What do you get when you invite a large number of tech savvy data experts into a big space to exchange ideas and network about the latest trends — and throw in free pizza? In Northeast Ohio, you get a big data meetup, a networking event like none other.

Big data is a hot buzzword in information technology today. Compiling and analyzing masses of data is a key decision- making practice in everything from banking to medicine to space engineering and professional sports. It’s a select pool of people who practice this craft, a smart, quiet, often solitary bunch scattered in offices throughout a regional economy. Who will bring them together to network and collaborate?

Doug Meil, MS ’98, is the founder of the Cleveland Big Data Meetup, which had its latest gathering in July at John Carroll University. The software engineer, a co-founder of the healthcare analytics firm Explorys, started the meetups in Cleveland back in 2010. He was inspired by similar events on the coasts.

“I had the good fortune to attend some meetups in New York and San Francisco,” Meil said. “I was just envious. I wanted that experience back in Cleveland. So I was like, ‘OK, I’m going to create one.’”

Meil, a married father of three who lives in the Cleveland suburb of Chagrin Falls, organizes the meetups six times a year and attracts people from many fields and interests. They come to hear expert speakers and to chat with kindred spirits. Attendance grew steadily over the years. Meil credits the opportunity to learn from specialists and to eat free food.

“Nerds appreciate good content,” he said. “And free pizza.”

Frequently, meetups are held in interesting locations, like at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. Speakers represent a range of fields and data projects. A meetup in January at Cleveland State University, for example, included a speaker who explained the creation of geospatial cemetery management to electronically map cemeteries owned by the city of Cleveland.

“I’ve had a guy from the FBI speak about cybercrime,” Meil said. “I like having that mix and the common theme is always data related. “It’s like, ‘Here are some data problems and let’s talk about them.’ No two sets of problems are exactly alike.”

Meil, the Assistant Director of Urban AI for the City of Cleveland, has always been fascinated by data. He got his first taste as a child playing stickball with his friends. He kept the stats and tracked their ERAs. He also diligently kept score whenever he attended games of the then-Cleveland Indians.

The early love for data turned into a successful career but his other passion, writing, would take him a step further.

Meil is a regular contributor to the blog of the Communications of the ACM (Association of Computing Machinery) and is working on a book about his experiences as an entrepreneur.

“There’s a presumption that tech people don’t communicate well. In some cases that might be true, but communication is a necessary part of the job,” Meil insists.

“The better you can explain what you’re doing and where you’re going, that’s a good thing.” Learn about future big data meetups.

Learn about future big data meetups at www.meetup.com/cleveland-hadoop/