6 Reasons to Attend Spark Summit 2016

Temples of Developer Knowledge

“Developers are the new kingmakers,” wrote Stephen O’Grady in his book “The New KingMakers: How Developers Conquered the World.” This shift in the rise of democratic power and developer class seem to stem from the flourishing of open source projects, open innovation, open development organizations like the Apache Software Foundation, and easy confidence to contribute to the open source projects—all developed by the community and for the community, as repositories of developer knowledge.

As temples of knowledge, the Spark Summit series of community conferences is the place where the best of Apache Spark developers converge to share their expert knowledge with the community, to participate in Meetups and networking events, or to ruffle the feathers at Ask Me Anything or track sessions. Year after year, these summits are an affirmation that Apache Spark’s popularity, adoption, and growth are uncontested.

For any Spark developer, the Spark Summit is a pilgrimage to the temple of knowledge—and here are my six reasons why:

1. Keynotes from Distinguished Engineers:  Four distinguished engineers, scientists and academics who have disrupted distributed computing and advanced deep learning will give keynotes. I can’t think of any other event where you get to hear legendary leaders like Matei Zaharia, Doug Cutting, Jeff Dean, and Andrew Ng share their wisdom about the present and future of Apache Spark, big data, distributed computing, and deep learning with the community.
2. A Developer Day: A day dedicated with developer focused sessions, you can choose from 45 sessions spanning five tracks: Developer, Data Science, Spark Ecosystem, Use Cases & Experience, and Research—all intense and deep-dive tech-talks. You can learn about developments in Apache Spark 2.0, Structured Streaming, Spark SQL, Unified Dataset APIs, MLlib 2.0, GraphFrames, Apache Spark and machine learning at scale, and more.
3. Apache Spark Training: For those new or familiar to Apache Spark, an entire day is dedicated for a developer to enhance his or her Spark skills. Popular courses range from Spark Essentials to Data Science with Apache Spark to Advanced Apache Spark.
4. The Bay Area Apache Spark Meetup: Apache Spark Meetups are well attended and popular for tech-talks. You can learn what other Spark developers are up to, mingle, network and enjoy the beverages and food in an informal setting.
5. Meet the Committer or Expert: In an informal office hour of face-to-face conversation, you can interact with Spark experts and ask them anything about Apache Spark—not an opportunity you get everyday.
6. San Francisco: We might be geeks at heart, but we do enjoy fine wine, delicious food, chic cafes, art museums, and nightlife in a cosmopolitan metropolis. This captivating city by the bay has its mystic draw not only to artists and tourists but engineers and high-tech entrepreneurs. Why not chill after an intense day of tech talks?

At the end of this three-day Apache Spark fest, you’ll have scaled new heights in your Spark knowledge, you’ll have met developers with similar interests, you’ll have discovered gorgeous San Francisco, and you’ll have recorded digital memories—of course, including best selfies—to share with others.

We hope to you see you there!

What’s next?

Tickets are selling fast. If you haven’t yet, register today using the discount code DatabricksSF20 and get 20% off.