HPCC Systems Digital Badges 2021

At our 2021 Virtual Community Day Summit, we announced the winners of our Poster Contest and our community awards (Watch Recording).  During the year, we also recognise the contributions of students joining our intern program and award certificates to learners completing our training courses.

Our series of digital badges marking these achievements are sent to the recipients and can be displayed on their social media profiles. There are 15 badges in total, covering a range of commitments, contributions and achievements.

Community Badges Awarded in 2021

There are five awards in this category. Our community members use HPCC Systems in many innovative and sometimes surprising ways. Colleagues, business partnersacademic program members and our student contributors push the boundaries of big data analytics, finding new ways to research and deliver solutions to real world problems using our platform.

HPCC Systems Community Recognition Award 2021

Image showing the Community Recognition Badge

Recipients of this award are community members outside of RELX and LexisNexis Risk Solutions group, who demonstrate innovative use of HPCC Systems in research, solutions and open source projects. They are strong advocates of the platform across their organization, including academia and business, contributing time, knowledge and talent back to the HPCC Systems Open Source Community.

The 2021 Community Recognition Award was presented to Robert Kennedy, PhD Candidate, Florida Atlantic University. Robert was an HPCC Systems intern three years running and was a winner of our poster contest each year. In 2021, Robert participated in our poster contest, not as a poster presenter but as a judge. He has presented at our Community Day Summit several times. His research and contributions to our Machine Learning Library will provide enduring benefit to our open source community:

HPCC Systems David Kan Ambassador Award 2021

Image showing the David Kan Ambassador Award Badge

The HPCC Systems Ambassador Program was established to help expand the HPCC Systems open source community through our talented and passionate colleagues. Recipients of this award are RELX or LexisNexis Risk Solutions Group colleagues who are strong supporters and proud evangelists. They have significantly promoted and contributed to the growth of our community, serving as mentors, event speakers, subject matter experts, and champions. They represent HPCC Systems, pushing the brand and platform capabilities to help promote and grow internal and marketplace awareness and preference. In 2016, this award became the David Kan Ambassador Award in memory of one of the first, and very dedicated HPCC Systems ambassadors.

The 2021 David Kan Ambassador Award was presented to Allan Wrobel.  Allan has become a regular feature of our community outreach speaking at our first ever Tech Talk Series in 2017, contributing more presentations over the years as well as taking part in our 5 Questions With Series. Allan’s YouTube channel features ECL Tip and Tricks, providing short videos tacking specific tasks such as using macros and various ECL functions. Many users have found Allan’s YouTube Channel a valuable resource for practical guidance on using the ECL Language.

2021 HPCC Systems Poster Competition Winner Badge

Image showing the 2021 Poster Contest Badge

This badge was awarded to the 2021 poster participants who placed in the top spots in the 2021 HPCC Systems Poster Competition. The selected winners are judged among the following categories: Best Platform Enhancement, Best Data Analytics, Best Use Case and a new Research category was added in 2021.

A fifth winner, selected by majority votes from the 2021 HPCC Systems Community Day attendees, received our new  Community Choice Award.

In 2021, this award was presented to the following Poster Contest Winners:

Our 2021 poster contest review blog provides details of all our poster contest participants and their posters, as well as links to video presentations by the students speaking about their work.

2021 HPCC Systems Intern Badge

Image showing the 2021 Intern Program Badge

Recipients of the 2021 HPCC Systems Intern Badge complete a 12 week internship program, meeting all expected criteria in contributing to the HPCC Systems open source project. To join the program, students submit a proposal identifying the tasks involved for their chosen project, including a timeline of tasks to be completed each week. They work alongside a mentor, using the same tools and working practices as our HPCC Systems Platform developers.

Twelve interns joined the program in 2021:

  • Achinthya Sreedhar
    RV College of Engineering, India
  • Alexander Parra
    University of California, Berkeley
  • Amy Ma
    Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, FL, USA
  • Atreya Bain
    RV College of Engineering, India
  • Carina Wang
    American Heritage School, FL, USA
  • Christopher Connelly
    North Carolina State University
  • Eleanor Carl
    Green River College, WA, USA
  • Jefferson Mao
    Lambert High School, Georgia
  • Mara Hubelbank
    Northeastern University, MA, USA
  • Mayank Agarwal
    RV College of Engineering, India
  • Nikita Jha
    Northview High School GA, USA
  • Roshan Bhandari
    Clemson University, SC, USA

Find out more about the application process for our intern program.
Learn more about our Class of 2021 interns and  contributions they have made to the HPCC Systems open source project.

2021 HPCC Systems Mentor Badge

Image showing the 2021 Mentor Badge

Recipients of this badge served as mentors to our interns in the 2021 HPCC Systems internship program, providing guidance and direction to their designated intern towards the successful completion of their open source projects. Our mentors in 2021 were a mixture of LexisNexis Risk Solutions Group Colleagues, university professors and school teachers.

This award was presented to our 2021 mentors from LexisNexis Risk Solutions Group:

  • Ming Wang
    Senior Consulting Software Engineer
  • Godson Fortil
    Software Engineer I
  • David Dehilster
    Consulting Software Engineer
  • Lili Xu
    Software Engineer III
  • Arjuna Chala
    Senior Director Operations
  • Roger Dev
    Senior Architect
  • Dan Camper
    Senior Architect
  • Bahar Fardanian
    Tech Evangelist
  • Michael Gardner
    Software Engineer III
  • Raja Sundarrajan
    Senior Software Engineer
  • Bob Foreman
    Senior Software Engineer
  • Kevin Wang
    Senior Consulting Software Engineer

This award was also presented in 2021 to the following mentors representing our academic partners:

  • Dr Shobha G
    Professor, RV College of Engineering
  • Professor Jyoti Shetty
    Assistant Professor, RV College of Engineering
  • Tai Donovan
    Robotics Program Director and Instructor, First Robotics Competition Team # 5472 Coach and Founding Mentor, American Heritage School

Find out more about the support our mentors give to students in this blog.

