Meet Clark Bradley: SAS technical architect by day and comedian by night. When he’s not demoing SAS Data Loader for Hadoop, he’s blogging about it on The Data Roundtable. Clark and a core SAS team of thought leaders, developers and executives will be in New York City on September 29 at Strata + Hadoop World, mixing and mingling with people like you who live and breathe analytics.
As I mentioned in my previous post, we’d love to be a part of your Strata + Hadoop World agenda. So, over the next three weeks, I'll be introducing you to our team. This is the second post of the series, which features Q&As with the folks you can meet at the SAS booth #543.
What’s your background?
Clark: I hold a BS in Math and Science from USC (the real one, just south of North Carolina!). I’ve always been interested in data, both from a structural and access perspective. If data has a purpose built structure the access is easy, if not, the access can be more complex to forming the output result set. I’ve worked as a data architect, administrator and developer for over 17 years (that’s 84 years to a beagle!).
What skills help you most as a technical architect?
Clark: I like working in Hadoop because I use a variety of skills when working with customers. Linux OS skills to monitor performance and troubleshoot various processes, native Hadoop skills to assess the environment and layout, architectural skills to plan and build robust schemas for applications and SAS skills to tie together various data management, data integration, data transformation and data quality activities. It depends on the problem as to which skill I'll use, whether solving a performance problem or building a solution environment.
When did you figure out you wanted to be a technical architect? What motivated you to become one?
Clark: Don’t tell anyone, but I always wanted to be Jacques Cousteau. When I learned that wasn’t a role, but an actual person and that he already had the job, I moved on to data management. In all seriousness, I started out working in data integration with Cobol/DB2 at a retail pharmaceutical company. I had the privilege to be selected for the first data warehouse project at the company. The transition from data transformations that had taken weeks to just minutes motivated me to continue down the path of data warehousing and, by extension, system architecture, data architecture, and code development.
What’s your biggest accomplishment thus far?
Clark: What, like this year? Or as of this hour? Overall, I would have to say my family. I have a wife and two great boys who I enjoy spending time with. My youngest is a comedian, and my oldest is a theoretical automated life form designer, specifically around mutations affecting reptiles in their teens.
What’s your favorite new technology or app?
Clark: I’m more of a system snob. I’ve worked with various symmetric multi-processing and massively parallel processing data systems. I won’t name names but I like a certain open source distributed compute environment represented by an elephant.
What are you most looking forward to at Strata + Hadoop World NYC?
Clark: I like hearing the use cases from visitors to our booth using both SAS and Hadoop on complex problems (ranging from data integration to analytics). We offer a wide array of possibilities both natively and with SAS technologies to tackle these problems.
What software/techniques are you excited to show attendees?
Clark: SAS Data Loader for Hadoop. The transformation capabilities and integration with other SAS technologies makes it a truly unique product.
Want a sneak peek at SAS Data Loader for Hadoop so you can prep questions for Clark? Check out his webinar “Rethinking Your Approach to Data Management, Hadoop and Analytics.”
Please stop by the SAS booth (#543) to talk to Clark, grab a cup of coffee and meet the rest of the team. And don’t miss Paul Kent’s session on Thursday morning, Oct. 1: Patterns from the Future.
