From Tamagotchi Pets to IoT Factories: Digging In at MongoDB World’s Builder’s Fest

Adam Hughes
May 26, 2022 | Updated: January 4, 2023
#MongoDB World

Everyone loves to build — whether it’s a child playing with LEGO Bricks or a startup founder building an app from scratch. At MongoDB World 2022, attendees will have the chance to build something truly unique.

Builder’s Fest, which takes place on June 9, 2022, at MongoDB World in New York, gives attendees the opportunity to get involved in hands-on workshops and coding competitions. The event will help developers learn how to master features of MongoDB — and also have a lot of fun.

“Builder’s Fest is a place where builders get together and feed off each other’s vibes and collaborate,” says Karen Huaulme, a principal developer advocate at MongoDB. “People are coming in from all different levels; we have something for everyone.”

*A session at Builder’s Fest at MongoDB World 2019. “At Builder’s Fest, we get our hands dirty and see MongoDB in action,” says MongoDB principal consulting engineer Dawid Esterhuizen.*

MongoDB experts will lead workshops and coding competitions to showcase their work, show off their skill sets, and reveal their secret passions. After more than two years of remote conferences, these engineers are excited to build something in person, together with colleagues and peers.

After delivering his keynote earlier in the week, MongoDB CTO Mark Porter will host four sessions during Builder’s Fest. Porter’s four sessions are: MongoDB’s Architectural Advantages, Safe Software Deployments, Engineering Culture at MongoDB, and Is Relational the New COBOL?

Builder’s Pods

*Attendees at Builder's Fest 2019 gather around to share different ideas with each other.*

Much of the action at Builder’s Fest takes place in the Builder’s Pods, which will be spread throughout MongoDB World’s Partner Promenade. The Pods are set up for hands-on learning and tutorials, and they will host the mini workshops led by MongoDB experts and others.

David Bradford is an engineer at MongoDB who is hosting a session in the Builder’s Pod. “For Builder’s Fest, I’m really excited to see the breadth of ways that MongoDB can be used to build unique and novel tooling and solutions,” he says. Bradford’s session will detail how to use MongoDB to export Git history.

“I’m looking forward to showing off some exploration I have been doing around leveraging MongoDB to explore trends and patterns hidden in Git repositories,” Bradford says. “I’m excited to be able to show how features like the aggregation framework and MongoDB Atlas Charts can be used to quickly build powerful analysis tools.”

During 2019’s Builder’s Fest, some of the Builder’s Pod topics included using MongoDB Atlas and Stitch, getting a Raspberry Pi to send IoT data to MongoDB, and creating visualizations using MongoDB Charts.

New sessions this year will begin every half hour at each pod around the space. Workshops will cover a wide spectrum, from building custom Tamagotchi hardware to tinkering with our model-size IIoT smart factory.

John Page, a distinguished engineer at MongoDB, is hosting the session on building custom Tamagotchi hardware. “I'm excited to show off my passion projects and to introduce people to the joy of coding for tiny computers,” Page says. “If you’ve never programmed hardware directly before, you get a chance to try it.”

Says Dawid Esterhuizen, a principal consulting engineer at MongoDB: “I plan to visit the IoT and Tamagotchi pods as my first stop. I like getting involved in the technical bits," he says, "and at Builder’s Fest we get our hands dirty and see MongoDB in action.” The security topics are always of interest, Esterhuizen says, as well as the various coding challenges.

At Builder’s Fest, there really is something for everyone. On two large stages at either end of the Partner Promenade, MongoDB World 2022 participants can take part in coding challenges and gaming competitions. Attendees can go head-to-head and show off their skills.

Coding experts and gamers will not want to miss out on this electric activation on Day 3 of MongoDB World.

Builder’s Fest will run from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m inside the Partner Promenade. Be sure to check out the full Builder’s Fest agenda within the MongoDB World app for iOS or Android to find workshops that are right for you.

Register today for MongoDB World, and use code MDBW22BLOG to save 25% off your tickets. We hope to see you in NYC from June 7 to June 9!

