Big data firm Cloudera announced that it will be host the first HBaseCon in San Francisco on May 22, 2012. The 2012 gathering will focus on (as the name implies) HBase, the distributed database that runs on top of Hadoop, and will feature various educational keynotes and workshops revolving around the software.

“It’s going to be a great day out for the community. Anyone with any kind of an HBase itch at all whether apps, ops or dev should be sure to drop by,” said Michael Stack, engineer at StumbleUpon and champion of the HBase community. “Our goals with HBaseCon are to give the attendees a platform for connecting with their peers and sharing experiences with this technology and to ultimately advance the development of HBase.”

The official theme of the conference will be “Real-Time Your Hadoop.”

News of the event comes about a week after Cloudera CEO Mike Olson sat down for an interview in theCube, discussing the importance of HBase for his company’s business.  In light of this it’s easy to see why the Hadoop distributor decided to step up its involvement in project, especially considering how well community contributions have worked for Cloudera so far.

For one, there’s the partner kit Cloudera introduced last year; a free one at that, which encompasses a very broad set of tools and resources at a scale previously unheard of in the analytics industry.  And more recently, the company expanded its education program, known as Cloudera University, with the addition of two Hadoop certification programs: one for developers and one for admins.  These tests are made available to everyone willing to deposit the $250 fee, including Cloudera University graduates. There are about 14,000 of them and growing, according to company data.