T-6: MongoDB World's Give Back Week

Dj Walker-Morgan
May 7, 2019 | Updated: July 3, 2019
#MongoDB World 2019

With six weeks to go before MongoDB World 2019, learn how you could be giving to a good cause when you buy your pass this week, get ready for the next weekly challenge, and catch up with the latest talks that have made it into the schedule.

Give Back Week

If you haven’t registered for MongoDB World, the bad news is that you’ve missed the early bird rates. The good news is that if you register this week, you’ll get a discounted ticket and 10% of your ticket price will be donated to Black Girls Code.

That means you get to go to MongoDB World’s three days of information rich talks, sessions and events for less and you get to help fund an organisation dedicated to empowering girls of color between 7 and 17 to become STEM innovators, community leaders and future builders, all through exposing them to computer science and technology.

Head over to the MongoDB World site and register; the discount is automatically applied to all types of ticket. The donation to Black Girls Code is based on that discounted price.

Challenge Update

The first week of Eliot’s MongoDB World Weekly Challenge was a great success - you can read up on how the challenge was solved in this post - Solving The Aggregation Rock Star Challenge. If you get over to the challenge's web site you’ll see the next challenge is tomorrow and involves charting a holiday for engineers.

Talks Talk

There’s still talks being added to the schedule as we finalise speakers and subjects.

Starting up: If you are looking for a quick introduction to the world of MongoDB, check out Don't Panic - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the MongoDB Galaxy, designed specifically to get you started. If you’re looking to get started with the official MongoDB Go driver, there’s Get Going: An Introduction to the Official MongoDB Go Driver to jump start your development.
Scaling up: If you are working at scale, you may want to hear Sharding: Stories From the Field or look at how MongoDB Cluster Design: From Redundancy to GDPR can help you to build out a cluster that suits your needs.
Experience: Talking about real world experience, there’s The Journey of Migration from Oracle to MongoDB at Rakuten and MongoDB Implementation at T-Mobile, where MongoDB users are talking about how they use the database.
Education: MongoDB can both power learning platforms and be taught on them. Learn how in A Tale of Two Use Cases: Innovative MongoDB Solutions for Code Schools.

That's it for T-6, the countdown to MongoDB World 2019 continues with T-5 next week!

← Previous

Solving The Aggregation Rock Star Challenge

The first of Eliot's MongoDB World Weekly Challenges was an out of this world challenge to analyse the records of meteorite impacts. Even if you didn't do the challenge (there's one every Wednesday up to MongoDB World), you can still be a winner because we're going to show you how to get the solution.

May 7, 2019

Next →

The Rise of the Strategic Developer

The work of developers is sometimes seen as tactical in nature. In other words, developers are not often asked to produce strategy. Rather, they are expected to execute against strategy, manifesting digital experiences that are defined by the “business.” But that is changing. With the automation of many time-consuming tasks -- from database administration to coding itself -- developers are now able to spend more time on higher value work, like understanding market needs or identifying strategic problems to solve. And just as the value of their work increases, so too does the value of their opinions. As a result, many developers are evolving, from coders with their heads-down in the corporate trenches to highly strategic visionaries of the digital experiences that define brands. “I think the very definition of ‘developer’ is expanding,” says Stephen “Stennie” Steneker, an engineering manager on the Developer Relations team at MongoDB. “It’s not just programmers anymore. It’s anyone who builds something.” Stennie notes that the learning curve needed to build something is flattening. Fast. He points to an emerging category of low code tools like Zapier, which allows people to stitch web apps together without having to write scripts or set up APIs. “People with no formal software engineering experience can build complex automated workflows to solve business problems. That’s a strategic developer.” Many other traditional developer tasks are being automated as well. At MongoDB, for example, we pride ourselves on removing the most time-consuming, low-value work of database administration. And of course, services like GitHub Copilot are automating the act of coding itself. So what does this all mean for developers? A few things: First, move to higher ground. In describing one of the potential outcomes of GitHub Copilot, Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott said, ““It may very well be one of those things that makes programming itself more approachable.” When the barriers to entry for a particular line of work start falling, standing still is not an option. It’s time to up your strategic game by offering insight and suggestions on new digital experiences that advance the objectives of the business. Second, accept more responsibility. A strategic developer is someone who can conceive, articulate, and execute an idea. That also means you are accountable for the success or failure of that idea. And as Stennie reminded me, “There are more ways than ever before to measure the success of a developer’s work.” And third, never stop skilling. Developers with narrow or limited skill sets will never add strategic value, and they will always be vulnerable to replacement. Like software itself, developers need to constantly evolve and improve, expanding both hard and soft skills. How do you see the role of the developer evolving? Any advice for those that aspire to more strategic roles within their organizations? Reach out and let me know what you think at @MarkLovesTech .

July 29, 2021