I always love traveling to DC. Meeting up with fellow Intrideans is incredibly motivating and satisfying. I had this chance yet again over the last couple days for an event; Open Analytics Summit, whereby Intridea was a sponsor. As well, we had a speaking slot. A few other companies were sponsoring/speaking as well, such as Basho, Elasticsearch and 10Gen.
The morning started pretty slow, I am certain people were around the corner, just not sure which corner that was. It was an intimate setting, only a few tables for vendors/sponsors and a select group of practitioners.
Presentations were longer than what I consider normal, 45-50 minutes. Topics were focused for the most part upon Open Source software which included: Applications, Architecture, Engineering, Methods and Systems used within Data Analytics. As a sponsor it was difficult to get away and listen to the presentations, certainly a few of them looked as though they would have been quite interesting to have attended.
My presentation titled: Data Science in the NOW – It Takes an ARMY of tools! Focused mainly upon the vast array of available Open Source DB’s, Indexing Engines, File Systems, Query Engines and Streaming Engines. As well, I spent a little time on the definition of “NOW” (within the context of data analytics), latency and our own human (physiological) limitations with perception. I made it a point to mention most that are available as well as their history, general feature set, strengths and weaknesses. I selected a few out of the myriad for special attention. Examples included: Storm, Cassandra, HBase, xQL’s, Hadoop and a few others. The presentation is available for anyone to view on slide-share. Unfortunately without the notes attached it may seem a lot of the detail is missing. If you want to read through the notes that apply to each slide, please just let me know and I will send them to you.
My only gripe is the venue itself. While quaint, it had some real drawbacks. For example, power outlets in front of the vendor tables, rather than behind. A lounging area directly in front of the vendor tables whereby attendees backs were to us. Therefore making it rather difficult to engage in useful discussion. Finally the main presentation room is built upon tiers, much like you have experienced in large collegiate classrooms. However, the drawback was that attendee’s each were behind a small barrier that hid their hands. With long presentations I noticed a lot of arm/elbow movement indicating QWERTY abuse or thumb wrestling rather than focus upon the presenter.
We met a few really cool people that we are already following up with. All in all it was a good event, glad we were part of it.
