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UMBC Computer Science Alumni Donald Miner (BS '06, PhD '10) (left) and Adam Shook (BS '09, MS expected '13) (right) have written a book on the popular MapReduce paradigm that has revolutionized the way collections of computers are used to process large amounts of data in parallel. Their book, MapReduce Design Patterns Building Effective Algorithms and Analytics for Hadoop and Other Systems, was published by O'Reilly Media in December.
“Adam and I were teaching Hadoop classes and we saw a gap: students would pick up on how hadoop worked mechanically, but struggled to understand how to solve problems with it,” explains Donald, who now works as a Solutions Architect at EMC Greenplum. “This book is intended for people who have a basic understanding of Hadoop, but want to start solving their problems effectively.”
Adam and Donald met in fall 2008 during an Artificial Intelligence class at UMBC. Donald, a Ph.D. student working with Dr. Marie desJardins on machine learning and multiagent systems research, was teaching the class. Adam, 
an undergraduate Computer Science student, was taking the class. Later, the pair ended up working together at ClearEdge IT Solutions.
“We worked well together and our skills and interests complemented each other well, so when I had the opportunity to write this book I knew it would be a much better book doing it with him than doing it alone,” says Donald.
Now Adam works with big data technologies like Hadoop, Accumulo, Pig, and ZooKeeper as a Software Engineer at ClearEdge IT Solutions. He is working towards his Master’s in Computer Science at UMBC under Dr. Tim Finin. His research deals with developing an efficient in-memory distributed database for Semantic Web applications.
“I don’t know how I do it,” says Adam about working full time, being in graduate school, and writing a book. “Caffeine helps.” He plans on finishing up his degree in 2013.
In the meantime, Adam and Donald have started working on Mapreducepatterns.com. Still in its infancy, the website is meant to be a Wikipedia style site where the Hadoop community can rally around a well-defined set of standard MapReduce design patters.
]]>Contact: Tom Moore
410-455-3370
tmoore@umbc.edu
From December 2012 through February 2013, UMBC's Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture (CADVC) presents For All the World to Hear, a dynamic humanities project in which ten senior citizens from the Baltimore area tell, write, perform, and digitally publish personal stories of their involvement in the struggle for civil rights.
The first component of the project brings seniors from inter-racial and inter-faith backgrounds together for a series of oral history interview meetings. Under the guidance of oral historian, dramaturg, and performance director, Harriet Lynn, their written accounts will result in a script that the participants will perform before intergenerational audiences in the Baltimore area.
Mediated, interactive audience discussions will follow each of the performances, which will be held at museums, libraries and college campuses. CADVC's long-standing K-14 outreach program will activate connections with schools in proximity to performances resulting in a rich, first person history lesson for Baltimore area school children. The performance schedule includes the following dates and venues:
Wednesday, December 12, 10:30 am
Reginald F. Lewis Museum of African American History and Culture
Friday, February 8, 12 pm
Baltimore City Hall—Baltimore National Heritage Area's "It’s More than History! Brown Bag Lecture Series"
Sunday, February 10, 2 pm
Jewish Museum of Maryland
Tuesday, February 12, 6 pm
Maryland Historical Society
Friday, February 15, 10:30 am
UMBC, Recital Hall, Fine Arts Building
Saturday, February 23, 2 pm
Enoch Pratt Free Library, Main Branch
Schedule updates will be posted at the project's website, foralltheworldtohear.org.
The second component of the program involves the same group of seniors with a digital storytelling component. Each senior citizen will work with a UMBC student to realize his or her story in digital video format, which will be published online at UMBC's digital story site, umbc.edu/stories. The digital stories will ultimately be distributed via iTunes U.
A documentary video will chronicle the entire process of developing this community of practice among the seniors and students, beginning with their first meeting in September 2012 and ending in spring of 2013 with the web launch and screening of their digital stories.
Acknowledgements
For All the World to Hear: Stories from the Struggle for Civil Rights is a community outreach program of the Center for Art, Design & Visual Culture, UMBC. It is organized by Sandra Abbott, CADVC's curator of collections and outreach in collaboration with Harriet Lynn, producer/artistic director of Heritage Theatre Artists' Consortium. The program is supported in part by the Maryland Humanities Council. Program partners include the Stoop Storytelling Series, Howard Peters Rawlings Conservatory & Botanic Gardens, Druid Hill Park and the Senior Citizen Division of Baltimore City Recreation and Parks. Media partners include The Beacon Newspaper and WYPR.
This project was made possible by a grant from the Maryland Humanities Council, through support from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this program do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities or the Maryland Humanities Council.
Related Programming
For All the World to Hear is related to the exhibition For All the World to See, on display at the CADVC through March 10, 2013. Additional information on the exhibition is available at http://artscalendar.umbc.edu.
About the Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture
The Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture is dedicated to the study of contemporary art and visual culture, critical theory, art and cultural history, and the relationship between society and the arts. The CADVC serves as a forum for students, faculty, and the general public for the discussion of important aesthetic and social issues of the day. Disciplines represented include painting, sculpture, drawing, printmaking, photography, digital art, video, film, television, design, architecture, advertising, and installation and performance art.
Since 1989, the CADVC has incorporated a number of public programs into its exhibition programming schedule to further impact the communities it serves. Symposia, lecture series, conferences, film series, visiting artist series, and residencies have all been fundamental in an effort to create an ongoing dialogue about contemporary art and culture. The Center has also initiated a number of projects with Baltimore and surrounding schools to integrate the contemporary artist and their concerns into the classroom. These projects take place on-site at both middle schools and high schools and are team taught by the instructors at these schools, professional artists, and students from the CADVC's Internship Program.
The Center produces one to two exhibition catalogues each year. Each document is fully illustrated and contains critical essays on the given subject by a variety of distinguished professionals in the field. Recent publications include Postmodernism: A Virtual Discussion and Paul Rand: Modernist Design. These books and catalogues are published and are distributed internationally through Distributed Art Publishers.
Since 1992, the Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture has actively pursued the organization of exhibitions that contain the aesthetic, theoretical, and educational potential to reach both a national and international audience. Over the years, the CADVC has traveled these exhibition projects to a broad spectrum of museums, professional non-profit galleries, and universities national and internationally. Recent traveling exhibitions include:
- For All the World to See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights (2010)
- White: Whiteness and Race in Contemporary Art (2003)
- Fred Wilson: Objects and Installations (2001)
- Adrian Piper: A Retrospective (1999)
- Bruno Monguzzi: A Designer's Perspective (1998)
- Minimal Politics (1997)
- Kate Millett, Sculpture: The First 38 Years (1997)
Beyond the scope of these traveling exhibitions, the Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture also undertakes projects such as the Joseph Beuys Tree Partnership. As part of the educational mission of the CADVC, one graduate thesis exhibition and one undergraduate senior exhibition are presented each year. This multi-faceted focus for presenting exhibitions, projects and scholarly research publications focused on contemporary art and cultural issues positions the Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture in a unique position within the mid-Atlantic region.
Public Information
UMBC Arts & Culture Calendar: artscalendar.umbc.edu
Images
High resolution images for media use are available: http://www.umbc.edu/newsevents/arts/hi-res/
