When you live in Texas you inevitably have to "take sides" on the UT or TAMU rivalry – even if you never went to either of these schools ('93 UNT BCIS and damn proud of it!; we've got a heckofu famous alumni list, too). Where am I on that one? Well, it will probably anger many of my family, friends & colleagues (including my younger brother), but I have to answer with Hook 'em, Horns!!
It is really the same thing here in Georgia, too. The rivalry is between the University of Georgia and Georgia Tech. I've been here for seven years now so I'm overdue in registering my favorite school of the two. Knowing the field I work in, it should come to no surprise that I'm throwing my hat in Tech's corner. The really do produce top-notch engineers and technology-oriented graduates as I have found out since moving to the Atlanta metro area.
Heck, after watching this motivating video I'm almost ready to take a sabbatical from work and head back to school at Georgia Tech right now! 
Speaking of going back to school, I am watching their Online M.S. Computer Science program closely that is planned to start in Fall 2014. This is the first MS CS degree being offered through the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) format and sounds very exciting. It is also relatively inexpensive with a total cost estimate of around $7000. Is anyone else interested in trying to do it with me?
I am transitioning teams at my employer and the group that I am joining the leadership team of is a big fan of Dean Leffingwell's Scaled Agile Framework (pronounced SAFe). I'll have to admit that it is a bit new to me and I wish there was more information available than just from the creator of the framework himself (his framework/product site, his blog and his books) and a single vendor (i.e. Rally). I wish it was more "community" driven, but the lack of that surely does not mean there isn't some goodness here.
If you've researched or used SAFe before, I'd sure appreciate it if you could share your experiences in the comments section below.
Are you asking yourself what is a data scientist? If so, check out IBM's definition which isn't too bad. What am I saying – it sounds awesome! It's the next great tech-oriented "artist" role out there – what's not cool about that?
When I was taking Cloudera's Hadoop Administration course (BTW, did I brag mention that I have obtained BOTH the CCDH and the CCAH credentials and point you to my shiny Professional Certifications?) the instructor turned me on to kaggle and the competitions they run for those calling themselves Data Scientists. Some are for ca$h and some are for fun. Pretty interesting stuff.
So, am I ready to jump in? Well... maybe not, but I would be willing to be part of a team that did if anyone is looking to learn together, or if brilliant data scientist wants to take me under their proverbial wing. Ping me if you fit into one of these categories and definitely let me know if you have participated in one of these competitions as I'd love to hear about it.
