I recently came back from my first MongoDB Champions Summit. The summit is an annual gathering of all MongoDB Community Champions from around the world at one place. This year it was organised around the public MongoDB.local event in London.
How I got there
But let’s go back roughly half a year. A colleague working with MongoDB Inc. reached out to me asking if I would be interested in the MongoDB Community Champions Program. I said yes which lead to him nominating me for becoming a champion. After a call with the leaders of the program I got a message a couple of weeks later confirming my acceptance into it.
Working with MongoDB since 2011 I quickly realised back then that MongoDB Inc. goes the extra mile when it comes to their community. Very generous with swag (which we developers appreciate very much, don’t we 😉), free high quality courses, and upfront with what MongoDB is and offers and what it doesn’t.
London Calling
But back to London. Everything around the summit and the public event was very well organised and resourceful. As the new bloke in the fold I was excited and a little anxious about the new responsibilities. Whether I would lose track of schedules or miss other things. In the end I was relaxed, went with the flow and enjoyed it very much, all because of excellent planning, transparency throughout and engagement beyond what’s necessary - everybody carries each other!
In regard to the content: besides the topic of the day which is AI and everything related to AI there was talks about busting myths around performance in MongoDB and SQL vs. no-SQL which I enjoyed very much. One take away from that is “it depends”. The world isn’t black and white, and don’t follow click-bait, use your brains!
I used the opportunity to invite clients I worked for in the past to the public event. Some of them seized the day and came. Which made me happy and is an important part of my job and how I do things.
We Are The Champions
The people in the program are called Community Champions and rightly so! I was welcomed with open arms! Independent of origin and background everybody is welcome - Hey WORLD, look here, that’s how you do it! But no surprise, do you remember what I wrote earlier about the beginning of my journey with MongoDB? Community.
Not to mention the abilities of each individual and their level of skill in regards to MongoDB. Impressive! I consider myself lucky to be part of the program.
Where to go from here
Hopefully my impressions and thoughts give interested people in MongoDB and their Community Champions Program a little insight in how they run things and what someone might expect if accepted into the program.
Please watch this space for more content related to MongoDB and my fare as a MongoDB Community Champion.
