Colin Charles Agenda

I’ve had many dealings with SK Planet, in South Korea, so when they asked me to speak at their inaugural Tech Planet, I jumped at the opportunity. I was already pre-given a topic titled “NewSQL”, so I talked about the evolution of SQL -> Big Data -> NoSQL -> NewSQL, all thanks to papers written by Google research, and then focused on how MySQL & MariaDB is gaining many new interfaces: mariasql, HandlerSocket, dynamic columns, memcached InnoDB plugin, node.js with NDBCLUSTER, CassandraSE, LevelDB, Galera Cluster and more. This is a topic I will talk more about later.

The event was great. It started with a speaker’s dinner in where the CTO of SK Planet & multiple VP’s dined with the speakers. We had a private room at the InterContinental COEX, and started with smoked salmon, Russian crab meat & cream cheese. This was followed on quickly by crab meat soup. The main course was beef tenderloin, mero fish & steamed black rice, asparagus and black garlic. We ended with a cranberry tian with raspberry sauce. This was filled with lots of Equus red wine. 

The next day, we had the day of the event itself and it was huge. There were probably over 800 attendees, and SkySQL had a booth maintained by the Korean partners: OSS Korea, PrixMedia, and Oh New Innovation. This was followed by lunch with the CEO of SK Planet with great conversation & food. Started with tuna & avocado, to clear the palate, some lemon sorbet, and a great main consisting of beef tenderloin & king prawn with red wine sauce. We had much to chat about, and as lunch came to a close, it was time for me to give my talk.

It was well attended, there were some good questions, and there are naturally some good action items. I’m glad that the whole ecosystem provided me multiple opportunities to talk about amazing work being done. The press covered the Tech Planet event. I managed to snag an interview as well. More photos of the event at my techplanet2012 tag on Flickr.

All in, an exciting space to be in now. Thank you so much for SK Planet for the invite, and I look forward to being around in 2013.

I didn’t participate in 2012, but in 2013, I’m back on the conference committee for Percona Live Santa Clara. We have an awesome Program Chair in Shlomi Noach, and after much deliberation & commentary, we have a tutorials schedule out now. Expect that the rest of the conference content to be awesome too. Remember, April 22-25 2013 are the magical dates, so register now!

I had an interesting conversation with Sheeri (who I’ve known for many years, so consider this friendly banter) on Twitter about my recent blog post titled: once again, a split in events.

Disclaimer/Bias Warning: For those that don’t know me, I write this as a perspective of a community member. I was the first ever Community Engineer at MySQL, followed by being a Community Relations Manager right up till I left Sun Microsystems. I now work on MariaDB which is a branch of MySQL, so naturally we are in competition for user base. But I’m writing this as a community member at large who cares about MySQL & the ecosystem.

First of, this is a focus on the user ecosystem. I think the MySQL developer ecosystem has never been healthier than it is today – so many branches, forks, features, development trees, etc. Developer ecosystems are for another post, this is all about user ecosystems.

On events during similar timeframes

Sheeri started with calling BS on my post. Great way to start a conversation. I for one didn’t say that Oracle split the community or that Percona did so. I’m not in the job of pointing fingers. I’m just looking at past evidence: London 2012 (Percona, UKOUG), September/October 2012 (MySQL Connect San Francisco, Percona NYC), April 2011 (MySQL Conference Santa Clara, IOUG Collaborate Florida). There may be more events but I can only think of these.

I’ve heard that the April timeframe is bad for Oracle to send engineers to conferences because they have a busy release month. Yet Collaborate in Florida was ok?

Yes, MySQL may be the most popular opensource database today. This is great for the ecosystem that I am in. We can & should have many events, so I totally agree with Sheeri. But do they have to be at the same time? Do they have to ensure that attendees have to choose one or the other?

On spreading MySQL

I am happy that free events now happen in places that previously had no events, like Nairobi & Kenya. MySQL presence was almost unheard of in South America (many users, but we never made it out there to meet with the grassroots), but I’ve seen great amounts of activity there. I’ve even written about this before: a tale of two conferences. London in 2011 was awesome for MySQL all spread by a week – Oracle and Percona had 2 events and there were 2 different audiences from what I could tell.

I was at MySQL Connect this year as well as Percona Live NYC. The amount of intersection in attendees was sparse. In fact, Oracle managed to gather an interesting new crowd for Connect, so all kudos to them!

