Jan 26, 2019
My experience at FoundationDB Summit 2018
I feel honored and exhilarated to have attended the first ever FoundationDB Summit 2018, in Seattle, Washington. No matter where you are in your FoundationDB journey, FDB Summit is the place to be! Despite being a single track event, FDB Summit offered an immense amount of opportunities and professional development through a number of interactive talks and demonstrations.
The Conference: An overview
Prior to FoundationDB Summit, here are the thoughts that were going through my head:
For more than a year, I’ve studied and lived basic database design, tradeoffs between SQL and NoSQL, the CAP theorem and benchmarking various databases for a vast array of use cases. I can personally describe, and even recall benchmarking statistics in some cases, for a plethora of diverse use cases. I felt like I had just scratched the surface of the multifaceted use cases of FoundationDB.
I left the event two hours after the closing reception not just with thirteen and a half pages of notes which will provide me with at least a year of things to study and learn, but also with so many great stories from developers and professionals from all over the world. Hearing about the challenges people face, and their solutions, getting feedback on the problems I’ve solved and just immersing myself in the entire experience of getting to know such a welcoming community was the biggest highlight of my year and the journey of over 24 hours to reach FoundationDB Summit was more than worth it!
Technical Deep Dive & Community
I’ve been able to learn so much more about the inception of FoundationDB, from the stage when it was a simple idea on a sheet of paper, to the stage where there are over 100 people attending the FoundationDB Summit today! The design decisions, the evolution of the product and the challenges faced throughout this journey as explained by Ben Collins was the perfect way to start off the conference and amplify my knowledge about the origin of FoundationDB.
Learning how SnowflakeDB interacts with the FoundationDB ecosystem, based on separating metadata from storage and compute, all the way up to diving deep into the details of SnowflakeDB’s architecture was the perfect offshoot to my initial experience with FoundationDB.
Ryan Worl’s very relatable talk on everyday data problems was extremely relevant, and besides strongly nodding in agreement to some of the problems I’ve encountered, I’ve learned so much more about the don’ts and poor practices.
FoundationDB’s storage model and the design decisions were extremely insightful, and they’ve got me covered for months of reading on advanced databases!
Last but not least, it was great to learn more about how JanusGraph tackles the edge to nowhere problem with improved consistency in Cassandra!
With a large number of attendees from diverse backgrounds ranging from people starting out just like me to professionals with enormous experience, there was a lot to learn beyond the technological aspects of FoundationDB. The opening talk by Ben Collins from Apple shed light on how FoundationDB has been about community since it’s inception, and how it’s rapid growth has led to increased involvement all over the globe. Everybody I approached was willing to talk about their ideas and work, as well as listen to mine and offer advice. I was able to meet people that have helped me in my journey, and some people who I’ve been able to give some advice too! It’s a powerful feeling to be able to discuss the problems surrounding diversity and representation in tech at such a large platform and introduce people to a different perspective, based on my personal experiences.
Key Takeaways
I started working with FoundationDB about a year ago, but the problems I’ve worked on are fairly one dimensional. FoundationDB summit has given me so much more to learn, ranging from high-level layers to the lowest level of intricacies of database design. Thanks to the conference, I have a much better understanding of the culture of the FoundationDB community. I think this is the open source culture at its best. It is the culture that makes this community an outstanding place which deserves our persevering.
One last huge takeaway from this event, aside from taking advantage of the incredible exposure of opportunities, is to understand how much we’ve been shown through the many inspirational speakers to never underestimate the potential we all have.
Next Steps
After having so much material to learn and absorb, and interacting with so many new people, I have a fresh perspective on the technology and community now. Another really commendable part of the conference that I enjoyed was the face-to-face interactions with the maintainers. It was really nice to hear about the projects from the people who maintain them. I am looking to start contributing more now. I hope to be able to propagate my learnings to the multiple local and global communities I’m a part of, and involve more people to celebrate open source along with me.
Final Thoughts
“Unity in Diversity.” It reverberated in every fabric of FoundationDB Summit 018. At the times when the world is tearing itself apart, it is nice to see so much love, cooperation, and sharing going around.
This was my first FoundationDB Summit. I thoroughly enjoyed my experience, and am looking forward to many more.
I have also started on the path to much better contributions to amazing upstream projects, and am looking forward to stepping up and doing a whole lot more.
I thank the team at FoundationDB Summit, for giving me this opportunity to expand my horizons. To meet great people, to learn and grow, and to bring back so much more to my community!
