Recap: MongoDB Power Heels Holiday Party

Danielle James
December 19, 2016 | Updated: December 20, 2016
#Events

In July 2016, Sarah Branfman, Amie Darboe, and Sarah Dart, members of the sales team at MongoDB, brainstormed ways to help fill the gender gap in sales and technology roles. The result was Power Heels, an organization that empowers women to maximize their potential, professionally and personally, in a safe environment. Since its inception, PowerHeels has partnered with organizations like Dress for Success and Safe Place. Members include technology and business professionals, university students, and women looking to change careers.

On December 6, 2016, Power Heels hosted its first annual holiday party at IBM Design Studio in Austin. More than just a networking event, the event featured the following career building activities:

  • Build Your Profile: Resume writing and building a stunning LinkedIn profile
  • Look the Part: Hair styling, makeup, and professional headshots
  • Talk the Talk: Mock interviews and feedback led by business leaders from some of Austin’s hottest companies

Additionally, attendees were encouraged to bring donations for Dress for Success. Over 85 items were donated over the course of the event.

![MongoDB Power Heels](https://webassets.mongodb.com/_com_assets/cms/MongoDB_PowerHeels_Team-5u4v97yc1m.png "MongoDB Power Heels")
*The Power Heels team*

The event was as much fun as it was valuable. Joanne Kim, a college senior whose job search hadn’t been as successful as she expected it to be, came to the event to get interview advice from experts. She said, “my favorite part of the event was the mock interview. I was able to hear what recruiters think and understand what they look for in a candidate. The party setting made it casual, yet I was able to get useful advice from HR professionals.” Joanne left the holiday party feeling more confident about her job search process.

![MongoDB Power Heels interviews with attendees](https://webassets.mongodb.com/_com_assets/cms/MongoDB_PowerHeels_Interview-jxu2tzqwlb.png "Power Heels interviews with attendee")
*MongoDB’s [Emily Friedman](https://www.linkedin.com/in/emilywilliamson1?authType=NAME_SEARCH&authToken=gP5L&locale=en_US&trk=tyah&trkInfo=clickedVertical%3Amynetwork%2CclickedEntityId%3A27252290%2CauthType%3ANAME_SEARCH%2Cidx%3A1-1-1%2CtarId%3A1481734465381%2Ctas%3Aemily%20fried "Emily Friedman") conducting a mock interview with an attendee*

According to Amie, Power Heels is about building a sisterhood of fierce women – and men, “because #allies” – who want to go far in their careers. It’s a group of people who work together to bring other women up and who are open to receiving support. MongoDB’s Taelen Lewis is one of those allies. During the event, attendees could purchase raffle tickets. The grand prize was a two-hour photo shoot by The Perfect Headshot. Taelen won the grand prize, but chose to auction it off to highest bidder and donated the proceeds to Power Heels. His reasoning? “As an oldest brother to three younger sisters, I love to see an organization empowering women to realize their potential and to be given equal opportunities,” he said. “I’m a big fan of Power Heels, so I’m happy to support.” Taelen won’t be getting an updated headshot soon, but thanks to the Look the Part station at the event, almost all of the women who attended got a brand new photo for their LinkedIn profiles.

![MongoDB Power Heels Look the Part station](https://webassets.mongodb.com/_com_assets/cms/MongoDB_PowerHeels_LookthePart_Station-zymz1n5hx0.png "Look the Part station")
*An attendee getting her hair done at the Look the Part station*

At the Look the Part station, attendees could also get their hair and makeup done. Nina, a team member at Naava - who provided the glam services at the event - said she learned about Power Heels when she was going through a challenging time. Recently divorced and jobless, Nina went to Dress for Success, where she received the resume and interview help that led to her current role. When she heard about the opportunity to give back through Power Heels, she jumped on it. She stated, “You never know how much you’re impacting someone’s life by offering resume help or giving them business attire. It might seem like a small thing to do, but enabling someone to perform well in an interview can turn someone’s life around.” Her staff had been working since 8am that morning, but insisted they come to contribute to the event.

![MongoDB Power Heels networking](https://webassets.mongodb.com/_com_assets/cms/MongoDB_PowerHeels_Networking-d3g595wef6.png "Power Heels attendees networking")
*Power Heels attendees networking*

Throughout the evening, attendees made new connections, edited their resumes, improved their online presence, and explored different ways to respond in an interview. This experience is what the women of MongoDB had in mind when they created Power Heels. Sarah B. didn’t want the holiday party to be just that, a gathering where attendees hand out business cards, take advantage of free food and drink, and go home with nothing actionable. “These events can rob you of your time and leave you unfulfilled,” she said. “While the Power Heels holiday party had its fair share of drinks, food and merriment, nobody left empty handed and without a next step to improve their career.”

See the Power Heels holiday party photo recap.

The MongoDB Power Heels team will soon expand in other states. Want to get involved by becoming a member or sponsoring an event? Let us know! You won’t regret it. In Sarah B.’s words, “We don't just shmooze, we get [things] done.”

