Five takeaways from OpenSearchCon North America 2024

Sun, Nov 24, 2024 · Laysa Uchoa, Yuliia Barabash

This year, OpenSearchCon North America took place in San Francisco. The city, being the heart of innovation, felt like the ideal place to talk about important topics like search and machine learning. The conference was held from September 24 to 26, 2024, and offered not only talks but also training and the Unconference (yes, we’ll explain that part in a moment!). eli-fischer-keynote

Keynote

There is no present without a past, which Eli Fisher highlighted in his keynote address about the history of the OpenSearch Project. He showed how contributions shape such a complex project, helping to keep it stable.

Then Anupam Chaturvedi talked about generative AI and OpenSearch interacting with technologies like information stored in PDF format. This reminds us that new technologies have to consider past ones. But how do we ensure the future of OpenSearch?

OpenSearch is open source, and we all know that modern technology wouldn’t exist without open-source software. From a long-term perspective, around OpenSearch and other open-source projects, we need flexibility and neutrality. The Linux Foundation, as a non-profit organization, supports the sustainable growth of the OpenSearch Project in this way. Jim Zemlin, Executive Director of the Linux Foundation, shared how this works in practice.

Overall, we learned about the past, present, and future of OpenSearch in one inspiring keynote presentation.

While conference formats are nice, sometimes what you really need is an “Unconference.” Here’s what happened at this event.

uncoference

Unconference

The fun of the Unconference lies in its format: anyone can propose a topic, participants vote, and the most popular topics are presented, which leads to thoughtful conversations and sharing of ideas.

These were some of our favorite Unconference topics:

Maybe next time you can join us and share your thoughts!

Talks

No conference succeeds without talks and the exchange of knowledge, and OpenSearchCon North America was no exception.

Across 4 rooms, attendees experienced 41 insightful talks delivered by 54 speakers from around the globe. These speakers shared their expertise on topics such as search, analytics, observability, security, community, and, of course, OpenSearch.

Many organizations and partners presented and shared their knowledge. Here are a few that you might be interested in checking out:

Additionally, Logz.io, Eliatra, Aiven Oy, and Canonical talked about how they are leveraging OpenSearch within their products. Are you curious for more? You can find all of these amazing talks here.

conference-attendees

Trainings

Have you ever wanted to learn about OpenSearch from industry experts? The third day of the conference presented a great opportunity to do just that. Attendees could dive into relevance engineering with OpenSearch, learning how to measure search quality and improve it by adjusting field weights. Additionally, those interested in deploying OpenSearch on Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS) had the chance to work alongside Jon Handler and Arun Lakshmanan in hands-on labs covering OpenSearch, Amazon EKS, and data management. These sessions provided immediate, practical experience with OpenSearch, making them invaluable for participants.

conference-party

Party

Additionally, if you were worried about not having enough time to meet people and network between talks, training sessions, and the Unconference, the organizers had you covered with “The Search Party.” It was a great opportunity to connect with OpenSearch maintainers, partners, and other community members. The vibe was just right for real conversations and making connections in the OpenSearch community.

Finally, the moment you’ve been waiting for—check out all the awesome pics from the conference here!