First things first. The Big Data Contrarians (“a hype free Agora for Big Data dialogue”) is now a community of over one thousand professionals.

Since its LinkedIn group registration on the 1^st of July 2015, the Big Data Contrarians has grown to become, without a shadow of doubt, the nicest, friendliest and most well informed Big Data group that you will ever come across in your entire life.

The Big Data Contrarians is a community of professionals who enjoy talking about data, statistics, analytics, data-centric applications, ideas, opinions and insights.

The Big Data Contrarians is a great place to contrast ideas about data. It is a group that passively encourages discourse. Especially discourse that comes with a touch of humour, a hint of disbelief and a delightful bouquet of subtle cynicism.

Also, no data, analytics or visualisation related subject, for as tenuous as the relationship might be, is out of bounds. This is a forum by professional adults for professional adults, with all its attendant facets and all that this implies. Indeed, who knows what the next topic of conversation will be on The Big Data Contrarians forum. But here’s some ideas:

• We may call it Big Data, Smart Data or Small data, but in reality isn’t the only intrinsic quality of data is in its being and in its symbolism, if indeed it has any?
• If data were a religion would Big Data be a craven image, a sect or a schism?
• Does ascribing qualities to data, such as Big, Small or Smart, places us at risk of outdoing the degrees of anthropomorphism of some pet lovers?
• To be a Big Data guru, is it necessary to know the difference between Hadoop and Spark?
• Did Big Data hype fall off the radar because it’s gone, or did Big Data hype turn ‘pro’?
• How do we measure the qualitative and quantitative value of data?
• Do we really need The Big Data Contrarians community?

After four weeks of the group’s existence, I wrote a piece for Data Science Central (July 23^rd, 2015), in which I itemised some of the reasons why I believed that The Big Data Contrarians groups was necessary. Those reasons were:

1. To alert people to interesting but ultimately dubious Big Data claims
2. To share lessons learned, good sense and practical data and Big Data principles
3. To connect professionals in overlapping disciplines, for example, in statistics, data architecture and data management, project management, solutions architecture, database administration, data science, risk management, technical, management and executive management roles, and a long list of etceteras.
4. To educate, inform and entertain each other about the practical world of data and Big Data
5. To weigh up the pros and cons of data technologies and techniques applied to solving business challenges
6. To minimise the hype surrounding Big Data, covered in part by the first item, but more so
7. To engender critical thinking, healthy scepticism and reasoned contrarianism

I genuinely believe that those reasons are as valid now as they were then. Perhaps even more so.

So, to get back to basics, I will leave you where I started.

The Big Data Contrarians. Is quite simply the best Big Data community on the whole wild-wild-wild internet, anywhere? Yes, anywhere. The Big Data Contrarians is an amazingly great data community that promotes inclusivity, interaction and coherence in data, statistics, analytics and Big Data discourse.

Anyone who is anyone in Big Data and data is a member of THE BIG DATA CONTRARIANS, either now or in the near future.

So, don´t be left behind. Join today. Be the Big Data smarty amongst your Big Data party.

Many thanks for reading.

Join The Big Data Contrarians: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/8338976