On February 1st, BigThink.com, an “online knowledge forum” that has been leading discussions on a wide range of topics since 2007, will present “Farsight 2011: Beyond the Search Box”.  The four hour presentation (from 10am to 2pm PST on Feb 1) will feature a number of “big thinkers” in search:

Farsight 2011 will bring industry leaders together for a series of demos and lively conversations. The brain trust we’ve assembled will include Hedge Fund Manager and PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, Recorded Future co-founder and CEO Chris Ahlberg, journalist entrepreneur Esther Dyson, and many more. In addition, Farsight 2011 will bring the major search competitors together for a lively roundtable. This unprecedented meeting of the minds will feature Matt Cutts from Google, Harry Shum from Bing, and Rich Skrenta of the upstart search engine Blekko. Sparks are sure to fly, as this panel will be moderated by the entrepreneur and tech provocateur, Vivek Wadhwa.

The BigThink.com Farsight 2011 page has a number of short videos already posted, including this one by noted author Malcolm Gladwell:

Malcolm Gladwell on “What is the promise of search technology?”

The event will be webcast on BigThink.com, we’ll be watching!