Developer Days

In this post, we explore a quick look at our DataStax Academy Developer Days. We've held a few of the Developer Days already in New York City and Washington DC, and just wrapped up two more Chicago, Illinois and Dallas, Texas! Next up are London and Paris, which we're really looking forward to. Teaching developers and practitioners at the Developer Days have been just as rewarding for us as getting a chance to learn about what everybody out there in the industry is working on!

Over the last week, we had the privilege and honor of coming out to Chicago and Dallas and teaching about DataStax Enterprise. Let's elaborate on and answer the following:

• What is DataStax Developer Day? Why would you want to attend?
• Where are the current DataStax Developer Day events being held, and where will future events be held?

What is DataStax Developer Day?

Developer Day at DataStax is focused around the DataStax Enterprise product, which is built on Apache Cassandra™. However, I have to add the very important note that this isn’t merely a product pitch type of thing. You can and will learn about distributed databases and systems in a general sense too. We talk about a number of the core principles behind distributed systems, such as the pivotally important consistent hash ring, datacenter and racks, gossip, replication, snitches, and more. We feel it’s important that there’s enough theory covered to understand who, what, where, why, and how behind the configuration and features too.

The starting point of the day’s course material is based on the idea that one has not worked with or played with Apache Cassandra™ or DataStax Enterprise. However, we have a number of courses throughout the day which delve into more specific details and advanced topics. There are three specific tracks:

1. Cassandra Track – this track consists of three workshops: Core Cassandra, Cassandra Data Modeling, and Cassandra Application Development. [more details]
2. DSE Track – this track consists of three workshops: DataStax Enterprise Search, DataStax Enterprise Analytics, and DataStax Enterprise Graph. [more details]
3. Bonus Content – This track has two workshops: DataStax Enterprise Overview and DataStax Enterprise Operations and Security.  [more details]

Why would you want to attend?

• One huge rad awesome reason is that the developer day events are FREE. But really, nothing is ever free right? You’d want to take a day away from the office to join us, so there’s that.
• You also might want to even stay a little later after the event as we always have a solidly enjoyable happy hour so we can all extend conversations into the evening and talk shop. After all, working with distributed databases, managing data, and all that jazz is honestly pretty enjoyable when you’ve got awesome systems like this to work with, so an extended conversation into the evening is more than worth it!
• You’ll get a firm basis of knowledge and skillset around the use, management, and more than a few ideas about how Apache Cassandra and DataStax Enterprise can extend your system’s systemic capabilities.
• You’ll get a chance to go beyond merely the distributed database system of Apache Cassandra itself and delve into Graph, what it is and how it works, analytics, and search too. All workshops take a look at the architecture, uses, and what these capabilities will provide your systems.
• You’ll also have one on one time with DataStax engineers, and other technical members of the team to ask questions, talk about architecture and solutions that you may be working on, or generally discuss any number of Graph, analytics, search, or distributed systems-related questions.

Where are the current DataStax Developer Day events that have been held, and were future events are going to be held? So far we’ve held events in New York City, Washington DC, Chicago, and Dallas. We’ve got two more events scheduled with one in London, England and one in Paris, France.

Future events? With a number of events completed and a few on the calendar, we’re interested in hearing about possible locations for future events. Where are you located, and where might an event of this sort be useful for the community? Ping us via @DataStaxAcademy on Twitter to let us know!