The document outlines the kickoff for a recommendation engines program hosted by Vivek A. Ganesan, including its structure, schedule, and team requirements. The program is free, spans one month with weekly sprints and includes hackathons and panels. Teams must comprise three to five members with diverse interests and register by May 10, 2013.

1. Recommendation Engines
Program Kickoff
Vivek A. Ganesan
vivganes@gmail.com
Big Data Gods Meetup, Santa Clara, CA May 06,
2013

2. Before we start
Copyright 2013, Vivek A. Ganesan, All rights reserved 1
o A BIG thank you to our sponsors –
Big Data Cloud
o Meeting Space
o Food + Drinks
o Recreation (just kidding)

3. Agenda
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o Introduction
o Structure
o Schedule
o Teams
o Questions?

4. Introduction
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o Program Outline
o This is an opt-in program, it is FREE! (as in beer)
o We do social coding (which means you share your
code as open source, Apache v2 license)
o Program duration = 1 month, weekly sprints
o Weekly meetup (topical + social coding + Q/A)
o A weekend hackathon (Sat. afternoon) alternate
weeks (deep technical immersion)
o Demo at the end of the program

5. About this Meetup : Structure
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• Agile teams
• Week 1 : Introduction to Problem
• Week 2 : Algorithm + Platform
• Week 3 : Technical help
(Algorithm, Platform, Testing and
Deployment)
• Week 4 : Panel + Demo
• Showcase Startups/Experts in
the space
• Teams show demos
• Panel judges winners
• We might have prizes (needs
to be figured out)

6. About this Meetup : Schedule
Copyright 2013, Vivek A. Ganesan, All rights reserved 5
• May 06th : Kickoff
• Scrum 1
• May 6th – Meetup : Kickoff
• May 11th – Hackathon 1 (Sat. 01:30 pm – 05:30 pm)
• MongoDB Introduction + Setup
• Scrum 2
• May 13th – Meetup : Collaborative Filtering Algorithms
• Scrum 3
• May 20th – Implementing Collaborative Filtering
• May 25th – Hackathon 2 (Sat. 01:30 pm – 05:30 pm)
• Advanced MongoDB
• Scrum 4
• May 27th – Panel + Demos

7. Picking your teams
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• Ideal Team structure (Three to Five people per team)
• Data Science interest (at least one person)
• NoSQL interest (at least one person)
• Visualization interest (at least one person)
• Domain interest (at least one person)
• Yes, one person can have more than one interest
• Requirement : At least two people in a team
• Requirement : Not more than five people in a team
• Requirement : Teams must register with the Organizer by
end of this week (May 10th, 2013)
• Requirement : Each team must pick an unique name (let
the Organizer know)
• Requirement : Each team must have two team leads

8. Questions? Comments?
Thank You!
E-mail: vivganes@gmail.com
Twitter : onevivek
Copyright 2013, Vivek A. Ganesan, All rights
reserved
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