Last nights ALT.net Big Data user group session was excellent.

Alt.net is other great way to meet a wide pan of developers, catchup with friends in the industry, have a beer and share ideas. If you’re out there, writing code, and not sharing ideas with colleagues perhaps this is a nice place to start!

Big Data

What was discussed at the meet up last night? “Cool big data excel power maps with silver light.” We looked at various big big big data store / warehouse tools that work on aws and azure.

As I sat there sipping away on a beer listening to our speakers I pondered the following…

Why would I shift to NoSQL?

This ties into an interesting debate we are having at work right now. Should we be going NoSQL?

Fyi, I’m a NoSQL Advocate.

It seems the debate around NoSQL is complex. Some people see it as amateur and a dying buzz word. Others think it is the future. When it comes to managing large amounts of simple data perhaps it is over kill.

Something new I discovered last night was that, when working with NoSQL, handling complex data science queries NoSQL can create additional complexity. Many people know how to write complex SQL, not many people know how to write Json store queries. Most of us don’t have a lot of experiencing querying json from a database.

Analytical

Using a data warehouse to join technical logs with regular user data. Google analytical doesn’t allow this sorts of easy connection between these two worlds of data. Request logs.

Sharing knowledge

Maybe I should do a demo of a certain technology?

Messy data

A great place to store messy data is in a data warehouse.

The scary money clip of cloud computing

Always worrying about using the right account and subscription name. Worry about the unexpected costs of making a mistake in the cloud and costing myself a unexpected bundle of cash.

GetUp

James is a technical lead at GetUp. It was fascinating to hear about the great technology work they are doing to get one of Australia’s most successful activist not for profit organisations alive!

GetUp do a lot of ‘people coordination’. They get like minded people together to raise awareness on an issue. To achieve that they use various forms of communication. Email. Social media.

I was thinking that I might be able to offer a lot of support and help with various technologies around mobile apps, social media integration and cross platform integration given my work on my own not for profit technology project – Musomap.com. I’ll reach out and see if I can help.

Back for more!

I learnt a lot and really enjoyed both presentations. I though James, Simon and Jibin Johnson did an excellent job sharing knowledge and stoking ideas.

Again, thanks guys! Looking forward to the next one.