When and where is it on?

The 10th edition of Berlin Buzzwords takes place at Kulturbrauerei in the heart of Berlin from June 16-18, 2019. We kick off on Sunday afternoon with a barcamp.

How many years has it been going?

The foundation of Berlin Buzzwords were laid in 2009 with its first edition taking place in June 2010. So we’ve been running for ten years now.

What was the inspiration to start it?

The three founders: Isabel Drost-Fromm, Jan Lehnhardt, and Simon Willnauer, met at a meetup for topics they were interested in at the time: Hadoop, Mapr, Apache Mahout etc. There was a lot of interest in these topics but there was nothing comparable to an ApacheCon in Europe back then, so they decided to come up with their own conference.

What exciting things can people look forward to?

At Berlin Buzzwords there are always loads of things to look forward to in addition to the actual conference program. There’s our barcamp on Sunday afternoon where anyone can bring their ideas and discuss them with peers. We have satellite events with workshops on the Friday before the conference and on the Wednesday after the conference. Our attendees always enjoy our get together where they can meet and exchange ideas, get to know new people, and expand their network. Of course there are our keynote speakers: Co-founder Isabel Drost-Fromm will speak about open source from a users’ perspective from the founding days of Berlin Buzzwords until today. Google’s Open Source strategist Gris Cuevas’ talk focuses on how businesses can contribute to open source.

What opportunities are on offer for those attending?

In-between talks there’s some time for the “hallway track” where attendees meet new people or speak to exhibitors. Berlin Buzzwords is a great place to learn and to network, but it’s not a trade show or a b2b conference. Attendees often tell us that one of their favourite things about Berlin Buzzwords is the casual and intimate feel of the conference which leads to lots of interesting serendipitous discussions.

Who will be speaking?

Besides the two keynote speakers mentioned above, we have a call for papers every year that our excellent program committee is currently reviewing. Every year everybody interested in open source and big data can submit a talk which then goes through a blind reviewing process. This year we expect to publish the program in late March early or April. Please check our website for updates or follow us on twitter @berlinbuzzwords #bbuzz. We record and put online all of the talks from Berlin Buzzwords so if people who are interested in attending but haven’t been before want to get an idea of who is speaking and the topics I would suggest they check our Youtube channel.

What tips would you give to people attending to get the most out of it?

That is a good question and not so easy to answer. For all those with a specific question or problem, I would recommend that they come to the barcamp and get involved in the cutting edge conversations taking place there.

Our program is compiled from 4 tracks: search, store, scale, and stream and has different skills levels: beginner/ intermediate/ advanced. If you are interested in a certain topic you can filter the talks by track and pre-arrange your schedule accordingly. An intensive workshop day can be booked on our website from our selection of satellite events on various topics such as Apache Spark or Elastic.

How can people book tickets / when does it usually sell out?

People can book tickets on our website here: https://berlinbuzzwords.de/19/tickets People who buy tickets for the main conference can get a discount on workshop tickets by following the prompts. If people would like to by tickets just for the workshops they can do so here https://berlinbuzzwords.de/19/hackathons-meetups

Anything else you’d like to add / we should have asked?

If people want to get a bit more background information from some of the interesting and important people who have been involved in Ber Buzzwords over the years they can listen to our interview series here https://berlinbuzzwords.de/19/conversations

If you would like to have your company featured in the Irish Tech News Business Showcase, get in contact with us at [email protected] or on Twitter: @SimonCocking