We Didn't Start The Big Data Fire. It Was Always Raging

We Didn’t Start The Big Data Fire

Unless you are hiding under a rock, you know that the Big Data fire is raging. Whole lot of people have contributed significantly to the advancement of Big Data over the years and quite a few are continuing to influence. I learn every day from these pioneers and influencers so I wanted to recognize my ‘guru’s and I had couple of options: 1) Write another boring article 2) Be little bit creative and write a song (and of course be ridiculed for doing so). Well, I wanted to take a chance.

One of my favorite singers is Billy Joel and one of my all time favorite songs is ‘We Didn’t Start The Fire’. Wait, did you just say, never heard of that song? I am sorry but you are not permitted to read this anymore until and unless you watch ‘We Didn’t start the fire’ on Youtube.

Here is my crude attempt to parody that great song in honor of Big Data pioneers and influencers. I relied on few sites to pick my list (sources are at the end of this article) and I am honored to say that I have interacted with a few of them personally. Challenge in coming up with a list like this is that there are lot more people that I am not aware of but are contributing significantly to big data and data science in general. Apologies in advance for not including many more but it is not intentional. Please feel free to do add your own influencers in the comments below.

The following song has links to their linkedin profiles or twitter handles or their web sites. I strongly advise you to follow them if you can. With that out of the way, shall we start? Remember, keep that tune in your head as you hum (or read) along. Let’s take it from the top, shall we?

Fremont Ryder, Michael Cox, David Ellsworth, Charles Tilly

Peter Denning, Francis Diebold, Roger Mougalas, John Mashey

Tim O’Reilly got us Web 2.0, Doug Laney got his 3 ‘V’s

Tom Reilly, Cloudera, Rob Bearden, Hortonworks

DJ Patil, Jeff Hammerbacher, William Vorhies, Kirk D. Borne

Jeremy Waite, Mark Van Rijmenam, Bill Schmarzo, Diego Kuonen

Vincent Granville

We didn’t start the Big Data fire
It was always raging
Since the world’s been growing
We didn’t start the Big Data fire
No we didn’t light it
But we tried to stoke it

Tamara Dull, Jill Dyche, Carla Gentry, Hilary Mason

Karen Matthys, Yanbing Li, Jana Eggers, Jamie Miller

Monica Rogati, Caitlin Smallwood, Carrie Grimes, Kelly Thompson

Megan price, Neha Narkhede, Amy O’Connor, Jennifer Chayes

Edwina Dunn, Neelie Kroes, Lillian Pierson, Meta Brown

Of course, we know women make great data scientists

We didn’t start the Big Data fire
It was always raging
Since the world’s been growing
We didn’t start the Big Data fire
No we didn’t light it
But we tried to stoke it

Doug Cutting and Mike Cafarella gave us Hadoop

Billy Beane made millions with Moneyball

Gregory Piatetsky-Shapiro started KDNuggets

Gil Press is asking What’s the Big Data

Bernard Marr is fighting fires with Big Data

We didn’t start the Big Data fire
It was always raging
Since the world’s been growing
We didn’t start the Big Data fire
No we didn’t light it
But we tried to stoke it

Stephen Wolfram, Jeff Smith, Sverre Jarp, Tom Davenport

Evan Sinar, Bob Hayes, John Schroeder & M.C. Srivas of MapR

Arijit Sengupta, Paco Nathan, Vadim Kutsyy, Chris Towers

Anmol Madan, Clive Humby, Scott Howe, Kenneth Cukier

Viktor MS, Mike Sutcliff, Mike Gualtieri, Ronald Van Loon

We didn’t start the Big Data fire
It was always raging
Since the world’s been growing
We didn’t start the Big Data fire
No we didn’t light it
But we tried to stoke it

Song images for easy download