Holden Karau's audience at High Performance Spark preso at Data Day Texas

Interviews with Brilliant People on Hadoop and the Future of Big Data Tech

Clearly, my new job as product manager for the big data software line at Syncsort has kept me a wee bit busy, as is obvious from the distinct drop in frequency of posts here. I have managed to squeeze in a few blog posts in the last few months, but you wouldn’t know it by looking here. That’s because my posts have been on the Syncsort blog. It’s a cool blog with overall great content, aside from my posts, which are of course, awesome. 😉 So, check it out.

While I have been writing a few traditional posts there, although a bit more commercial than what I generally write here:
Syncsort Big Data Integration – Streaming and Kafka and Spark, Oh My!
The Big Data Processing Dilemma: Combining Streaming and Batch Data Sources

and I managed one post here that was all about Syncsort tech, and was re-blogged over there:
How Do You Move Data Preparation Work from MapReduce to Spark without Re-Coding?

I mostly haven’t had time to write many blog posts anywhere.

However, I have been doing some very cool interviews with brilliant people, usually at events like Strata + Hadoop World and Hadoop Summit. That way, I get to learn new things, and get the unique perspectives of folks who really know their stuff. Then I can come back here or on the Syncsort blog, and share their words with you. Nothing like learning tech from the folks who literally wrote the book on it.

Holden Karau's audience at High Performance Spark preso at Data Day Texas

That’s me in the blue sweater at Holden Karau’s High Performance Spark presentation at Data Day Texas. She took the pic.

My first post based on an interview with Holden Karau, one of my favorite industry experts, just went up the week before Hadoop Summit. I interviewed her at Strata back in March, but like I said, things have been a bit nuts lately.

I’ve recruited some of the Syncsort bloggers to help me out with the upcoming posts so they don’t all lag behind by months. And, I have talked my corp comm folks into letting me keep a few of them for my own blog, so this will not be a forlorn and empty sad place where big data blogging once happened.

Here are a few of the folks I’ve interviewed so far, a bit about what they do and who they are, and where you can expect to see the posts, here or on the Syncsort blog. The order that they will show up in may vary, but I have all kinds of good intentions to come back to this post periodically and edit it to add links as the posts go live.

Interviews done at Strata + Hadoop World San Jose in March 2016:

Ms. Holden Karau – Apache Spark expert and committer. Writer of great O’Reilly Spark books, snarky and all around interesting person. Works for IBM, and teaches and presents at places like Strata and Data Day Texas. – On Syncsort blog –
IBM’s Holden Karau on Hadoop, ETL, Machine Learning and the Future of Spark, Part 1
IBM’s Holden Karau on Hadoop, ETL, Machine Learning and the Future of Spark, Part 2 

Dr. Ellen Friedman – Apache Drill and Apache Mahout committer, PHD in biochemistry. Author of many books on things like Streaming Architecture and Practical Machine Learning. Works at MapR. Teacher and presenter. – On Syncsort blog:
Part 1 — Dr. Ellen Friedman Discusses Increased Flexibility in Big Data Tools and Changing Business Cultures
Part 2 — Dr. Ellen Friedman Discusses Streaming Data Architectures and What to Look for in a Good Streaming Message Layer
Part 3 — Dr. Ellen Friedman Discusses Streaming Data Architectures and What to Look for in a Good Streaming Message Layer

Dr. Robin Bloor – Industry Analyst, mathematician, author of many cool books, and all around smart person. Founder of Bloor Research and The Bloor Group where he currently waxes wise. Also a dear friend and mentor to me, and fellow lover of the written word. – Syncsort blog
Robin Bloor Discusses the Future of Big Data and the Role of Hadoop, Spark, Kafka and Big Data Analytics

Mr. Steve Sarsfield – Product marketing expert, author of the Data Governance Imperative, and face of HPE Vertica. First met in person when we both presented at Big Data Tech Con. – Syncsort Blog
Expert Interview: HPE Vertica’s Steve Sarsfied on Big Data Innovations

Interviews done at Hadoop Summit San Jose in June 2016:

Mr. Scott Gnau – CTO and resident curmudgeon at Hortonworks. (He told me I could say that, so I shall not be struck down by Hadoop PR green meanies.)  – Syncsort blog
Part 1: Scott Gnau On the Hadoop Toolbox, Spark, and Future-Proofing the Hadoop
Part 2: Scott Gnau Talks Big Data Governance, Cyber Security, and Superhero Justice

Dr. Owen O’Malley – Co-Founder, Sr. Architect and certainly a very technical fellow at Hortonworks. One of the original Yahoo Hadoop team, and creator of ORC files and the new Hive LLAP (Live Long and Process) for faster SQL on Hadoop, and huge influence on Hive in general. Former NASA dude, too. Oh, and definitely a Tolkien and Star Trek geek. (My kind of people.) – Syncsort blog and Big Data Page by Paige
Hortonworks Co-Founder and Technical Fellow, Owen O’Malley on the Origins of Hadoop
Part 2: Hortonworks Co-Founder and Technical Fellow, Owen O’Malley on the Origins of Hadoop

Mr. Ryan Merriman – Long time Hadoop consultant and architect and currently a committer on the Apache Metron project. Smart enough to get me hired at my previous job, and to live in Austin. – Big Data Page by Paige
Cyber Security with Apache Metron and Storm

Ms. Yolanda Davis – Brilliant and charismatic Hortonworks engineer and architect. Creator of the variable registry for Apache Nifi. A fun quote from Hadoop Summit regarding Apache Nifi: “We have all these deficiencies, and @YolandaMDavis swoops in and makes it more useful.” – Big Data Page by Paige
Ten Years of Hadoop, Apache Nifi and Being Alone in a Crowd

By the way, it is Pure Coincidence(TM) that all of the Hadoop Summit interviews are with Hortonworks folks. Scott Gnau was co-presenting with my boss, and I introduced them, so he knew who the strange woman hassling him for an interview was.

I just happened to run into Owen O’ Malley in the vendor hall chatting with some friends. I intruded rudely on his conversation and dragged him off to a table to be interviewed. Being a generally nice guy, he let me. For those of you (all three) who have been reading my blog since the beginning, Owen O’Malley was the one who helped me get it launched by lending me his slide and theme for my “Not All Hadoop Users Drop ACID” post, which was recently re-posted on the Syncsort blog.

The other two folks are friends from the Hortonworks project I worked on last year. It was fun catching up with them, and I learned a lot about Nifi, which I thought I had been pretty immersed in already, and Metron which I was totally ignorant of, but now am not.

Yolanda and I ran into each other at the Women in Big Data Lunch, so we chatted a bit about that and Girls Who Code and Black Girls Code as well. I can’t talk to Owen O’Malley without getting a bit geeky on sci fi and fantasy. And when Robin and I get together, we talk about everything from literature to architecture to pop culture, so the interviews will not be all tech all the time.

However, in general, you can expect some very meaty, sink your teeth in, tech info from smart folks coming soon.

Stay tuned.

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