Thank you to the MongoDB Power Heels advocates, who sponsored the event:

**|** [Safe Place](http://www.safeaustin.org/safeplace/ "Safe Place") **|** [The Perfect Headshot](http://www.theperfectheadshot.com/ "The Perfect Headshot") **|**
**|** [Breaking the Glass](https://www.meetup.com/Breaking-the-Glass-Womens-Networking-Group/ "Breaking the Glass") **|** DJ Chido Machine **|**
**|** [IBM Design Studio](https://www.ibm.com/design/studio.shtml "IBM Design Studio") **|** [Moojo](http://moojo.net/ "Moojo") **|**
**|** [OwnYourSpot](https://www.yallzi.com/ownyourspot/#/shared/5847a3f6e4b0088800c78c6a "OwnYourSpot") **|** [Kendra Scott](http://www.kendrascott.com/ "Kendra Scott") **|**
**|** [NAAVA](http://www.naava.com/ "NAAVA") **|** [Nothing Bundt Cakes](http://www.nothingbundtcakes.com/bakery/tx/austin-westlake "Nothing Bundt Cakes") **|**
**|** [Jet’s Pizza](https://online.jetspizza.com/r/jetspizzatx004.html "Jet's Pizza") **|** [Topo Chico](http://www.topochicousa.net/#default "Topo Chico") **|**
**|** [JuiceLand](http://www.juiceland.com/ "Juice Land") **|** [Lick Honest Ice Creams](http://www.ilikelick.com/ "Lick Honest Ice Cream") **|**
**|** [Tito's Handmade Vodka](http://www.titosvodka.com/ "Tito's Handmake Vodka") **|** [Big Frog Custom T-Shirts](http://www.bigfrog.com/southaustin/ "Big Frog Custom T-Shirts")**|**



← Previous

MongoDB 3.5.1 is released

MongoDB 3.5.1 has been released. As a reminder, 3.5.1 is a development release and is not intended for production use. The 3.5 series will evolve into 3.6, which will be for production. New/fixed in this release: SERVER-27048 Fix recursive lock issue leading to deadlock or crash in LegacySession SERVER-27053 Possibility to confirm w:majority write that has been rolled back SERVER-27124 Disallow readConcern:majority reads on pv0 SERVER-27201 $graphLookup triggers null pointer dereference SERVER-27207 Find on view with sort through mongos may incorrectly return empty result set SERVER-27213 Two $match stages combine incorrectly, yielding incorrect results. SERVER-27300 Disallow indexing of BSONType::Symbol with a non-simple collation SERVER-27210 3.4.0 mongo shell unable to connect using MongoURI with "ssl=true" SERVER-27271 rolesInfo command raises System.InvalidOperationException : Duplicate element name 'roles'. SERVER-26870 Sometimes collection data file is not removed even though collection is dropped SERVER-8308 Javascript shell max call stack exceeded on deeply nested json object SERVER-27177 Segfault after lowering jsHeapLimitMB SERVER-20113 File descriptors can be exhausted by killing map/reduce jobs on WiredTiger SERVER-23715 Failure of mmap() call should terminate mongod SERVER-23759 shutting down a node while replication is initializing can crash SERVER-23916 Remove currentOpCtx command SERVER-23976 repairDatabase command on a new, different-cased database terminates server SERVER-24128 Namespace parsing in commands code must reject embedded null bytes SERVER-24563 Secondary crash when inserting document into db with different case SERVER-24963 Concurrent collection.drop() and system.indexes.count() can trigger an fassert SERVER-27065 Segfault in building an aggregation SERVER-27074 Update to Mozilla Javascript ESR 45.5.0 SERVER-27217 Allow nopreallocj to be specified in YAML config file SERVER-27246 Running applyOps with an op on a nonexistent database using mmapv1 will crash mongod WT-2670 Inefficient I/O when read full DB (poor readahead) WT-2960 Inserting multi-megabyte values can cause pathological lookaside usage WT-2969 Possible snapshot corruption during compaction WT-3028 Workloads with all dirty pages could trigger diagnostic stuck check WT-3048 WiredTiger maximum size warning uses the wrong format. WT-3052 Improve search if an index hint is wrong All Issues | Downloads As always, please let us know of any issues. -- The MongoDB Team

December 15, 2016
Next →

How Edenlab Built a High-Load, Low-Code FHIR Server to Deliver Healthcare for 40 Million Plus Patients

