<div dir="ltr"><div><span id="gmail-docs-internal-guid-83dd6bb4-7fff-1056-9035-69e7679911f7"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline">The FOSDEM 2026 Search DevRoom Call for Papers is now Open!</span><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline"><br></span><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline"><br></span><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline">Are you passionate about open source search technologies and how they help us to find relevant data in a proverbial haystack?  Then we would love to see submissions on the latest enhancements on search libraries and related libraries.</span></p><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:18pt;margin-bottom:6pt"><span style="font-size:16pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline">FOSDEM 2026</span></h2><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline">FOSDEM 2026 will take place on Saturday 31st January and Sunday 1st February 2026 at </span><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline">ULB Solbosch Campus, Brussels, Belgium. </span><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline">The Search Devroom taking place on the afternoon of Sunday 1st February. Check out the event details at </span><a href="http://fosdem.org/" style="text-decoration-line:none"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;text-decoration-line:underline;vertical-align:baseline">http://fosdem.org/</span></a><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline">.</span></p><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:18pt;margin-bottom:6pt"><span style="font-size:16pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline">Call for Participation</span></h2><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline">The Search DevRoom wants to showcase the current and future state of search technologies within the evolving technology landscape, with a focus on open source technologies. Possible topics could include:</span></p><br><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline">1. The evolving state of search libraries such as Apache Lucene and Tantivy.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline">2. Improvements and issues in popular open source search engines, including Elasticsearch, Solr and OpenSearch.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline">3. The state of machine learning in search, including but not limited to reranking, learning to rank and embedding models.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline">4. How to measure search quality.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline">5. Enhancements in vector search and other techniques to search through multimodal data.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline">6. Discussions of developer experience in search and how this will evolve and improve. </span><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline"><br></span><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline">7. Best practices on how to improve the developer experience for established search engines.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline">8. Takes on the future of full text search algorithms, including BM25 and SPLADE.</span><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline"><br></span><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline"><br></span><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline">If you have a topic of interest that leverages open source search technologies, we would still love to see a submission. Please do apply!</span></p><br><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline">All talk proposals should be submitted by </span><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-weight:700;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline">30th November 2025</span><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline"> via the FOSDEM pretalx portal available </span><a href="https://pretalx.fosdem.org/fosdem-2026/cfp" style="text-decoration-line:none"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;text-decoration-line:underline;vertical-align:baseline">here</span></a><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline">, selecting the Search track from the dropdown. Proposals sent via other means or that are sent after the deadline will not be accepted.</span></p><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:18pt;margin-bottom:6pt"><span style="font-size:16pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline">Logistics</span></h2><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline">On the day, the Search DevRoom will be recorded and streamed live. We are looking for 25-minute talks (which includes 20 minutes for your presentation + 5 minutes for Q&A). The recordings will be published under the CC-BY licence as is the case for all FOSDEM content.</span></p><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:18pt;margin-bottom:6pt"><span style="font-size:16pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline">Timeline</span></h2><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline">2025-11-01: This CfP opens</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline">2025-11-30 23:55 (UTC):  Submission deadline for talk proposals</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline">2025-12-15:  Announcement of the final schedule</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline">2026-02-01:  Search DevRoom (Sunday afternoon)</span></p></span><br class="gmail-Apple-interchange-newline"></div><div><br></div><span class="gmail_signature_prefix">-- </span><br><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.56;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-weight:700;vertical-align:baseline">Carly Richmond</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.56;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:9pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;vertical-align:baseline">Developer Advocate Lead</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:2.16;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><a href="mailto:carly.richmond@elastic.co" target="_blank">carly.richmond@elastic.co</a> | <a href="https://twitter.com/CarlyLRichmond" target="_blank">@CarlyLRichmond</a></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:2.16;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span><a href="https://www.elastic.co/" target="_blank"><span style="font-size:9pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(17,85,204);background-color:transparent;vertical-align:baseline"><span style="border:none;display:inline-block;overflow:hidden;width:153px;height:32px"><img src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXd7c_fVm3Q1zM9CDgCjJbFDrNF6nXWQ7G6A2kugS-cBHs_UmqOCQ0DXETKjYdU7MHQKnPnV7jPDAgmhb8Y9pmXyq_jMqfNhBhd0wx51Zrb_rPvfMT0W3jzz5Ezzx1lEwqUGril5sCy58575npQb3ZYQFA2X?key=VAw4p-pWZ7Uex8di98V3nQ" width="153" height="32" style="margin-left:0px;margin-top:0px"></span></span></a></span></p></span></div></div></div>