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How Two MongoDB Employees Are Reflecting on Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month

Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month is a time to reflect on and celebrate the many communities and cultures that make up this group of individuals. Each community has its own history, struggles, and achievements, and it’s important to recognize that the experiences of individuals who belong to them may differ greatly. This year, two MongoDB employees share their personal stories and how they’re reflecting on Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. Zaira Pirzada , senior strategy manager for governance, risk, and compliance I live in the hyphen. Indian-Pakistani-American. Pakistani-Indian-American. Oh, I’m also Muslim. There are layers to unpack when I think about my identity and the places that define me. So I live somewhere in the hyphen, trying to figure out what it is to love the India, Pakistan, and the United States that I know. This is reflected in everything I am and I do. My Indian mother and Pakistani father came to this country when they were 5 and 6 years old, so the motherland is a faint memory for them. My mother grew up loving hip-hop, rock, and R&B. She bought me my first cassette tapes. My father introduced me to classic rock. I thank him for showing me the brilliance of Queen and Ozzy. My mother's Bismillah ceremony (she's the one covered in flowers) Today in our family, we hold on to our culture in the ways we can. Our culture sits on our tongue when we speak Urdu mixed with English. I hope we never lose our language. That culture lives in our stomachs in what we crave when we cook and when we eat (even on Thanksgiving). I hope we never lose the taste for our spices. That culture is music to our ears and color to our eyes when we watch South Asian movies (with subtitles). My mother and grandmother could never have been in a position of leadership in a corporate environment. But here I am, exploring a world that is entirely different from the world I came from and that my family has ever known. My parents provided me the opportunity to explore whatever I wanted to be and however I wanted to be it. I do it boldly, and I do it with privilege that I recognize. Me and some of my cousins (all offspring of the people in the previous picture) in American clothing. Me and the same cousins, but in traditional clothing Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month means a lot to many people. To me, it’s a time to reflect on the journey of being American while still being Indian and Pakistani. Especially as the previous generation ages, we must reflect on who we are now while also remembering our roots. We are all living another chapter in the book of humanity’s becoming. This is a part of my chapter. Kailie Yuan , education engineer As I scroll through the web reading stories for Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, I can’t help but wonder: Why does it seem like everyone had such a fun, supporting, and loving childhood? As sad as it sounds, I never felt that I was enough. In most Chinese families, you are expected to be exceptional and flawless. My family was no different and always tried to make me go the extra mile with all that I do. But how many kids spend Saturdays in school trying to perform better in class, get their free time taken away and replaced with reading and studying, and are constantly told they need to put more effort into school when they don’t know what more they can do? I grew up with the expectation that to be successful, I needed to become a doctor or a lawyer. I was disappointed in myself when I couldn’t deliver on the high standards that my parents held. Because of that, I despised this Chinese stereotype of perfectionism — and still do. I didn’t want to be judged or feel like I wasn’t enough anymore, and this caused me to distance myself from Chinese culture and people outside of my family. That changed when the COVID-19 pandemic happened. Although I don’t support most traditional Chinese views, I realized that I still care tremendously about Chinese people. Several times, I cried out of anger after hearing reports of Asian people being targeted and blamed for the pandemic. I wondered what would happen if those experiencing discrimination were my parents or grandparents? For me, Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month now means shining light on what it’s really like for many Asian Americans and the tragedy that has been happening since the COVID-19 pandemic started. So many people don’t acknowledge the horrors some Asians have been dealing with or the fear they have when they leave their homes. By sharing my story, I hope it helps others realize that things have been tough for us. Interested in joining MongoDB? We have hundreds of open roles on our teams across the globe and would love to help you transform your career.

May 25, 2022

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Retrieval Augmented Generation for Claim Processing: Combining MongoDB Atlas Vector Search and Large Language Models

