Klaas is a data analysis and machine learning geek that enjoys the challenges of playing with large amounts of data. He has contributed code to several open source projects related to data processing, the largest one being Apache Hadoop, and is the original author of Dumbo, a Python API for writing and running Map/Reduce applications. He was also the main organizer of a series of Hadoop User Group UK meetups, with speakers from various well-known companies such as Facebook, StumbleUpon, Playfish and Cloudera. Over the last couple of years he has given a few Hadoop-related talks himself as well – a recent one being a tech talk at the LinkedIn headquarters about the usage of Hadoop at Last.fm, the London-based web company where he took on the role of Data and Scalability Engineer after finishing his Ph.D. at Ghent University in December 2009. In January 2011, he moved back to Ghent to join Massive//Media as a Data Scientist.

Daan is a software and opensource enthousiast at heart. During his education he not only participated in, but also launched several initiatives to promote opensource. As it became clear that software development is a tedious task, he focused on creating frameworks and tools to ease developer's life. Daan is working as a software engineer at the moment, specializing in content management. Thats is only during the daylight hours. As dusk sets in, the world of BigData lures and initiatives like FrogPond see the light. The main objective remains: ease developer's life.

André Kelpe works as a Software Engineer in the world of digital mapping and navigation where he makes sure that everybody uses the freshest and best maps to find faster to their destinations. He is working mainly on backend systems for map data production. In his freetime he is involved in the Belgian hackerspace movement a general purpose POSIX geek and freethinker.

Steven Noels is VP Product at NGDATA. NGDATA brings big data technology and machine intelligence together, allowing organizations to capitalize on the massive amounts of data that is generated today. NGDATA develops Lily, a big data management platform that offers an easy way to extract powerful business insights in real-time and benefit from enriched data to make an immediate impact on business performance. NGDATA's global partner community provides expert services best suited to meet evolving big data needs. NGDATA is a privately-held company with headquarters in Ghent, Belgium. More information and recent updates are available at www.ngdata.com.

Geert is ceo and consultant at foundation.be, a Java Consultancy Services Company. Working the last years as architect, agile coach, team lead and instructor. Spent the 90s focussing on AS400, the 00s on Java and perhaps next decade on bigdata. Interested in adapting and applying emerging technologies, and to instruct others what has been learned. Working on a third Big Data project at the moment.

As software architect and later CTO for medium-sized a software organisation building ERP systems, I am passionate about software architecture, development methodology, the group dynamics of development in the large and the general complexity of managing SME. The last 2 years, I am avidly researching cloud computing, grids, NoSQL and big data. At the moment I'm crystallising those interests into a business plan with software engineering as problem domain, the cloud as delivery model, SaaS as revenue model and agile as business culture,