Thank you 10gen
So I'm one of the MongoDB Masters and therefore have been invited to attend the first MongoMasters Summit and MongoSV 2011 in Santa Clara (Silicon Valley).
I really appreciate having been invited to the Masters program, particularly because it's so incredibly well-organized. For example I've been picked up at the San Francisco airport to be transferred to the hotel they've booked for all the Masters. I have been reimbursed for all travel costs which is very important to me at least (students usually don't have money to burn :-) I didn't even need to manage anything on my own, things just happened.
I'm convinced Meghan Gill, 10gen's Community Manager, played a major role in organizing the Masters Summit -- Meghan definitely knows how to do her job.
So does 10gen. 10gen is doing it right. I actually think 10gen's the first Free Software company that has such a "key community members" group in the first place, at least I'm not aware of anything comparable in the Free Software world.
I think most people (me included) don't expect companies to maintain such relationships to key community members at all. But maybe we should because for a company that makes Free Software, having a great and actively evolving community is everything.
10gen wants to make their community want to stay. They had at least some success with that so far -- I will certainly stay.