Following up on our previous blog, AI, Vectors, and the Future of Claims Processing: Why Insurance Needs to Understand The Power of Vector Databases , we’ll pick up the conversation right where we left it. We discussed extensively how Atlas Vector Search can benefit the claim process in insurance and briefly covered Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) and Large Language Models (LLMs). MongoDB.local NYC Join us in person on May 2, 2024 for our keynote address, announcements, and technical sessions to help you build and deploy mission-critical applications at scale. Use Code Web50 for 50% off your ticket! Learn More One of the biggest challenges for claim adjusters is pulling and aggregating information from disparate systems and diverse data formats. PDFs of policy guidelines might be stored in a content-sharing platform, customer information locked in a legacy CRM, and claim-related pictures and voice reports in yet another tool. All of this data is not just fragmented across siloed sources and hard to find but also in formats that have been historically nearly impossible to index with traditional methods. Over the years, insurance companies have accumulated terabytes of unstructured data in their data stores but have failed to capitalize on the possibility of accessing and leveraging it to uncover business insights, deliver better customer experiences, and streamline operations. Some of our customers even admit they’re not fully aware of all the data in their archives. There’s a tremendous opportunity to leverage this unstructured data to benefit the insurer and its customers. Our image search post covered part of the solution to these challenges, opening the door to working more easily with unstructured data. RAG takes it a step further, integrating Atlas Vector Search and LLMs, thus allowing insurers to go beyond the limitations of baseline foundational models, making them context-aware by feeding them proprietary data. Figure 1 shows how the interaction works in practice: through a chat prompt, we can ask questions to the system, and the LLM returns answers to the user and shows what references it used to retrieve the information contained in the response. Great! We’ve got a nice UI, but how can we build an RAG application? Let’s open the hood and see what’s in it! Figure 1: UI of the claim adjuster RAG-powered chatbot Architecture and flow Before we start building our application, we need to ensure that our data is easily accessible and in one secure place. Operational Data Layers (ODLs) are the recommended pattern for wrangling data to create single views. This post walks the reader through the process of modernizing insurance data models with Relational Migrator, helping insurers migrate off legacy systems to create ODLs. Once the data is organized in our MongoDB collections and ready to be consumed, we can start architecting our solution. Building upon the schema developed in the image search post , we augment our documents by adding a few fields that will allow adjusters to ask more complex questions about the data and solve harder business challenges, such as resolving a claim in a fraction of the time with increased accuracy. Figure 2 shows the resulting document with two highlighted fields, “claimDescription” and its vector representation, “claimDescriptionEmbedding” . We can now create a Vector Search index on this array, a key step to facilitate retrieving the information fed to the LLM. Figure 2: document schema of the claim collection, the highlighted fields are used to retrieve the data that will be passed as context to the LLM Having prepared our data, building the RAG interaction is straightforward; refer to this GitHub repository for the implementation details. Here, we’ll just discuss the high-level architecture and the data flow, as shown in Figure 3 below: The user enters the prompt, a question in natural language. The prompt is vectorized and sent to Atlas Vector Search; similar documents are retrieved. The prompt and the retrieved documents are passed to the LLM as context. The LLM produces an answer to the user (in natural language), considering the context and the prompt. Figure 3: RAG architecture and interaction flow It is important to note how the semantics of the question are preserved throughout the different steps. The reference to “adverse weather” related accidents in the prompt is captured and passed to Atlas Vector Search, which surfaces claim documents whose claim description relates to similar concepts (e.g., rain) without needing to mention them explicitly. Finally, the LLM consumes the relevant documents to produce a context-aware question referencing rain, hail, and fire, as we’d expect based on the user's initial question. So what? To sum it all up, what’s the benefit of combining Atlas Vector Search and LLMs in a Claim Processing RAG application? Speed and accuracy: Having the data centrally organized and ready to be consumed by LLMs, adjusters can find all the necessary information in a fraction of the time. Flexibility: LLMs can answer a wide spectrum of questions, meaning applications require less upfront system design. There is no need to build custom APIs for each piece of information you’re trying to retrieve; just ask the LLM to do it for you. Natural interaction: Applications can be interrogated in plain English without programming skills or system training. Data accessibility: Insurers can finally leverage and explore unstructured data that was previously hard to access. Not just claim processing The same data model and architecture can serve additional personas and use cases within the organization: Customer Service: Operators can quickly pull customer data and answer complex questions without navigating different systems. For example, “Summarize this customer's past interactions,” “What coverages does this customer have?” or “What coverages can I recommend to this customer?” Customer self-service: Simplify your members’ experience by enabling them to ask questions themselves. For example, “My apartment is flooded. Am I covered?” or “How long do windshield repairs take on average?” Underwriting: Underwriters can quickly aggregate and summarize information, providing quotes in a fraction of the time. For example, “Summarize this customer claim history.” “I Am renewing a customer policy. What are the customer's current coverages? Pull everything related to the policy entity/customer. I need to get baseline info. Find relevant underwriting guidelines.” If you would like to discover more about Converged AI and Application Data Stores with MongoDB, take a look at the following resources: RAG for claim processing GitHub repository From Relational Databases to AI: An Insurance Data Modernization Journey Modernize your insurance data models with MongoDB and Relational Migrator

April 18, 2024