I am freshly back from the UK. What a great trip. I was in London for the Rackspace Unlocked event and the London MongoDB meetup. First off, the Rackspace Unlocked event was really nicely done. I have to tip my hat to @Laurabpacheco and the team for ensuring the event was fantastic.

Rackspace Unlocked

I had the chance to talk to a myriad of customers at the Rackspace Unlocked event, and some themes came forward. Overwhelmingly, customers where struggling with how to best choose technologies to achieve their goals with data. They struggle finding what the best fit for various use cases are, the drawbacks and benefits.

In recent years there has been an explosion in the data technologies landscape, and it was apparent that customers are struggling with the choices. I think there needs to be some sort of guide to help customers make these choices. Its possible as the fundamentals decision matrix is mostly achievable. Speaking to folks, it made me think back about the decision I made to add MongoDB at Shutterfly. I used a methodical approach vs just going with my gut. I had to quantify the data components required, score them, and then rank them against each potential technology. I built a model in Excel that essentially helped us get to a short list of contenders for any given data problem-set. I started to think something similar, but on a large scale is needed.

Customers also where starting to think creatively about using data in products. Gone of the days where ‘business intelligence’ meant running simple reports. Today, products need to be data driven in real time. The competitive landscape dictates that customers ensure each product they offer has eaked the most out of any possible data available. I highlighted the Nest Rush Hour Rewards program as being at the tip of the spear. I will post the video when it becomes available. I also tried to help customers realize that the ‘big data’ buzz word is just that, and no more. Fantastic business value can come from small data as well. It’s more important to realize that important data is king. Check out the first slide where I say ‘WTF Big Data’. ;-).

Lastly, Dane from SumAll spoke about ObjectRocket, and how it has helped them scale MongoDB and give them confidence. I am so proud of the team! The video is here. At the end he showed this image:

MongoDB Meetup

Later that day I did another presentation to the London MongoDB User Group. Yes, thats two presentations in 1 day. Whew. Some good questions and discussions following my presentation on MongoDB Performance Tuning. I love giving this talk, I just can’t get over how magical it is using the aggregation framework against the profiler for performance tuning. It’s just fun. Big thanks to Sean for managing the event! Here are my slides: