If you are working on Big Data projects in or around the federal space a resource you will want to engage with (if you have not already) is the Washington DC Area Hadoop Users Group (Hadoop-DC). This is a group of user-practitioners and enthusiasts who meet to exchange lessons learned, discuss emerging technologies and network to strengthen the emerging Big Data community in DC. The group is coordinated by three community-minded technology professionals, Josh Sullivan, Ed Kohlwey, and Lalit Kapoor
As you can tell from the title of the group, Hadoop and the many related capabilities in the Hadoop stack are key topics. Which means Hadoop-DC has a whole ecosystem of interesting topics to explore.
Hadoop-DC uses meetup.com to organize and to provide notice of upcoming meetings. Find them at: http://www.meetup.com/Hadoop-DC/
Note: while not announced, I have heard discussion of a Hadoop-DC session that may occur in the late afternoon 25 Jan that will feature Doug Cutting and Todd Lipcon, two icons of the Big Data movement. If the event will be scheduled you will find out about it first at the Hadoop-DC meet up page, but I’ll also quickly report on it here. For now, please keep your schedule open on 25 Jan from about 4pm till 9pm. We will provide more info soon.
Till then, here are some Twitter feeds to follow relevant to the topic:
- Todd Lipcon is at: @tlipcon
- Doug Cutting is at: @cutting
- Cloudera is at: @cloudera
- Hadoop-DC is at: @hadoopdc
- Josh Sullivan is at: @joshdsullivan
