started with Vespa.ai and in particular how to use Quepid for offline testing and query debugging. I'll give a brief intro to Vespa and Quepid, show you how to spin up an example news search...[1/2]

Offline search relevance testing with Vespa & Quepid

Vespa is a powerful and scalable open source search engine. Although Vespa provides some offline evaluation tools in Python, there isn’t an easy, interactive way to tune search queries. Quepid provide...

maven.com

Join me and Trey Grainger for a Lightning Lesson about how to use Quepid with Vespa for offline search relevance testing - next Friday 30th maven.com/p/771bd9/off...

Offline search relevance testing with Vespa & Quepid

Vespa is a powerful and scalable open source search engine. Although Vespa provides some offline evaluation tools in Python, there isn’t an easy, interactive way to tune search queries. Quepid provide...

maven.com