The Kodjin FHIR server has speed and scale in its DNA. Edenlab, the Ukrainian company behind Kodjin , built our original FHIR solution to digitize and service the entire Ukrainian national health system. The learnings and technologies from that project informed our development of the Kodjin FHIR server. At Edenlab, we have always been driven by our passion for building solutions that excel in speed and scale. With Kodjin, we have embraced a modern tech stack to deliver unparalleled performance that can handle the demands of large-scale healthcare systems, providing efficient data management and seamless interoperability. Eugene Yesakov, Solution Architect, Author of Kodjin Built for speed and scale While most healthcare projects involve handling large volumes of data, including patient records, medical images, and sensor data, the Kodjin FHIR server is based on a system developed to handle tens of millions of patient records and thousands of requests per second, to ensure timely access and efficient decision-making for a population of over 40 million people. And all of this information had to be processed and exchanged in real-time or near real-time, without delays or bottlenecks. This article will explore some of the architectural decisions the Edenlab team took when building Kodjin, specifically the role MongoDB played in enhancing performance and ensuring scalability. We will examine the benefits of leveraging MongoDB's scalability, flexibility, and robust querying capabilities, as well as its ability to handle the increasing velocity and volume of healthcare data without compromising performance. About Kodjin FHIR server Kodjin is an ONC-certified and HIPAA-compliant FHIR Server that offers hassle-free healthcare data management. It has been designed to meet the growing demands of healthcare projects, allowing for the efficient handling of increasing data volumes and concurrent requests. Its architecture, built on a horizontally scalable microservices approach, utilizes cutting-edge technologies such as the Rust programming language, MongoDB, ElasticSearch, Kafka, and Kubernetes. These technologies enable Kodjin to provide users with a low-code approach while harnessing the full potential of the FHIR specification. A deeper dive into the architecture approach - the role of MongoDB in Kodjin When deciding on the technology stack for the Kodjin FHIR Server, the Edenlab team knew that a document database would be required to serve as a transactional data store. In an FHIR Server, a transactional data store ensures that data operations occur in an atomic and consistent manner, allowing for the integrity and reliability of the data. Document databases are well-suited for this purpose as they provide a flexible schema and allow for storing complex data structures, such as those found in FHIR data. FHIR resources are represented in a hierarchical structure and can be quite intricate, with nested elements and relationships. Document databases, like MongoDB, excel at handling such complex and hierarchical data structures, making them an ideal choice for storing FHIR data. In addition to supporting document storage, the Edenlab team needed the chosen database to provide transactional capabilities for FHIR data operations. FHIR transactions, which encompass a set of related data operations that should either succeed or fail as a whole, are essential for maintaining data consistency and integrity. They can also be used to roll back changes if any part of the transaction fails. MongoDB provides support for multi-document transactions , enabling atomic operations across multiple documents within a single transaction. This aligns well with the transactional requirements of FHIR data and ensures data consistency in Kodjin. Implementation of GridFS as a storage for the terminologies in Terminology service Terminology service plays a vital role in FHIR projects, requiring a reliable and efficient storage solution for terminologies used. Kodjin employs GridFS , a file system within MongoDB designed for storing large files, which makes it ideal to handle terminologies. GridFS offers a convenient way to store and manage terminology files, ensuring easy accessibility and seamless integration within the FHIR ecosystem. By utilizing MongoDB's GridFS, Kodjin ensures efficient storage and retrieval of terminologies, enhancing the overall functionality of the terminology service. Kodjin FHIR server performance To evaluate the efficiency and responsiveness of the Kodjin FHIR server in various scenarios we conducted multiple performance tests using Locust, an open-source load testing tool. One of the performance metrics measured was the retrieval of resources by their unique ids using the GET by ID operation. Kodjin with MongoDB achieved a performance of 1721.8 requests per second (RPS) for this operation. This indicates that the server can efficiently retrieve specific resources, enabling quick access to desired data. The search operation, which involves querying ElasticSearch to obtain the ids of the searched resources and retrieving them from MongoDB, exhibited a performance of 1896.4 RPS. This highlights the effectiveness of polyglot persistence in Kodjin, leveraging ElasticSearch for fast and efficient search queries and MongoDB for resource retrieval. The system demonstrated its ability to process search queries and retrieve relevant results promptly. In terms of resource creation, Kodjin with MongoDB showed a performance of 1405.6 RPS for POST resource operations. This signifies that the system can effectively handle numerous resource-creation requests. The efficient processing and insertion of new resources into the MongoDB database ensure seamless data persistence and scalability. Overall, the performance tests confirm that Kodjin with MongoDB delivers efficient and responsive performance across various FHIR operations. The high RPS values obtained demonstrate the system's capability to handle significant workloads and provide timely access to resources through GET by ID, search, and POST operations. Conclusion Kodjin leverages a modern tech stack including Rust, Kafka, and Kubernetes to deliver the highest levels of performance. At the heart of Kodjin is MongoDB, which serves as a transactional data store. MongoDB's capabilities, such as multi-document transactions and flexible schema, ensure the integrity and consistency of FHIR data operations. The utilization of GridFS within MongoDB ensures efficient storage and retrieval of terminologies, optimizing the functionality of the Terminology service. To experience the power and potential of the Kodjin FHIR server firsthand, we invite you to contact the Edenlab team for a demo. For more information On MongoDB’s work in healthcare, and to understand why the world’s largest healthcare companies trust MongoDB, read our whitepaper on radical interoperability .

May 31, 2023