NoSQL Now 2011 Conference in San Jose Last Week

I attended the NoSQL Now 2011 Conference in San Jose last week. It was a great experience to meet others who are currently working on or exploring the option of using a NoSQL database in their organizations.

Conference site (San Jose Convention Center) was a great location. The conference session snapshot on computer monitors to show what all sessions are scheduled at a specific time was very helpful. I could look at all the session summaries at the same time and decide which one to attend. The conference mobile app (Guidebook) was also very helpful in checking the conference session schedule, details and slide deck from anywhere at the conference. Attendees getting access to the presentations before hand is a great idea.

I gave a talk on NoSQL Security topic and it was a good discussion and well received by the attendees. NoSQL databases like MongoDB, Cassandra, and Neo4J (which are the NoSQL databases I covered in my session) have decent application security support (authentication, authorization, encryption) but there is still room for improvement in this area. For example, record/entry level data encryption, role based access control (RBAC) can be better than what's there right now.

Overall, NoSQL Now was a great learning event and an excellent forum to meet and network others who are working in the same space. Thanks to Tony, Nerrisa and his team from Wilshire Conferences group and Dan McCreary for organizing the conference. Can't wait for the next year's conference.