The Workshop

The Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering, under their Innovation Access Program (Frontiers of Science and Technology Missions and Workshops), funded a three-day event titled "Strategic Workshop on Information Retrieval in Lorne" (SWIRL), held in Lorne, Victoria, in December 2004.

We brought together a group of approximately 35 international and Australian researchers, plus Australian graduate students, for a discussion-based residential workshop, at a beachside location in Victoria. The aim for the workshop was to try and define what we know (and also don't know) about Information Retrieval, examining past work to identify fundamental contributions, challenges, and turning points; and then to examine possible future research directions, including possible joint projects. That is, our goal was to pause for a few minutes, reflect on the lessons of past research, and reconsider what questions are important and which research might lead to genuine advances. Attendees included researchers responsible for many of the key innovations in web searching and the implementation of effective and efficient information retrieval systems.

Resources

• The "Homework": reading recommendations for research students. SWIRL attendees were each asked to make two nominations, and explain why they beleived those papers were relevant. The final set of collated recommendations was published in SIGIR Forum in December 2005 (edited by Alistair Moffat, Justin Zobel, and David Hawking, SIGIR Forum, 39(2):3-14) is available here; and updates that we are aware of are listed here.

• A SWIRL 2004 Photo Album.

Sponsorship

We also thank the CSIRO ICT Centre, RMIT University, and the University of Melbourne for additional support.

Joint Organisers