Better Together: Dato and Spark

This Seattle Spark Meetup will be hosted at the newly minted Concur auditorium with pizzas and drinks served!

We have the honor of having the great folks at Dato (formerly GraphLab) loop by to showcase GraphLab Create with Spark Integration. We will also be showcasing Big Data scenarios involving machine learning and predicting traffic safety.

Our three sessions

Title: By our powers combined… GraphLab Create + Spark, together at last!

Abstract: We’ll briefly introduce Dato (formerly GraphLab, Inc.), GraphLab Create - our platform for predictive apps, and describe how GraphLab Create integrates with Spark through rdd to SFrame conversion. Developers should walk away with a clear understanding of how these complementary technologies can be used together to build amazing applications.

Bio: Shawn Scully is the Director of Product at Dato where he helps developers and data scientists build cool experiences with data. He is one of the many physicist-turned-data scientist. He is data geeky and loves inspired technologies. He has practical experience in recommendation systems, business analytics, physics simulations, and energy. He holds a PhD in Materials Science from Stanford University and a BA in Physics from Cornell University.

Title: Quick jump start into classification with GraphLab Create and Spark

Abstract: We'll do a quick jump start on how to work with Spark and GraphLab Create to explore, understand, and classify a small sample of receipt data. This will be a quick demo only (no slides) within a handy iPython Notebook.

Bio: Denny Lee is the Senior Director of Data Sciences Engineering at Concur. He is a hands on data architect and developer / hacker with more than 15 years of experience developing internet-scale infrastructure, data platforms, and distributed systems for both On-Premises and Cloud. His key focus surround solving complex large scale data problems - providing not only architectural direction but hands-on implementation of these systems to facilitate a successful data discovery and analytic environment.

Title: Sparky <3 GraphLab

Abstract: Data science teams are faced with an ever-increasing mountain of choices for their workflow, from ideation to optimizing the production data pipeline. By combining Dato's GraphLab Create with Spark, we can quickly move through the explore, model, deploy, evaluate, iterate loop. We will be demonstrating using a public data set analyzing traffic safety in the United States.

Bio: Amanda Casari is a Data Scientist at ProKarma, Inc. where she helps clear out the hype to show the value in data: big, BIG, small and in-between. She is very excited to be talking about two of her favorite new technologies for science and engineering. Her roundabout career has given her professional experience in driving big ships over the Marianas Trench, building data-driven software products and nerding out about complex networks. She earned a MS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Vermont and a BS in Controls Systems Engineering from the United States Naval Academy.