Houston Hadoop Bootcamp was a real success

What was so amazing about our March 28-30 bootcamp? A number of things:

• We collected more than twenty students altogether (with some remotes and some rescheduling). In the place where nobody could do it (some large companies tried) - there we were able to do it! Houston is just beginning its Big Data journey, and we at Elephant Scale may well be the catalyst taking it forward.
• We managed to go through the complete training agenda: HDFS, MapReduce, Pig, Hive, HBase, theory and practice. We packaged more real experience here than regular training programs accomplish in ten days. At the end we ran a real mini-hackathon, and each of the three teams was able to complete the SmartMeters project: find smart meter data, download it, collect with Flume into HDFS, and analyze it with Hive.
• We have formed real friendships, and our team will surely continue to maintain close ties through out LinkedIn Group, Houston Big Data: share news, share leads, and perhaps even work together.  The fact that we took the whole group to lunch every day, at nearby Papasitos or Papadeaux may also have played some role :)

Of course, we have lessons to learn and things to improve, but overall it was an unbelievable experience for all, students and trainers alike. We are already thinking of the next bootcamp on May 2, and of taking Houston Hadoop Bootcamp to Chicago and to Washington, DC.

Our students are proud of their "Excellence in Hadoop" diploma by Elephant Scale, which they can substantiate with real knowledge. 

One student, Guadalupe Hernandez, had this to say, "The bootcamp delivered on all promises and more. The experience was challenging and invigorating!"

Another student, Lila Ghemri, commented: "This was a great experience and great people to learn from and work with. Thanks to all."

Student Buu Vinh said, "It was an incredible experience. Everyone was highly motivated, hard working and helpful to each other in a 3-day super charged weekend. Mark Kerzner and Manish Mehndiratta were knowledgeable and willing to deep dive into questions, or lab work and still were able to complete the entire agenda for the bootcamp. AWESOME!"