2024 was filled with exemplary encounters, engaging thousands of people at academic and industry events to evangelize the best big data analytics platform around! Throughout 2024 HPCC Systems supported workshops, coding challenges, and hackathons in an effort to increase use and exposure to this robust open source big data platform as well as connecting with students who may be interested in joining LexisNexis Risk Solutions as either an intern or even a full time employee once they graduate. This blog serves to highlight the involvement HPCC Systems has had in the community in 2024.
January
In January, we hit the ground running by kicking off the new year with a 4-day ECL Workshop at New College of Florida. This workshop aimed to familiarize students with HPCC Systems and ECL, and it was the fourth year we participated in this event. The workshop proved to be a success, as several students from NCF applied for the HPCC Systems Internship program. One student even made it into the program! You can read more about the work Sabrina Harris completed here. We would like to extend our gratitude to Professor Bernhard Klingenberg for his help in organizing the event and his warm hospitality.
February
February rolled in with a burst of energy as our team made a special stop at Lakeside Middle School on our way to UGAHacks 9 at the University of Georgia. There, we introduced aspiring computer science students to big data concepts in an engaging and relatable manner. Our unique use of Takis® to illustrate distributed data not only made complex ideas accessible but also turned out to be a big hit! We want to take a moment to congratulate the school’s robotics team for their achievements this year and spotlight the girls robotics team on their accomplishments. Through our diversity, inclusion and belonging initiatives, we are passionate about supporting females in STEM fields and are honored to have renewed another year for our two HPCC Systems Community Impact scholarship recipients.
From there, we plunged into UGAHacks, a student-organized hackathon that welcomed hundreds of participants. It was exhilarating to introduce the “Help Missing Kids” Code Challenge and to offer a virtual workshop for the girls.code initiative, reinforcing our commitment to supporting women in tech. For more information on this event check out the UGA Hacks 9, Hotter Wings and Helping Missing Children blog.
The month concluded with the KSU Hackathon, where we once again focused on our support for the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC). It was an annual gathering of creativity and innovation, with around 100 attendees diving deep into ECL and the challenges we presented. Read more about this event in the 2024 KSU Hackathon for Social Good blog.
March
March allowed us to spread our wings virtually as we lent our support to the RVCE Hackathon that took place in Bengaluru India at the R.V. College of Engineering. With over 50 students participating, we provided an overview of ECL and introduced the Safe Haven Challenge. The students displayed creativity and passion and gave us some really great submissions!
April
April was particularly exciting as we hosted our inaugural event at the University of Florida, engaging 20 eager students who were introduced to the Four Corners of ECL workshop.
Shortly after the UF workshop, we embarked on an adventure to the Boston College Spring Symposium where we hosted a table at their career fair followed by an intensive 3-hour workshop, “BC (Boston College), meet BD (Big Data).” This session provided participants with a comprehensive understanding of HPCC Systems and ECL, celebrating nearly 25 years of conquering big data.
Our month wrapped up at ODSC East, where we showcased HPCC Systems with an engaging demo “The Kit and Kaboodle for Big Data and Data Science” as well as a workshop on relational dataset analytics. It was inspiring to connect with several hundred visitors who shared our passion for data science!
May
In May the team took part in a workshop at Nova Southeastern University (NSU) as part of a Summer Research Mini Program, welcoming 21 eager students for a 90-minute introduction to HPCC Systems and ECL. This experience laid the groundwork for future innovations and collaborations.
June
In June, we continued our global outreach by collaborating virtually with RV University for a crash course ECL workshop held by the University to help them prepare for a hackathon that was held later in the summer.
Then it was back to KSU for their annual STEM Camp that aimed to empower young minds. We tag teamed this event working with the Henry Arthur Callis Education Foundation and offered a hands-on HPCC Systems and ECL coding workshop as part of the Youth to Men Mentoring Program, nurturing a new generation of tech enthusiasts.
July
July was marked by our first RVU Hackathon hosted by RV University in Bangalore, India. This inaugural event was virtually supported by our HPCC Systems team and featured the Safe Haven ECL Challenge. With eight teams and 24 students participating, there was a palpable sense of camaraderie and innovation in the air.
August
In August, our 10th summer internship program wrapped up. This year’s group included thirteen talented interns working on diverse projects to extend the capabilities of the HPCC Systems platform. Projects addressed areas such as enhancement of regression testing, creating command line tools, and fostering integrations with third-party services. The goal was to automate and streamline as many processes as possible within the platform, with all interns receiving guidance from experienced mentors. For the second consecutive year, the program has collaborated with the LexisNexis Risk Solutions Technology team in Mumbai, enabling two students from the Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies (NMIMS) in India to create beneficial projects related to data visualization and HPCC Systems integration with Power BI.
September
As summer transitioned into fall, the 9th annual poster presentations competition was held as part of the Community Virtual Summit, showcasing the work of our academic community and demonstrating how students leveraged the HPCC Systems platform to complete their projects. 30 students submitted entries into the competition.
In addition to the standard judged categories, the Community Choice Award had over 200 of the virtual attendees participate in the voting for their favorite poster. Winners were announced as part of the Community Recognition and Awards Ceremony during the Summit. This year’s poster competition showcased the creativity and ingenuity of participants. More information can be found in the 2024 HPCC Systems Poster Contest blog.
October
The month of October wrapped up the year’s events with the much-anticipated 2024 HPCC Systems Community Summit and workshops. This year’s theme was Igniting Innovation and was free to attend and open to all users of HPCC Systems throughout RELX and the broader open source community. The purpose of the Summit was to gather engineers, data scientists and technology professionals to share knowledge and future roadmap plans for the HPCC Systems platform. This event is dedicated to showcase our community and have industry and academia present their HPCC Systems use cases, research projects and share their experience on how they leverage the HPCC Systems platform.
It was a great week of informative and compelling talks, an engaging workshop and superb academic posters! The full playlists of all the sessions, workshop, and poster presentation videos are accessible on the HPCC Systems YouTube channel.
Lastly, we made one final trip to Boston for NUhacks’24, another inaugural event generated by our ODSC presence. We had about 20 students join us for a two-day adventure that included a comprehensive 2-hour ECL overview and spent all day on campus Saturday for hands on help as they tackled the Safe Haven Challenge. We would like to give a special thanks to Cydney Hodder of Northeastern University for helping to make this event a reality!
HPCC Systems in Brazil
Over the past few years, LexisNexis Risk Solutions has also expanded the reach of the HPCC Systems platform to Brazil, becoming an integral part of the community. Please click the links below for the events participated in by the HPCC Systems team in Brazil.
Wrap Up
As we reflect on the impactful engagements and collaborations of 2024, it’s clear that our commitment to fostering a vibrant community around HPCC Systems and big data analytics has yielded meaningful connections and positive outcomes. From workshops that inspired students to hackathons that sparked creativity, each event served as a testament to our mission of empowering the next generation of tech enthusiasts. We are proud of the progress made and the relationships built over the past year, and we look forward to continuing this exciting journey of discovery and innovation together. Thank you to everyone who contributed their time, energy, and passion to make these initiatives a success. Your involvement fuels our drive to create an inclusive and dynamic environment within the tech community.
A full list of events, collaborations, publications, and resources can be found on here.