HPCC Systems Training Achievement Badges

Our training courses deliver comprehensive content for learning how to use the ECL language alongside the HPCC Systems Platform. Courses are available for beginners to advanced ECL users, managers and system administrators. A badge is awarded on the completion of a course and there is an additional badge for those who manage to compete all the courses in our training program.

Badges are also awarded to the instructors who deliver these training courses.

HPCC Systems Certified Trainer

Image of the HPCC Systems Certified Trainer Badge

Recipients of this badge are certified HPCC Systems training instructors delivering courses included in our training catalog. Our trainers provide in person and online courses as well as workshops focusing on specific learning points.

Sign up for an online training course using our website and if you want to book onsite training, contact us for more information at training@hpccsystems.com. Currently, we have 3 certified trainers:

  • Richard Taylor, Senior Consulting Software Engineer, LexisNexis Risk Solutions Group
  • Bob Foreman, Senior Software Engineer, LexisNexis Risk Solutions Group
  • Hugo Watanuki, Senior Technical Support Engineer, LexisNexis Risk Solutions Group

During our 2021 Community Day, our trainers ran a series of workshops which were recorded. A guide to the content and links to the recordings are available in our blog, Cruising the ML World with HPCC Systems and ECL.

Core ECL Competency Badges

The following courses are included in the ECL Core Classes section of our online training course catalog.

Image showing the Introduction to ECL Badge

HPCC Systems Introduction to ECL Parts 1 and 2

Awarded on the successful completion of all lessons and labs in the HPCC Systems Introduction to ECL Parts 1 & 2 courses.  Part 1 focuses on concepts and queries and Part 2 moves on to look at the Extract, Transform and Load (ETL) Process.

Image showing the Advanced ECL Badge

HPCC Systems Advanced ECL Parts 1 and 2

Awarded on the successful completion of all lessons and labs in the HPCC Systems Advanced ECL Parts 1 & 2 courses. Part 1 focuses on working with relational data and Part 2 moves on to look at super files, working with XML and free form text parsing.

Image showing the ROXIE ECL Badge

HPCC Systems ROXIE ECL Parts 1 and 2

Awarded on the successful completion of all lessons and labs in the HPCC Systems ROXIE ECL Parts 1 & 2 courses. Part 1 focuses on indexes and queries and Part 2 moves on to look at complex query development.

Image showing the ECL Core Competency Badge

HPCC Systems All Core ECL Competency

Awarded on the successful completion of all the lessons and labs in the HPCC Systems  ECL Core Class catalog. This includes, Introduction to ECL Parts 1 & 2, Advanced ECL Parts 1 & 2, and ROXIE ECL Parts 1 & 2. This is a major milestone achievement in the ECL language learning journey.

Image showing the Code Generation Tools Badge

HPCC Systems Applied ECL: Code Generation Tools

Awarded on the successful completion of the Applied ECL Code Generation Tools course, which provides the opportunity for ECL users to extend their knowledge by using the ECL code generation tools to automate operational tasks. This course covers creating and using macros, the ECL template language and automating processes.

HPCC Systems Applied ECL – Machine Learning with HPCC Systems

Image showing the Machine Learning Badge

Awarded on completion of the Applied ECL Machine Learning course which explores the fundamentals of machine learning with ECL, including the Myriad Interface. Learners are also introduced to a number of the currently supported HPCC Systems open source machine learning bundles such as Learning Trees, Deep Learning, Generalised Neural Networks (GNN), KMeans and DBSCAN.

This course is an extension to the core ECL classes, requiring the completion of the Introduction to ECL classes parts 1 and 2.

HPCC Systems Managers Course

Image showing the HPCC Systems Manager badge

Awarded on completion of all lessons and labs in the Introduction to HPCC Systems for Managers course, which is ideal for anyone who wants to gain a basic understanding of HPCC Systems and how ECL can be used to build powerful data queries. An overview of Thor and ROXIE is provided as well as introduction to ECL concepts and syntax, using ECL IDE and ECL Watch, progressing on to give some basic knowledge about how to create simple ECL queries.

Systems Administration Course

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Awarded on completion of all lessons and labs in the Systems Administration course for learning methods and best practices to maintain and manage an HPCC Systems environment. This course is aimed at those who wish to maintain and manage HPCC Systems Clusters, focusing on daily administrative operations. An architectural overview is provided along with advice about routine maintenance, using Preflight on core components and clusters, using the Configuration Manager for setup as well as troubleshooting tips.

HPCC Systems Ultimate Master Badge

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Awarded on completion of all the HPCC Systems ECL core competency courses, applied ECL courses, Machine Learning, Manager and Systems Administration courses. As the name of this badge suggests, this award is the ultimate milestone in the ECL learning journey provided by our training catalog. But the learning doesn’t stop here. Our Ultimate Masters will go on to use and extend their knowledge all the time by completing projects and knowledge sharing with others.

Congratulations to all our 2021 Badge Winners

So far, we have made over 700 awards. The 2022 Community Recognition Award winners will be announced during our 2022 Community Day Summit alongside the Poster Contest Winners. We will announce the list of those joining the 2022 HPCC Systems Intern Program during the summer.

As you can see from the number of awards presented so far, many community members have received badges for their achievements.