We are pleased to announce a new collaboration between the GÉANT Network eAcademy and the SoBigData Academy, a recently launched learning initiative by the SoBigData Research Infrastructure, providing educational resources on social mining and big data. By bringing together the two initiatives, GÉANT and SoBigData aim to share expertise, optimise use of their free and open learning materials, and avoid duplication of efforts.
As part of the collaboration, the GÉANT Network eAcademy and the SoBigData Academy are now complementing their respective platforms with relevant learning units of mutual interest. In particular, nine learning units from the GÉANT Network Automation eAcademy have been integrated in the SoBigData Academy, covering a general introduction on data modelling, data formats & protocols, a focus on specific formats like XML, YAML, and JSON, and units on big data storage, Docker, Kubernetes, Elasticsearch, and GitHub. Conversely, the Intelligence Management track of the GÉANT Network Automation eAcademy is now referring to SoBigData training in relation to units on databases, data analysis, legal and ethical aspects of data science, information retrieval, data mining & machine learning, data theory and society, complex network analysis, and use of Spark for data analysis.
GÉANT Network Automation eAcademy map, now including the link to SoBigData resources.
The root of the relationship between SoBigData and the GÉANT Network eAcademy can be traced back to TNC24 in Rennes. In June 2024, SoBigData’s presentation at the TNC24 BoF session on “Integrated Support of Large Scale Research Instruments” was noticed by the GÉANT Network eAcademy team, which identified possible synergies and got in touch to suggest the collaboration. You can read more about SoBigData’s experience at TNC24 in their blog: https://www.sobigdata.eu/blog/new-experiences-tnc24
About SoBigData and the SoBigData Academy
SoBigData RI (www.sobigdata.eu) is a distributed, Pan-European, multi-disciplinary research infrastructure aimed at using social mining and big data to understand the complexity of our contemporary, globally-interconnected society. It aims to become the European open science research infrastructure for social mining according to EU values of fairness and privacy protection.
The SoBigData Academy offers educational resources to support responsible data science. Similarly to the GÉANT Network eAcademy, learning units in the SoBigData Academy are offered in a flexible and engaging MOOC format, freely accessible, and designed for self-paced learning. Units currently in development are also listed on the SoBigData Academy and are set to be released quarterly.
About the GÉANT Network eAcademy
The Network eAcademy is a GÉANT service aiming to support organisations with the advancement of skills and organisational capabilities in domains related to Network Development. This covers several activities, such as the production and promotion of content around orchestration, automation and virtualisation, of architecture analysis and terminology documents, of an OAV Maturity Model and, most notably, of a popular and far-reaching series of training programmes developed “from the community and for the community”.
These training programmes are continuously developed by the GÉANT project’s Network eAcademy team, in collaboration with other project tasks and with external organisations. The Network eAcademy includes programmes on Network Automation (with the recent addition of a track on Artificial Intelligence), Quantum Technologies, and Optical Time and Frequency Networks (OTFN). Currently, more than 40 units have been published under the Network Automation track, together with architecture analyses and external collaborations, as with the Global NOC (GNOC) at Indiana University and now with the SoBigData Academy.
Would you like to learn more about the GÉANT Network eAcademy and share your feedback on this initiative? Don’t miss the upcoming Network eAcademy infoshare on 7 May (at 15:00 CEST), which will also include a presentation about the collaboration with the SoBigData Academy from SoBigData’s Learning Designer Sara Lelli (CNR): https://events.geant.org/event/1849/
