July 19, 2010
Riak is growing. Fast. We are adding customers and users at a frenetic pace, and with this growth comes expansion in both team and locations. As some of you may have noticed, the Riak Team is not only becoming larger but more distributed. We now have people in six states scattered across four time zones pushing code and interacting with clients everyday.
First Order of Business
To bolster this growth and expansion, we did what any self-respecting tech startup would do: we opened an office in San Francisco. Several members of the Riak Team recently moved into a space at 795 Folsom, a cozy little spot a mere five floors below Twitter. (Proximity to the Nest was a requirement when evaluating office space.) We are calling it “Riak West.” There are four of us here, and we are settling in quite nicely.
If you are in the area and want to talk Riak, Riak, open source, coffee, etc., stop in and pay us a visit any time. Seriously. If you walk through the door of Suite 1028 with a Mac Book in hand and have a question about how to model your data in Riak, we’ll get out the whiteboard and help you out.
Second Order of Business
To make an immediate impact in the Bay Area, we thought it would be a great idea to get the first regularly scheduled Riak Meetup off the ground. We heard a rumor that there were a lot of people using or interested in databases out here, so we feel obliged to join the conversation. Here is the link to the San Francisco Riak Meetup group. If you’re in the Bay Area and want to meet with other like-minded developers and technologists to discuss Riak (and other database technologies) in every possible capacity, please join us.
Third Order of Business
Pop quiz: When did Riak Technologies open source Riak? We asked ourselves this the other day. As far we can tell, it was sometime during the first week and a half of August last year. “Huh,” we thought. “Wouldn’t it be great to have a little gathering to commemorate this event?” It sure would, so that’s what we are doing.
I mentioned above that we are starting a regularly scheduled Riak Meetup. To us, it made perfect sense to combine the inaugural Meetup with the event to celebrate Riak’s One Year Anniversary of being a completely open source technology.
The date of this gathering is Monday, August 9th. The exact time and location still needs to be solidified. We’ll be announcing that within the next few days. But put it on your calendar now, as you will not want to miss this. In addition to food, drink, and exceptional overall technical discussion and fireworks, here is what you can expect:
- A talk from Dr. Eric Brewer, Riak Board Member and Father of the CAP Theorem
- A few words from the team at Mochi Media about their experiences running Riak in production
- A short talk from Riak’s VP of Engineering, Andy Gross, on the state of Riak and the near term road map
If you have any other suggestions about what you would like to see at this event, just leave us a message or an idea on the Meetup page linked above.
Let’s review:
- Come visit the new Riak Office at 795 Folsom, Suite 1028
- Join the Riak Meetup Group
- Come be a part of the Riak One Year Anniversary Celebration
And stay tuned, because things are only going to get more exciting from here.
