• Read more about MongoDC Recap

10gen, the purveyors of everyone's favorite document-oriented database MongoDB, recently held a gathering of developers, sysadmins, devops, and other parties interested in MongoDB in D.C. appropriately named MongoDC. I was fortunate enough to be asked to speak on how we use MongoDB here at Intridea, so I delivered a little treatise on one of our client projects. Although we've moved most of the project operations off of MongoDB now for a few reasons, working with such a deep and wide dataset was an interesting experience that a lot of people don't encounter when using document-oriented databases. (You can find my slides below)

MongoDC was one of the only non-Ruby conferences I've attended in the past few years. Actually, the only other one in recent memory has been the MySQL Conference and Expo, which created an interesting and stark contrast to how these companies and communities interact. At the MySQL conference, the conversations and gathering were largely dominated by vendors and enterprise software product pitches. The event felt rather out of touch and sterile to me, but that may have been attributed partially to it being a larger, O'Reilly-powered event and partially to the fact that I'm not really a "MySQL guy." On the other hand, the 10gen event felt warm from the second I walked through the door. A 10gen rep greeted me, attendees were having interesting conversations, and the whole day felt like people were excited and interested in the content.

I think 10gen has cultivated a great community of people interested in their products, but I do wonder how to get more people interested in contributing. Currently, the core server is built about 90% to 95% by 10gen's employees, which is not really how an open source company is supposed to work, right? But it seems like the contribution bug hasn't really caught on among those interested just yet. I attended a talk about contributing to MongoDB in various capacities and was joined by about 4 other people (including a 10gen employee). Given MongoDC was a 2 track event, that means people cared more about "neat tricks" with MongoDB than how to improve the core product. Sort of disappointing. This isn't to say that 10gen is doing a bad job at getting people excited (they're doing awesome), but I guess my question is this: how can those of us who are starting to contribute to MongoDB in meaningful ways get others as excited about it as people are about Rails or jQuery? Not sure there's a good answer at this point as 10gen's community stuff is still taking shape, but I'm very hopeful and interested to see how it shapes up.

I'll be speaking at another MongoDB event in Atlanta in February, and I hope to get a feel for why people aren't contributing more. Even if I don't, I'm still really looking forward to it! The event in D.C. was smashing, and from what I can tell, the other events 10gen has been putting on around the nation are just as good. If you're able to make it to any of these events, I heartily suggest you do so. It'll be worth your time!

• Read more about Mobomo CEO Participates on Mobile Roundtable at the 2010 Venture Summit Mid-Atlantic

Mobomo founder and CEO, Barg Upender, was a panelist on a very successful Mobile Roundtable as part of the the latest Venture Summit Mid-Atlantic 2010.

The Venture Summit took place this past Nov 3rd-5th, at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. On Friday, Nov 5th, the Mobile Roundtable covered innovation in the Mobile sector for the Mid-Atlantic region.

Topics and issues covered included apps, advertising, platforms, Mobile Service Management, mobile monetization & growth opportunities for investors, and what's to come in the Mobile sector.

For more information on the Venture Summit Mid-Atlantic 2010, please visit the official web page.

Need advice on a mobile apps strategy for your business? Just want to know how you can leverage the mobile platform in general? Feel free to contact us to discuss your app idea or mobile campaign needs.

• Read more about Mobomo's Barg Upender Speaking at 2010 Digital Media Conference

Washington, D.C., is the location of the 2010 Digital Media Conference East and Mobomo founder/ CEO Barg Upender will be one of the panelists for the Mobile track. The conference, which is now in its 7th year, is split into five tracks: Mobile, the other, Social Media, Television/ Video, Marketing and Law & Tech.

The one-day conference takes place Jun 25th at the McLean Hilton in McLean, Virginia. More details at the DMC East site. If you are following tweets on Twitter about this conference, look for the #dmc10 hashtag. The Mobile panel, entitled Mobile Apps: The Next Stage, takes place from 11:20 am - 12:05 pm (EST), which includes 10 minutes for audience questions.

• Read more about The Recipe for the Apple...Tablet

Let's move away from prognostications and fabrications because there are enough of those going around. The reality is that if an iTablet or iPad or iSlate or iThingy is indeed announced by Apple tomorrow, it will likely not look or function the way we think it would. After all, this is the company that created the scroll wheel, dared to put one button on a phone, and brought multi-touch to multi(ple) computing devices.

If Apple succeeds in doing the tablet the Apple way, then the starting point for it will not be to think about how the tablet fits into the current gadget landscape. Instead, Apple will have embarked on how it could once again redefine an industry to make the tablet a necessity.

Apple is as much about content as it is about hardware. That's the proven Apple recipe. In the last two decades, Apple has blown up both the music and software industry with iTunes and the iPod and the App Store and iPhone respectively. It's obvious where the next big media disruption is happening -- print. Apple's once again in its favorite place -- not being first to market but instead watching and waiting, observing and then innovating.

Sure, Steve Jobs mentioned that Apple doesn't care about e-readers. Similar statements were made about playing videos on tiny screens and staying out of the phone market. More significant though is that an Apple tablet would probably resemble as much an e-reader as the iPod did an MP3 player. Compared to Amazon's Kindle, the Apple tablet would be full color, multi-touch, and probably have a larger screen. And unlike the Kindle, which is only just launching a platform for apps (not especially exciting), the Apple tablet could soon embrace all of the 100,000+ apps running on the iPhone.

Like many technology predecessors before it, the initial response to the impending Apple tablet will be to categorize it as a gizmo, shiny toy, and luxury. After all, it's just a glorified e-reader. What skeptics will fail to recognize is the significance of a large multi-touch personal media device that provides always-on access to a little thing called the World Wide Web while packaged in the form factor of a true modern day digital notebook (versus the ones that were called such towards the end of the 20th century).

No, no one knows what the Apple tablet is going to look like except those at Apple. Wish lists and concepts aside, what is for certain is that if Apple has decided to venture into the tablet world, the print and computing market is going to be changed forever.

• Read more about Mobomo Speaking at AlwaysOn - OnDC

Barg will be joining fellow entrepreneurs Hooman Radfar, Matthew Voorhees, and PV Bocassm in a panel titled "Technology Innovators in the WDC Region." Our goal is to discuss ideas for fostering innovation and entrepreneurship in the government. The event is being held October 19th-21st at the Four Seasons Hotel in Washington, DC.

We look forward to seeing you there.

• Read more about Intridea at the Web 2.0 Expo

Intridea is going to be at the Web 2.0 Expo today through Friday, talking to people about the business of Web 2.0 and demonstrating our SocialSpring social networking platform. We're sharing an exhibition hall booth with our friends at VisualCV, so please stop on by and say hi if you're attending.