The Birmingham Big Data Science Group (BIDS) aims to provide a forum for discussion of the latest tools and techniques in the area of Big Data. We cover technologies such as: 

1. Google and Apache Foundation's pioneering efforts in large-scale distributed computing such as MapReduce and the Hadoop framework, Mahout, Percolator, Microsoft's Dryad/DryadLINQ, and any upcoming new frameworks, 

2. NoSQL and NewSQL data store efforts such as Cassandra (Facebook/DataStrax), Hbase (Google BigTable), Megastore, Dynamo/SimpleDB (Amazon.com), Washington's Comet, and TokuTek amongst others, 

3. Intelligent web/machine learning algorithms such as recommendation systems (made popular by Amazon.com) and clustering algorithms. This also includes web mining, search and information retrieval techniques and tools such as Nutch, Lucene, PageRank and semantic search algorithms. 

4. Platforms for querying and analyzing large datasets such as Pig, Pregel, Dremel, and others. 

We are passionate software engineers who want to promote and further our knowledge of the latest and greatest in Big Data. As long time residents of Birmingham, Alabama we want to increase awareness of these technologies in the area, disseminate what we know and learn from others at the same time. Many of the world’s leading technology companies and startups have taken advantage of these cutting edge technologies to gain a competitive advantage in the highly competitive software industry. We aspire to make Birmingham a leader in these technologies. 

We have regularly scheduled local user group meetings, and also have plans to have invited talks and demos by some of the leaders in this area. If you are interested in these technologies please join us!

We are also on LinkedIn and  Facebook.