Ask Jeeves CEO Steve Berkowitz In Keynote Conversation - SES San Jose 2005

It's not on the agenda yet, but we've just confirmed that Ask Jeeves CEO and director Steve Berkowitz will be doing the keynote for our SES San Jose 2005 show. This will be in our keynote slot on August 9, the second day of the show. It's actually going to be a "keynote conversation," rather than the traditional keynotes that some shows have.

A keynote conversation? Google kicked this off with us back at SES San Jose 2003. Cofounder Sergey Brin was in the spot but preferred the idea of doing a Q&A format rather a formal keynote. So we had a Conversation With Google's Sergey Brin, complete with a plasma screen fireplace to make for a fireside chat, as covered in this past SearchDay article.

In New York this year, we had another search engine cofounder for the keynote, Yahoo's Jerry Yang. Like Sergey, Jerry preferred to be PowerPoint-free and instead do a Q&A. We didn't have a return of the fireplace, but as it was Yahoo's 10th birthday, we did present him with a cake. You can read about the conversation via SearchViews or in our SEW Forums.

With Ask Jeeves, perhaps the trend of keynote conversations is becoming a tradition. There will certainly be plenty to talk about. The acquisition of Ask by IAC just completed, and I'll be talking with Steve about how he plans to continue building Ask as the "fourth network" of search beside the larger "channels" of Google, Yahoo and MSN. And what about ideas for a new name or an Ask Jeeves ad network? Lots to discuss!