So I got to speak to MIlton Ngan right before his closing keynote. I don’t know where we got the idea that they (Weta Digital) ran Fedora, because all they’ve had are a bunch of Red Hat 9 machines as well as a few Debian. They seemingly are moving fully to Ubuntu real soon now. As always, sticking with MySQL.
Oh, and watch out for X-Men 3, out on May 19th…
Hey, hey, this is well worth a read: MySQL to Offer Linux Bundled with Database as Free Download.
So, the MySQL Forge has been announce and has been live for a while… Even the Forge Wiki has content that isn’t created by me! Ha, the community at work…
And Ubuntu, now supported by MySQL. There’s a relationship there. Mark Shuttleworth gave a great keynote, talked about the relationship with upstreams, the new MySQL relationship they have, and how he was really excited to be here. Thawte I believe, ran on MySQL :-)
If there’s one thing to take away from his talk it’d have to be the fact that he’s also a VC and a lot of people ask him for money. Don’t go to a VC and tell them, “Hey, I’ve got Project Y, and I expect it to be the next X.” Why be the next X, you want to be unique, yes?
All that aside, I guess I can mention in public what I’ve been up to for a while… Well, the press release mentioned it. Whatever. So, now all we have to do is plod on for June 1st, and thats a good one month more for me to work hard at this…
And you thought I was a big fan, tracking him almost every month, in a different country, or a different continent!
(well, actually I am :P)
“No, you can’t run a Migration BoF, and it won’t make sense without a few of our migration experts,” he exclaimed with a petulant expression.
Well, it turns out the migration BoF was actually quite good at the MySQL UC. It turns out, that everyone attending thought that it was a migration from 3.23 or 4 or 4.1 to MySQL 5. My understanding of this was that we’d actually prefer folk to come in from $database and figure they’d want to migrate to MySQL.
And fair enough, the only experience I’ve had over time was migrating from Postgresql right to MySQL. But the idea of a BoF is to let everyone talk, share experiences, and so on. So a few resources we discussed, and I think were generally useful (and hopefully now, there will be more 5.0 users):
MySQL has always recommended incremental upgrades. And its always a good idea to backup your data before doing an upgrade.
What I did want to discuss was the cool MySQL Migration Toolkit. It also has an excellent manual entry. But it seems that no one has really used it before, and I had to run away for another item… aka, the Quiz Show. All in all, good Migration BoF, and thanks to everyone attending!
… you’ll never have to show up again.
Overheard Arjen telling us this when the MySQL signed 10th anniversary t-shirt was going for $650. At $775, we had to go visit Kaj, and he decided that if its above $1,000, the Community Budget will shell out $800 in addition.
Jeremy Cole will do 10% of the total! Sheeri is now giving $900. She’s getting married, and she figured she doesn’t need flowers for the wedding!
But the ultimate winner, Ronald Bradford bid $1,000. Sheeri paid $900. Jeremy gets to pay 10%. Ronald got the t-shirt… They both get an entry to SHOW CONTRIBUTORS in MySQL 5.1.
All in all, the EFF should be one happy camper from all this :-)
I heard Cory Doctorow about a week ago (yes, we have cool international speakers here in Melbourne all the time!), and if there was only one thing you’re really meant to take away from his talk, I think I found the gem.
Cory signs a book
We’re usually told content is king. He says thats a myth. Have you seen the six trillion dollar industry, that is telecommunications? (okay, I don’t know if that stat is remotely correct…) So the content is king idea is bollocks. What is really king is community and inter-personal communication. Getting people to talk about it. Humans are terribly social beings, so yeah, go community.
“Trying to kill MySQL by acquiring open source is like trying to kill
a dolphin by drinking the ocean.” — Marten Mickos
And yes, that quote ties in well with the Oracle Bought InnoDB Without a Clue article… MySQL has a great community. And of late, we’re getting a lot more great community contributed content. I do think content is important, but the community is too. And being around over 1,500 MySQL users, all I can say is that there’s great community here. From financial analysts, to DBAs, to students, to storage engine creators. This is one damned good community!
If you’re at the MySQL Users Conference 2006, we’d love if you took notes and shared it with everyone… There are some cool tools like Gobby or SubEthaEdit that some folk might enjoy, since there’s a WiFi network available.
We’ve got a UC2006 Category on the wiki that you might find handy. Go ahead, create a wiki account, and start writing some useful content :-)
The name of the wine seems appropriate to MySQL and writing
If you wanna chat (for collaborative writing purposes and not for skipping out on your session!) there’s #mysql-uc on the famous freenode IRC network.
So the last few days have been randomly fun. I’ve been to Fry’s several times to grab random bits and bobs. Things I don’t need, but now have. Hung out with Mikal and Stewart quite a bit, which is always fun. Had lots to drink, and have gotten some work done!
All that aside, today was reserved mostly for our CEO’s house party. It was highly fun, there was drink, great food, and even song!
Stewart by the bar
There was Foster’s beer! Haha. Go Australian export beer. And Morgan was caught having some. I got to meet so many MySQLers its going to be hard to remember them all. I’m sure by the time the UC is over, all will be well.
Kaj, my boss. I like this “portrait” of him quite well
Anyways, a picture tells a thousand words, so view the MySQL Staff Party 2006 photoset.
It took me just under five minutes to signup for a T-mobile hotspot account, so I could send my mail. Username already chosen, form resets itself. Find credit card, re-enter information. Submit. Need to fill in the expiry date (which displays fine). Form resets. Repeat.
Funny that the immigration official today at SFO had heard of both Linux and MySQL. He’s apparently some form of online gamer, and has written a few PHP apps himself. I was, to say the least, highly impressed.
Something I noticed as funny. All the baggage carousels had Oracle ads. Must be something Oracle related happening here…
Anyways, I’m still waiting for Arjen to come out. Stewart I know is already at the hotel, and JD should arrive in due time. In the meantime, I’ll attend to mail, and upload Flickr photos at 250KB/s (yes, a marked improvement from the 30KB/s cap I have at home in Australia).