T-Minus 23 Days to Lucene/Solr Revolution: “Stump the Chump”

We’re just several weeks away till this year’s Lucene/Solr Revolution event, and this week we’ll be using this blog to go a bit deeper on content. One of the more popular — and entertaining — programs from previous events is Stump the Chump, an interactive session where you get to ask questions about Lucene or Solr in front of a live audience of hundreds at Revolution.

Here’s how it works: back by popular demand, Chris Hostetter from Lucidworks (aka Hoss) will be in the hot seat to tackle the questions. Our moderator, Steve Rowe, will read the questions, and Hoss will have to formulate solutions … right on the spot. A panel of judges (Yonik Seeley, Mark Miller, Robert Muir) will then decide if the answers are good enough. Prizes will go to the best question and, yes, for those deemed to have “stumped the chump.” Participants can ask anything they like, but expect lots of questions in areas such as: Data modeling, query parsing, tricky faceting, text analysis, scalability.

You can email your questions to stump@lucenerevolution.org. Please describe the challenge you have faced and the approach you have taken to solve the problem. Anything related to Solr/Lucene is fair game. In the meantime, to get a taste of what Stump the Chump is like, check out this video from last year’s event.

And here’s more about the guy in the hot seat (from the Revolution bio): Chris Hostetter is a Member of the Apache Software Foundation, and serves on the Lucene Project Management Committee. Prior to joining Lucidworks in 2010 to work full time on Solr development, he spent 11 years as a Principal Software Engineer for CNET Networks thinking about searching “structured data” that was never as structured as it should have been.

Stump The Chump, Presented by Chris Hostetter, Lucidworks, Wednesday May 1, 4:00PM.

You can find Hostetter, the moderator and judges on Twitter:

Chris Hostetter @_hossman
Steve Rowe @steven_a_rowe
Yonik Seeley @lucene_solr
Mark Miller @heismark
Robert Muir @rcmuir