Apache Cassandra at SoundCloud

I'm glad to announce our first Berlin Cassandra Users meetup sponsored by SoundCloud and DataStax!

For the first time we will meet together and exchange Cassandra experiences, ask questions, and have some fun.

There will be a presentation by Omid Aladini (https://twitter.com/omidaladini), Engineer at SoundCloud, on their use of Apache Cassandra for their activity stream, user-facing real-time time-series, and analytics shown to users who upload sounds.

And a second presentation by Emily Green (https://twitter.com/greenemilymay), Backend Engineer on SoundCloud's the Creator Stats Team, on all the mistakes, misconceptions, problems and wrong-turns that were made along the way when developing a project to create a new internal API serving top-k data.

The format of this meetup will be relaxed, to ensure that all questions are answered.

Food and beverage will be served at this event, so be sure to come straight from the office.

We hope to see you there!

Omid's Abstract

SoundCloud uses Cassandra and Hadoop for a number of its services including the activity stream, user-facing real-time time-series, and analytics shown to users who upload sounds. Each has different operational and functional requirements. This talk is an overview of these systems; the evolution of data services at SoundCloud and the challenges faced providing reliable and consistent data.

About Omid Aladini

Omid is an engineer at SoundCloud. He has worked on SoundCloud's data infrastructure for the past few years, involving a number of applications built on top of Cassandra and Hadoop. Prior to this he studied Computer Science and Machine Learning at the Frankfurt School of Advanced Studies.

Emily's Abstract

This year I used Cassandra for the first time. It was as part of a project to create a new internal API serving top-k data to give users who upload tracks to SoundCloud a better idea of how and where their tracks are played. The system went live in July and so far has been stable. But looking back to the development phase, it wasn't such a smooth ride. In this talk I'm going to tell you about all the mistakes, misconceptions, problems and wrong-turns that were made along the way. This will be embarrassing for me, but I hope it will be useful for you.

About Emily

Emily Green is a Backend Engineer on SoundCloud's the Creator Stats Team. She's originally from Britain, and graduated in Computer Science and Maths from Bristol University.

Agenda

7:00pm - Food/Beverage

7:30pm - Cassandra at SoundCloud by Omid Aladini

8:15pm - Getting It All Wrong with Cassandra by Emily Green

9:00pm - Q&A/Social

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We are actively searching for more speakers! If you have something to say about your real-life Cassandra experience - feel free to email me at Brady@DataStax.com and send your topic and short agenda.