Hi!

Recently I wrote about how glad I was to see two of my proposals for the upcoming MySQL Conference approved.

I am absolutely thrilled to see my third proposal has been approved as well: "Starring Sakila: data warehousing explained, illustrated and subtitled". I'm very proud to announce that I'm doing this talk together with Matt Casters, chief data integration of Pentaho and creator of the popular ETL/Data Integration suite Kettle (a.k.a Pentaho data integration).

During this 45-minute seminar, Matt and I will take the …

Last week Giuseppe Maxia announced the Call for Papers for the 2009 MySQL Users Conference and Expo, and also announced that there would be an unconference, MySQL Camp, organized by me.

It’s true! Currently MySQL Camp is set to happen, though I am still working out details with Colin Charles and Giuseppe Maxia. We had originally talked about having MySQL Camp on Tuesday and Wednesday, but I would like to add Monday so that folks attending the conference who are not attending a tutorial have a choice on Monday. I am also looking into lunch options, since the conference venue does not have many options within walking distance.

There will be plenty of …

I have already blogged about this keynote at http://www.pythian.com/blogs/948/liveblogging-who-is-the-dick-on-my-site.

If you are interested in actually seeing the video, the 286 Mb .wmv file can be downloaded at http://technocation.org/videos/original/mysqlconf2008/2008_04_17_panelDick.wmv and played through your browser by clicking the “play” link at http://tinyurl.com/55c5ps. This is not to be missed!

The team just finished our second successful MySQL Con. Many thanks to Marten & Zack and all the folks at O’Reilly that put on such a great conference.

This year definitely had a different feel, and of course that had a lot to do with Sun’s influence. It felt like it was almost a new event, a chapter 2 for MySQL, and its ecosystem of vendors and customers. There were more people - I don’t know exact numbers, but it felt appeared to be twice as packed. The exhibit hall was the same, but we took up a bit more space than last year and certainly there were much fancier booths - ours included! We even gave away multiple prizes this year - our fun 8-ball tshirts, and a couple remote control helicopters. Scott Baird and Mike Hogan were the lucky winners this year.

The one thing that hasn’t changed is our fit with the MySQL customers. This year we met several of our own customers and users face-to-face - including an …

Jeff Rothschild of Facebook’s “A Match Made in Heaven? The Social Graph and the Database”

Taking a look at the social graph and what it means for the database.

The social graph:

• At it’s heart it’s about people and their connections.
  
• Learning about people who are in your world.
  
• Can be a powerful tool for accelerating the use of an application.
  

“The social graph has transformed a seemingly simple application such as photos into something tremendously more powerful.” We’re interested about what people are saying about us, and about our friends. Social applications are compelling.

Facebook users blew through the estimate for 6 months of storage in 6 weeks. It is serving 250,000 photos per second at peak time, not including profiles. Facebook serves more photos than even the photo sites out there, and serves more event invitations …

Identity 2.0: A world that’s simple, safe and secure.

Who is the Dick on My Site? by Dick Hardt (Sxip Identity Corporation)

Quotes:
“Really, data is about people. It’s really identity data.”

“Identity helps you predict behavior.”

“Identity is who you are.”

“Identity is also what you like.”

“Identity enables you to uniquely identify somebody.”

“There are things that other people say about you, too.”

“Modern identity is about photo IDs so you can prove your identity.”

“Identity is a complicated issue….Everyone has a different idea of what it is.”

Identity transactions are:

• party identification (who)
  
• authorization (permission)
  
• profile exchange (info about that person)
  
• NOT record matching
  

Identity transactions can be: …

*Sigh*, well I won't be making it out to the conference this year:  My wife is due any day now with our third child.  Scheduling to fly to California next week just doesn't seem like it falls under the category of "supporting my wife."  

Top ten things I'll miss about the mysql conference 2008:

1. How replication is dead
2. Why 5.1 isn't stable yet
3. How wonderful Sun/Maria/Falcon/Cluster/6.x/Proxy is
4. Grilling Heikki about Innodb internals and bottlenecks
5. Wringing more information about high performance MySQL from Paul Tuckfield
6. The food!
7. Vendor / O'Reilly Swag
8. How great MySQL will run on Sun hardware
9. Conference Day 3 daze -- that part of the conference where your eyes start to glaze over. 
10. Getting really, really sick of talking about MySQL

Have fun everyone, see you next year! …

*Sigh*, well I won't be making it out to the conference this year:  My wife is due any day now with our third child.  Scheduling to fly to California next week just doesn't seem like it falls under the category of "supporting my wife."  

Top ten things I'll miss about the mysql conference 2008:

1. How replication is dead
2. Why 5.1 isn't stable yet
3. How wonderful Sun/Maria/Falcon/Cluster/6.x/Proxy is
4. Grilling Heikki about Innodb internals and bottlenecks
5. Wringing more information about high performance MySQL from Paul Tuckfield
6. The food!
7. Vendor / O'Reilly Swag
8. How great MySQL will run on Sun hardware
9. Conference Day 3 daze -- that part of the conference where your eyes start to glaze over. 
10. Getting really, really sick of talking about MySQL

Have fun everyone, see you next year! …

The MySQL Users Conference is coming up — April 14-17 in Santa Clara, California, USA.

This was forwarded to me from a colleague:

Are you interested in attending the 2008 MySQL Conference & Expo? I’m happy to announce that LinuxQuestions.org is able to give away one pass to the event. Visit this link for additional information. Good luck.

And I as well wish you good luck! If you would rather get a surefire deal instead of taking a chance, e-mail me and I can send you a 20% speaker’s discount code — I am speaking, so you get a discount!