Nicholas Knize, PhD
Dr. Nicholas Knize is a search expert, geospatial technologist, and Apache Lucene Committer and PMC member with over 20 years of experience. As the former Elastic Geospatial Search and Maps Lead and AWS Principal Engineer, Nicholas spearheaded the creation of OpenSearch, a pivotal fork of Elasticsearch. He has decades of experience building and deploying search and analysis systems for Defense and Intelligence industries, designed to operate in resource-constrained and network-starved environments. This deep expertise is now poured into his startup, Lucenia, which advances open source search technology while balancing innovation with the needs of both the community and enterprise.
Session
Go behind the scenes of creating and building OpenSearch—a bold fork of Elasticsearch and Kibana that defied taboos, sparked public drama, and redefined open source governance. This talk dives into the challenges, lessons, and breakthroughs that shaped the project and a journey to balance community, corporate influence, and innovation.