Our Talks
Women of Search have been sharing knowledge and information with the search community for years. Check out some of our content below.
Women of Search Panel — Audrey Lorberfeld, Chen Karako-Argaman, Jess Peck, Ellen Voorhees, Julie Tibshirani
Women of Search and Prefixbox — Atita Arora, Paige Tyrell, and Istvan Simon
Building Recommendation Systems with Vector Search — Erika Shorten
Popular AI-Driven Information Retrieval Techniques — Audrey Lorberfeld
AI Agents: From Hype to Reality — Atita Arora, Angeley Mullins, and Olena Gorbatiuk
How Great Product Managers Build for Impact — Samdisha Kapoor and Audrey Lorberfeld
The Women of Search Workforce
A diverse workforce means happier and healthier employees and helps access the huge range of talents and skills required for organisations to thrive. The search & information retrieval sector, like many other areas of technology, can struggle to attract and retain women despite their visible achievements as pioneers, creators and maintainers of leading search technologies. In this session we’ll lay out the issues and present the results of a brief survey. We’ll then hear from women working in search and celebrate their amazing achievements, before discussing next steps towards a more inclusive future. Hosted by Atita Arora of OpenSource Connections and the Women of Search group in Relevance Slack.
Women of Search Panel
Haystack US 2022
Hear from the core members of Women of Search about their technical achievements and experiences.
Women of Search and Prefixbox
Last year’s Women of Search talk emphasized that despite the remarkable achievements of women in the world of search and information retrieval, companies in the sector still face challenges in attracting and retaining female talent. Our discussion delved into these challenges, presenting insights from a brief survey and celebrating the accomplishments of women in the field.
Building on last year’s insights, this year we will talk about a Women of Search case study. It’s essential to acknowledge the hurdles we faced: gathering contributions for the study proved to be a formidable challenge, leading to moments of disappointment. However, our persistence eventually led us to a company in the search space that sets a shining example of nurturing the unique qualities of women.
In this session, we not only reflect on the positive findings from the case study but also explore the transformative power of women leaders in the workplace. We shed light on the distinctive contributions they bring to the table and envision an ideal workplace where women are not just equally valued but also celebrated. Through this journey, we hope to inspire more organizations to follow in the footsteps of those who recognize the true value of gender diversity and empowerment.
Building Recommendation Systems with Vector Search
Bad search and recommendation is a major loss for e-commerce businesses. Haystack EU 2022 keynote speaker Dmitry Kan stated that “nearly $300 billion is lost each year from bad online search experiences.” With such a high impact, search and recommendation is an important area to focus on. To begin, we need to represent items and users. They are both typically represented as vectors and indexed for fast computation. Ref2Vec is a feature in Weaviate that converts users to vectors. Ref2Vec presents a graph-structured interface for connecting users and their online interactions to create a digital fingerprint. We can construct a bipartite graph between users and products and represent the user as the average representation of “liked” products. We then achieve recommendation by searching with the user vector as the query. Listeners will gain an understanding of how vector search impacts recommendation and learn how to build a recommendation system. Followed by Q&A on both the talk and the Women of Search initiative.
The Life of a Search System
In a tech landscape that would have been deemed science fiction just a few years ago, terms like ‘vector search’ and ‘LLMs’ have become as commonplace as ‘coffee’ and ‘good morning’ in our daily conversations. Being part of this rapidly evolving community is exhilarating, yet it often feels like everyone but you is already leveraging the latest technology. If your aim is to build the most intelligent, efficient, and cost-effective search system, where do you begin? Do you dive into the cutting edge, start from the basics, or find a balance somewhere in between? To explore this question, Women of Search will present The Life of a Search System. This talk will be anchored in real-world examples from our community, showcasing how today’s search systems have evolved—and should continue to evolve—to meet modern expectations. Together, we will cut through the AI jargon and focus on practical steps to start building. Talk developed by the Women of Search group.
Popular AI-Driven Information Retrieval Techniques
This talk will trace the life of a query through various AI-powered information retrieval strategies that are gaining traction in the search field today. Audrey Lorberfeld will discuss AI-driven IR techniques such as fine-tuning ML models, constructing sophisticated RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) pipelines, and reranking methods. She will provide an in-depth analysis of the advantages and limitations of each strategy, with a focus on identifying the optimal use cases for each. We invite you to join us for what promises to be an educational and inspiring presentation.
AI Agents: From Hype to Reality
Haystack EU 2025
The AI agent revolution promises to transform products, but reality is more nuanced. This session brings together three perspectives: where the hype originates, what users actually need vs what’s promised, and the technical limitations we face today. Through startup investment, product management, and AI architecture lenses, we’ll bridge the gap between market excitement and practical implementation. Attendees will learn how to build AI agents that solve real problems rather than chase technological possibilities.
How Great Product Managers Build for Impact
Join Women of Search for an insightful discussion on how search product managers can move beyond reactive cycles of quick wins and tech debt to build strategic, insights-driven roadmaps. Attendees will learn how to balance tactical demands with long-term vision, while keeping stakeholders aligned and empowering teams to focus on high-impact deliverables.
AI-Powered Code Search At Scale
Code search has come a long way from command-clicking into references or traversing ASTs. Modern code search tools blend traditional IR techniques with generative AI workflows to push the boundaries of code exploration and understanding. Getting comfortable with this paradigm is essential for anyone building or maintaining large-scale engineering systems.
