For those of you who are familiar with the world of Big Data you will also be aware of the vanguard data community known as The Big Data Contrarians (the most fabulous Big Data community online).

Launched today (23 September 2015), the Big Data Contrarian’s Challenge is destined to fast become the most prestigious, enviable and prized challenge on the entire global world-wide-web.

For this inaugural event, we are expecting well in excess of any previous record numbers of entrants set for similar and less esteemed challenges.

The contest is open to all, although we will particularly welcome those who will be making their first ventures into this amazing Big Data Challenge territory.

Submissions are welcome from individuals in their own rights or as representatives of businesses and other types of organisations.

The winner of the challenge will gain significant kudos amongst The Big Data Contrarians (the nicest Big Data Community in the entire world) and shall thereafter become known as a decent, upstanding and professional Big Data exponent, one deserving consideration, recognition and appreciation. Praise indeed from such a prestigious institution.

To enter the competition you simply submit a Big Data Success story (you can either drop an email to me at martyn.jones@cambriano.es, or you can leave a message on the Big Data Contrarians discussion forum, here: https://www.linkedin.com/grp/home?gid=8338976 ).

The success story should ideally include:

• Detail of the data that was used to create new insight and understanding?
• How the was data sourced, treated and stored?
• How was the resulting data queried? For example, let’s see a description of the queries, descriptions of the code, the pseudo-code and the code narrative.
• What were the results of the queries? In technical and business terms.
• What normalisation of the results took place?
• How did those results drive insight? In business terms, please.
• Please also add additional content that shows how unique, interesting or innovative the success story is.
• But most of all, please feel free to express yourself just as you wish.

In addition, the Big Data success story submitted must involve the use of Hadoop (HDFS and MapReduce), projects from the Hadoop ecosphere such as Scala, Pig and Spark, or the use of other technologies such as Lustre and GPFS.

Extra consideration will be given to entries that leverage data not sourced from operational business systems (so no ERP databases or structured operational data sources).

Ideally, the success story ought to highlight Doug Laney´s three Big Data Vs of volumes, velocity and variety; however, this aspect will not be a deal-breaker.

A participant may submit one or more entries to the challenge. In addition to a winner, there will be additional recognition for all submission deemed to be exceptional.

Submissions

Please submit your entry, preferably as an article of between 800 to 1000 words, to The Big Data Contrarians.

If you prefer (and we recommend this approach), publish your Big Data success story to LinkedIn Pulse, or to a forum of your choice, and then send us the link.

The deadline for submissions for 2015 will be the 23rd December 2015.

The decision of The Big Data Contrarians Challenge committee will be published 28th February 2016.

For additional information please contact me or leave a message on The Big Data Contrarians discussion forum.

The Big Data Contrarians forum can be found here: https://www.linkedin.com/grp/home?gid=8338976

Well, the ball is now in your court and so I will leave you with the words of Rainer Maria Rilke. who famously stated: “Believe that with your feelings and your work you are taking part in the greatest; the more strongly you cultivate this belief, the more will reality and the world go forth from it.”

Many thanks for reading, and good luck!