What the MySQL is this anyway at Berkeley
We were at the University of California, Berkeley, yesterday. Dups picked me up from the Hyatt, and we headed out there (despite the traffic jams caused by the major winds the night before — 50+mph winds!). Lunch was in Berkeley, and we met up with our Sun counterpart who deals with University Relations.
At about 3.50pm, we were told that our talk which was scheduled from 5-6pm, was actually meant to be at 4-5pm. Oops. I immediately sent a text message to Farhan, and he told me he was a few minutes away.
While the attendees all sat down and ate the pizza, we put on a little show for them, and then started at about 4.10pm. Farhan walked in a little later, and by 4.30pm, it was Q&A time.
Lots of interesting questions: why did Sun acquire you, how do you make money, is it true that MySQL cannot scale (surprised this question was asked after the presentation showing all the big ticket sites using it), is BigTable better, what new features can there possibly be to add, and more.
After that, Volker Oboda (from PrimeBase, the folk that bring you PBXT, and more – a picture of Volker and Dups talking earlier), Dups and I headed to grab a beer at the university pub, before heading back. All in all, good fun. A few photos are here.
So, the minor snag of it being an hour earlier, was taken by us in good stride. Today, Dups will visit San Jose State University, while Farhan and I will visit Stanford University. I had wished that the attendance was greater than the 20-25 or so that we had, but oh well. The slide deck is one prepared by Dups, that is pretty standard, that even Sheeri and Giuseppe are using.