“How do you got in Big Data?”, is a question that people asked me a couple of times now. So let me give that answer in a blogpost as well.<\/p>\n
I’ve used eight sources of Big Data related knowledge and skills:<\/p>\n
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MOOCs are a cost effective way to learn new skills. You can basically learn many skills for free, as long as you don’t want the certificate. The time you have to spend to complete the course can be different. Some courses only took me 2-3 hours for 5 weeks, others took me 8-10 hours per week for 11 weeks.<\/p>\n
Good sites are Coursera.org<\/a>, Udacity.com<\/a> and EDX.org<\/a>. In the Big Data field there’s also Big Data University<\/a>. If you do want the certificate (you can put them easily on your LinkedIn profile, for example), I only know it costs about 80 euros per course on Coursera.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n The quality of courses varies and that’s why a site like class-central.com<\/a> is useful. This is where students rate the courses they have followed. There’s also coursetalk.com<\/a>, but I don’t see as much rates by students there.<\/p>\n Back when I started following Big Data related courses I hoped that they would easily land me my data engineering job. That wasn’t exactly the case. But it does speak for you, if you wanted to learn a new field and went for it yourself. Most of these MOOC courses just give you a taste of the field you want to work in. If you liked it, you can find out more in the sources listed below.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Some books really helped my career, but I’m a slow reader. Or maybe I don’t take enough time to read. I’ve bought the book Hadoop, The Definite Guide<\/a> (700+ pages) for example, and by the time I’m halfway through, I’m pretty sure Hadoop is already out of fashion.<\/p>\n There are a lot cheap ebooks out there. I don’t mean free downloadable ebooks on pirated sites, but the deals of the publishers themselves. For example, Packt Publishing has a free ebook everyday on their Free Learning<\/a> site. Apress<\/a> has a daily deal of one ebook for 10 euros. O’Reilly<\/a> has a daily deal also, but it’s more like 50% off.<\/p>\n Pro tip: tell your employer you need access to book sites like Safari Books Online<\/a>, Apress Open<\/a> or Mapt<\/a>, so you can read all the ebooks all the time and even get access to learning video’s.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n There are currently many meetups<\/a> on data science and associated fields. They are usually held in the evening and they are also free. In about half a year I’ve already been to four meetups on data science and data engineering here in the Netherlands (and one in Germany). The topics and required knowledge level vary wildly. On one occasion the meetup was more of a showcase of what data science can do, while another had several very theoretical lectures. But whatever your knowledge\/skilllevel, it’s an excellent opportunity to network. When I decided I wanted to become a data engineer it was good to talk to people in the field whether data engineers were in demand (the are). Also there often is pizza, so what’s not to like?<\/p>\n Now summits are a different affair, because some can be rather expensive for the individual (think 1000-2000 euros\/dollars). But, as I found out last year, there was one that was free, the Big Data Expo<\/a> in Utrecht, the Netherlands. I was a bit skeptical. I suspected many sales talks and little content. But actually it was great. I met my current employer there, and I was able to talk to many people in the field about what they expect of a data engineer.<\/p>\n And of course I was at the Dataworks Summit<\/a> 2017 in M\u00fcnchen last week. This one is not for free, but I won a ticket, thanks to Hortonworks<\/a> via the Roaring Elephant podcast<\/a>. This is a great opportunity to learn a lot about varying topics in a short time. They are also on varying skill levels. The hardest thing about a summit like this, is choosing which of the parallel sessions to go to. One great thing about the Dataworks Summit, is that the presentations are online quite soon after. Check their Youtube channel<\/a>.<\/p>\n Another well known Big Data related summit, is O’Reilly’s Strata Data Conference<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Podcasts are useful for finding out what the current trends are. Although some might leave you with the feeling you’re way behind. Here are the podcasts I listen to:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I haven’t fully investigated this one, but I’m pretty sure there’s a ton of videos that can help you with learning Hadoop and other Big Data topics. There’s even one that explains Hadoop (well, HDFS anyway) and Kafka<\/a> (data streaming product) with Legos:<\/p>\nBooks<\/h2>\n
Meetups and summits<\/h2>\n
Podcasts<\/h2>\n
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Videos<\/h2>\n