DISCLAIMER: This post contains no technical MySQL content however it is good news for the MySQL Community.

MySQL content will be included for the first time with the LAOUC (Latin American Oracle Usergroups Council) Oracle tour that is being organized in conjunction with OTN (Oracle Technology Network).

I have no idea what MySQL user communities are in South America however if you live in any of the following cities, please feel free to contact me. I am happy to have additional discussion regarding MySQL or help in some way if there is interest in any cities.

This seven country tour includes:

• Oct 12 – Lima, Peru
• Oct 14 – Santiago, Chile
• Oct 16 – Montevideo, Uruguay
• Oct 18 – São Paulo, Brazil
…

With OpenSQL Camp and FrOSCon being over for almost a week now, it's time to come up with a short summary. I traveled home on Monday morning and then took Tuesday off, so I had some catching up to do...

As for the past years, FrOSCon rocked again! According to the closing keynote, they had around 1.500 (unique) visitors and I had a great time there. I really enjoyed meeting all the old and new faces of the various Open Source communities. The lineup of speakers was excellent, Jon "maddog" Hall's keynote about "Free and Open Source Software in the Developing World" was quite insightful and inspiring.

Most of the time I was busy with speaking at and …

Greetings from Sankt Augustin, Germany! I've arrived by train today and just returned from the FrOSCon venue, which will start tomorrow. The organizers are still busy with the preparations, but things already seem to be in good shape.

It was a mild and sunny evening today. Hopefully it will be the same tomorrow again, so we can enjoy a relaxed BBQ outside! The social event at FrOSCon is always a nice opportunity to meet and talk with fellow open source enthusiasts, users and developers.

And finally some good news for those of you who can't make it to FrOSCon this year: there will be live video streams from selected lecture rooms! So you will be able to attend the OpenSQL Camp sessions virtually - just head over to http://live.froscon.org/ and select room "HS6". It'll be …

Around these days last year I presented `securich` for the first time. It was at froscon 2009, barely knowing anybody, spending my 27th birthday in a hostel in Germany fixing some bugs before the actual presentation on a 10 inch netbook (my mac had some problems at the time but thats another story :)). I got a beating, verbally of course! Many of the people listening to the presentation were expecting something else since another presentation was supposed to be running at that time, some even started dozing off (encouraging? not really hehe) but after a few minutes people started getting interested and asking all kind of questions. “This awesome” I thought to myself, “questions are good, it means people are understanding and want to know more”, but the more they learnt the more they realised how young securich was as a tool, lacking fundamental features like …

The DOAG ("Deutsche ORACLE Anwendergruppe e.V.") is the German association of users of Oracle products. In November 2010 (16th-18th), they will hold their annual Oracle Users Conference 2010, which will take place in Nuremberg, Germany.

This event is quite an institution – it has been established more than 20 years ago already. This year, there will be more than 400 sessions by over 300 speakers. For the first time, this year's conference will also have a dedicated stream of sessions about MySQL and I'm happy to announce that I'll be there, too, giving an overview of the various MySQL Replication Technologies as well as a glimpse into a MySQL DBA's toolchest.

Here's the full list of MySQL sessions, as of today:

Tuesday 2010-11-16

• 10:00-10:45: …

In just two days the OpenSQL Camp Europe (hosted by the excellent FrOSCon) will kick off!

We've had a few last-minute changes to the schedule, as some speakers could not make it due to visa or family issues. But we managed to keep all slots filled on both days and I think we've come up with a very nice program! In addition to the two sessions I already had, I've volunteered to take over Giuseppe's talk about Shooting from the Hip. MySQL at the Command Line.

The most up-to-date version of the schedule is on the OpenSQL Camp Wiki, I expect the remaining changes to be reflected on the …

I just wanted to send out a friendly reminder: you still have time until next Monday, 16th of August, 8:00 am (UK) to submit MySQL-related talk proposals for the Conference Series Technology & E-Business Suite 2010 conference which will take place in Birmingham (Nov. 29th - Dec. 1st). The UK Oracle User Group is looking forward to set up a dedicated track with great talks about MySQL! Thank you.

Similar to events in the US and Germany, another large Oracle User Group organization is preparing for their annual conference and would like to set up a dedicated track of sessions about MySQL – this time it's the British UKOUG  which organizes the Conference Series Technology & E-Business Suite 2010.

This annual user group event will offer a place to share knowledge and hear the latest information from key personnel about product development. This event is a technical event and not a marketing event and we'd like to encourage you to submit a MySQL-related talk!

Some more information about this conference:

• Dates: Monday 29th November – Wednesday 1st …

I’m at OSCON this week. Come say hi and talk Drizzle, Rackspace, cloud, photography, vegan food or brewing.

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If you wonder why there hasn't been an update from me for quite a while — I just returned from two months of paternal leave, in which I actually managed to stay away from the PC most of the time. In the meanwhile, I've officially become an Oracle employee and there is a lot of administrative things to take care of... But it feels good to be back!

During my absence, Giuseppe and Felix kicked off the Call for Papers for this year's European OpenSQL Camp, which will again take place in parallel to FrOSCon in St. Augustin (Germany) on August 21st/22nd. We've received a number of …