The second full day of papers went well, with a number of very good
presentations. I know most of you aren’t terribly interested in the
contents of an academic conference on search, so I’ll skip those
details. Once again, we met a number of great people and saw some
top-notch talent in action.

That evening was the annual SIGIR banquet. This year, the food was OK…
it was actually almost identical to the lunch we had the day previous
— guess the hotel has a standard buffet service they do. However, the
banquet entertainment was the best I’ve ever seen… it was a Bahian
folk dance troupe that did a number of different local dances, including
a capoeirha number and an amazing samba number at the end where the
troupe came out and got the crowd dancing. It was just a ton of fun —
very enjoyable!

Just a side note… the banquest was sponsored this year by Google, who
was once again conspicuously absent. Amit Singhal and his family were
there, as were the Google Brazil folks (aka Akwan, the company that
Google bought), although the Google Brazil guys were still a bit unsure
of themselves as Google Brazil — getting acquired is always tough if
you’re who is acquired. However, I didn’t see the usual cadre of
Googlers or even some recruiters, which was surprising. Rumor has it
that a number of them stayed home to work on a response to Yahoo’s
announcement of a 20B doc index, but as I said, that was just a rumor
(although a fun one, I must say!).