Strata Conference 2011: Complete Video Compilation

Summary: Lots, lots, of material for data lovers

I don’t like focusing on money when it comes to reviews, but this time I have to admit – yes, this is what you can call an expensive package. Is it worth money? It depends. If you focus on data at your day to day work, you should consider buying it. If you are freelancer and you want to by it just to “take a look” – you should re-think it. That’s what I’d say about the price. On the other hand, there is a content. I have found it quite entertaining to view some of the videos. I was unable, of course, to go through all of them before writing an interview – there is more then 50 hours of material! But hey, you should expect that for what you pay! In any case – if you are looking for recent trends within data management areas you should probably take a look at this. If you have planned to attend the conference, but couldn’t – you are lucky. Conference comes into you home, just in front of your couch. If you are like me, person who does occasional trainings and tutorials it’s even more interesting. You can take a look at recent trends when it comes to public speaking. You can take a look at public related issues that you can expect during this kind of events. You can analyze different approaches of different speakers. You can find how they work with environment and how do they deal with “crowd”. So, basically, this is not only for “data people”. If you came from the field of social science this is quite interesting material as well.

I like to put hands on when I learn. That’s why I enjoyed most practical session (Cassandra/Data bootcamp) but I have found quite interesting The Mythology of Big Data as well even thou this is not that technical. So, it depends on your personal expectations.

Technically speaking, there is one issue with the table of contents at the product page. It is hard to get the knowledge regarding particular sessions’s content. I’d advice you to refer to conference page instead: http://strataconf.com/strata2011/public/schedule/full This way, you can get closer look at what you can find within Video material before you decide to by it.

Anyway, is it worth buying? It’s hard to say. There are 90 sessions you can choose between. So, you pay like 4.5$ per session. Is it worth money depends on how much focused on data you are and whether you like to peek and somebody’s else’s approach when it comes to problem solving. And, whether you can get your boss to pay for it ;)

Product page: http://oreilly.com/catalog/0636920019961/