My wish as a community member (on events)

I wish to see Oracle MySQL employees show up at all events. This includes Percona Live events. I mean a talk from someone developing InnoDB, for example, would be great. It seems that the official line though is: “Oracle is not willing to help other companies’ marketing“. Fair enough. Percona Live is a great marketing event for Percona.

In the same vein I wish to see non-Oracle employees, even those from competitors, show up at Oracle MySQL events. MySQL Connect had 2 talks from Percona. That’s a good start.

I also wish that I get the best MySQL & ecosystem related content at one event. Many people can only make one event (especially when they happen during the same time at different locations). As a busy DBA, I want “the one event to learn it all”. That’s what the MySQL Conferences in Santa Clara used to do. This was a home for people to meetup once a year. This is no longer the case, it would seem.

Keeping MySQL relevant

Another wish that is unrelated to events: I wish MySQL was still spreading.

I speak to many MySQL users. From humble developers to large enterprises.

Oracle’s enemy isn’t MariaDB or Percona Server or the ecosystem at large. MySQL’s enemy is the growing use of other databases. NoSQL solutions are a popular choice; when people realize they want something relational, they don’t think about MySQL as a migration path. Pretty much every migration story I’ve seen suggests it is a migration to PostgreSQL.

Many years ago, you deployed on MySQL first. Today, is it still the first choice for the developer? Is it the second choice?

What about enterprises migrating from the Oracle database? They are well aware whom the new owners of MySQL are.

I saw this published on Josh Berkus’ blog: MySQL-to-PostgreSQL migration data from the451.com. It is worth a read.

I have had many conversations with experienced MySQL DBAs who I would consider rockstar DBAs in the Valley who are now beefing up their MongoDB knowledge. Some job offers are now asking for more than just MySQL knowledge. The naive way to look at it is if you’re getting 2-3 job offers for MySQL work per week. That is today. What about next year? I would like to put on a long term view here.

One more thing

I am truly independent in this. I want to see MySQL succeed. I need it to succeed as I am an ecosystem participant (via MariaDB).

I have heard many people call Oracle ACE/Directors Oracle apologists. I know pretty much all the Oracle ACEs as friends and respect their opinions, so in no way am I going to refer to them as apologists or shills. 

Celebrate the Oracle ACE/Director like you would the old/defunct MySQL Guilds.

Let’s work together to make the MySQL user ecosystem healthy!

Thanks to Sheeri Cabral, Giuseppe Maxia, Henrik Ingo & Ronald Bradford for pre-reading this.

Percona Live London 2012 happens December 3-4 2012. Naturally Oracle has decided to back UKOUG in Birmingham with interesting talks as well, happening December 3-5 2012. This is akin to the recent San Francisco/New York split for MySQL Connect & Percona Live NYC 2012.

Lucky for us, Birmingham’s “MySQL day” seems to be December 5 2012, and by estimates, it takes about 1.5 hours for one to attend both events and see 3 days of MySQL related content.

That aside, I’m hoping this doesn’t happen in 2013. Splitting the community is never a good idea.

Yesterday we (Gerry, Lars, Serg) had a mini-MySQL’er reunion courtesy of us all speaking at HighLoad++. Much thanks to the organizers for bringing us out here so that we could all catch up :)

We had a chat about how SHOW CONTRIBUTORS got into the code of MySQL as we were giving ideas to HighLoad++ organizers to raise money for charity. I distinctively remember it had something to do with a charity auction at one of the older MySQL User Conferences in Santa Clara. This was when we had quiz shows! And it was at the UC in 2006 for a charity auction where all proceeds got donated to the EFF. 

I see than Ronald has it in a presentation, and Sheeri was just saving to get married but still shelled out. Someone who’s a little quieter in the MySQL community, Frank, has a distinctive writeup, who reminded me that I too talked about this back then.

A lot has changed since 2006. SHOW CONTRIBUTORS is now deprecated, just like SHOW AUTHORS. As of 5.6.8, it is removed.

It will not affect how the database performs, but it certainly affects the “community feel” around MySQL, further cementing the idea that this is now a product at a very large company.

The end of September/beginning of October is a most exciting time if you dig MySQL & its diaspora. September 29-30 is MySQL Connect (register – early bird ends September 7) in San Francisco and October 1-2 is Percona Live NYC (register – early bird ends September 1) in New York City. I’m just attending MySQL Connect (thanks Dave for the ticket) and I’m speaking in New York so will take the redeye on Sunday. Four packed days of MySQL/MariaDB/Percona/tools/etc. across two coasts. Who can pass this up?

Who else is going to two of these events? Oh, MariaDB is also proud to be a sponsor of Percona Live NYC.