(The basics — comment here if you’d be interested to hear a non-partisan talk about the technical challenges faced by the IT team during the Obama campaign [particularly if you’re not an American who likes the idea of Obama as President, but even if you are].)

So, we all saw when Jonathan Schwartz posted this on election night:

http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan/entry/change_has_come_to_america

Now, back in December 2001 one of the speakers at LISA (a system administrator’s conference) was a William LeFebvre, who spoke about what it was like to run CNN.com during the extremely high peak times of …

Just a quick update, I was invited to speak at Sys-Con’s Cloud Computing Expo 2008 West (how’s that for a mouthful?) and accepted, planning on talking about SkyNet, S3, and our future use of cloud computing. Alas, my Inbox is so crazy, I failed to see the handful of emails the conference sent me asking me to sign a contract of some type. So I missed the deadline and they canceled my spot. (BTW, I can’t recall a conference ever asking me to sign something to speak, but this one does and I was full of FAIL.)

So, I’m sorry, despite being listed on the program, I’m *not* speaking there this week. It was my bad – I just missed the emails (as I miss so many emails these days). But still, a phone call from them wouldn’t have hurt, would it?

Who knows if I’ll be on …

So the good news is that the inaugural OpenSQL Camp is going to be an awesome event with mouth watering sessions by noted experts. The bad news (for me) is that I won't be attending it, which makes me sad. I cannot leave my town because my wife can go into labor anytime now.

The session list looks great! Congratulations and thanks to Baron, Sheeri, Ronald, all the sponsors and contributors for organizing the first OpenSQL Camp.

I will be watching PlanetMySQL closely for juicy blog posts. Hopefully, the one and only Sheeri is taking her camcorder!

(Note: updated with the presentation video on 11/15/2008)

At LISA 2008, I gave a presentation entitled “How to Stop Hating MySQL: Fixing Common Mistakes and Myths”.

The presentation slides can be downloaded as a PDF at:

http://technocation.org/files/doc/stophatingmysql.pdf

View the video online at http://technocation.org/node/646/play or download the 202.5 MB Flash video file (.flv) directly at http://technocation.org/node/646/download.

Here are some notes and links I referred to:

Technocation, Inc containing free videos, a MySQL podcast (currently on hiatus) and blog posts about MySQL.

…

Last week I found out about the Open Source Economy Conference 2008 held in Putrajaya, Malaysia on the 19th of November 2008. Its co-organised by Sun and the Multimedia Development Corporation (MDeC). Its also the “launch” of MySQL in Malaysia.

I only mention this because I’m speaking - check the agenda out. Don’t hesitate to register now.

We are almost there. Four days more, and then it's over. The CfP for the MySQL Users Conference 2009 ends on November 5th, 2008.

We have already received more proposals than we got last year, and (yes!) many of them are innovative.

Thanks to all the submitters.

I have still a few wishes, though.

There are still no proposals or very little on

• The event scheduler
• OpenOffice integration
• Java
• The plugin architecture
• MySQL Proxy

If you have a technical story to tell about one of the subjects above, don't be shy, and come forward!

And of course, if you have some innovative ideas on any topic related to MySQL, feel free to submit a proposal.

OpenSQL Camp is a free unconference happening Friday, Nov. 14th through Sunday, Nov. 16th in Charlottesville, Virginia, USA. More details can be found at http://www.opensqlcamp.org.

Whether or not you have already registered for OpenSQL Camp by putting your name here:

http://www.opensqlcamp.org/index.php?title=Events/2008/AttendeeList

you should be aware of very important information.
(more…)

In particular, what is notably absent from the proposals, is contribution from other Sun communities. Java, Glassfish, Netbeans, Solaris, OpenOffice, are either completely amiss or faintly represented. We need good technical presentations on the above topics, involving MySQL usage and integration. And remember, the theme of the conference is …