Time to vote for MySQL sessions at FOSDEM

There is a room dedicated to MySQL at FOSDEM 2012. (Thanks to @lefred for organizing). The CfP has received 37 submissions, but there will be time slots only for 12 to 15 talks. So now it's up to the community. If you want to attend a particular talk, you should vote for it. Like in previous years, the selection of the talks is public. You can see the list of the proposals, with the instructions, which I repeat here. You can vote either publicly, using Twitter, or privately, by sending an email. Each talk proposal will be referred by the number immediately after the title in this page. This number indicates the order in which the proposals were received. In public, you should send a tweet to @opensqlcamp, indicating a maximum of 12 talks that you would like to see, in the order you like them. e.g. "@opensqlcamp #FOSDEM2012 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12 http://bit.ly/mysql_fosdem_2012" (adding the link will help others to find the page. In private, by email at mysqlfriends AT gmail DOT com, using the same method used for Twitter. Maximum 12 talks, in the order of your preference. In both cases, votes for your preferences will result in 1 point for each talk. In case of equal voting, we will assign 12 points to the first in the list, 11 to the second, and so on. We'll do the tally, and choose the most popular ones. Anonymous votes either by Twitter or email won't be counted. If you want your vote to count, make sure your twitter account has a recognized name (or known nick) on it. If your email address doesn't spell your name, please sign the message with your real one. DEADLINE: Your votes must be entered by January 8th, 2011.

Open Database camp 2011 - Travel logistics, and don't forget the party

The Open Database Camp 2011 is near. In 9 days, the welcome party starts, and then the conference itself gets going. If you are coming earlier than Friday, May 6th, you can either use public transportation or book a private seat with a volunteer in the car pooling page. Please help the organizers: post your arrival and departure dates and times, so we may be able to help you even outside the official conference days. About the conference itself, as everyone should know, it's a un-conference, where the talks will be decided on the spot. But you can book ideas and topics in the sessions page. Since we will have many participants from Italy, there will be dedicated sessions in Italian in addition to the ones in English, which is the official language of the conference.

Open Database Camp - Accommodation and Sponsoring

The Open Database Camp 2011 is shaping up nicely. The logistics is being defined and local and international volunteers are showing up for help. (Thanks, folks!) If you want to start booking, there is a list of hotels in the Accommodation page. And don't forget to sign up in the Attendees list. Local travel information will be released as soon as we finish cranking up the plan. Open Database camp is free, but we still have expenses to get the job done. We need both official sponsors and personal donations. No minimum amount required. You can donate painlessly online through the nonprofit organization Technocation. (Thanks!) Please see the Sponsors page for more info.

My wish list for OpenSQLCamp, Boston 2010

On Friday, October 15^th, the third OpenSQLCamp in North America will start at 6pm with a social event and then continue with more technical stuff over the week end.
Compared to the overcrowded Oracle Open World with its 45,000 attendees, this event may look like a desert. But the quality of the attendance will more than compensate for the missing thousands.
The event will be held with unconference style. There is a list of sessions, where I have proposed two topics, one for which I would like to see someone stepping up and help defining the topic of Data integrity : comparing the SQL and NoSQL approach and one where I plan to tell an cute technical story about MySQL replication and the quest for a global transaction ID.

OpenSQLCamp EU 2010 - Vote your favorite sessions

The deadline for the OpenSQLCamp CfP is over. Now it's time to submit your votes. As we did last year, the procedure is public and transparent. After seeing the list of submitted sessions, you can then vote via mailing list, or via Twitter. But, please, hurry! We need to finalize the schedule at the end of this week. Thanks!

OpenSQLCamp EU 2010 - Last days to submit a talk

There is still time and hope if you want to present at the OpenSQLCamp 2010, European edition. The Call for Participation is open until July 11th. Thanks for the ones who have submitted proposals. A few caveats: if your proposal does not include a description, it will not be accepted. Therefore, wannabe speakers, please check your proposals, and make them as good as you can!

We want talk about all open source database. Not only MySQL.
Open source database fans, wake up, and submit a proposal!

OpenSQLCamp EU 2010 - Call for participation

The European OpenSQLCamp 2010 will take place in parallel to the Free and Open Source Conference 2010 (FrOSCon) on Saturday 21st and Sunday 22nd August at the Fachhochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg in St. Augustin, Germany. St. Augustin is located close to Bonn and Cologne. The Call for Participation is now online.

The event is organized by yours truly and Felix Schupp, and we are open to cooperation from other volunteers.
Specifically, we need help to beat the drum. Even if you can't participate, we will appreciate your help in making the Call for Participation known.
OpenSQLCamp2010 will use the FrOSCon's Pentabarf conference coordination system to collect talk submissions and perform the organizing and scheduling of the talks.
Please create an account there, if you don't have one already. Once you have activated your account via the email address you provided, please log into the system and create a new event. Make sure to select track OpenSQLCamp for your submission!

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IMPORTANT! - FrOSCon uses CA certificates. If you browser does not recognize them, then you need to Import the CAcert Root Certificate before using the CfP pages.

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The deadline for submitting your proposal is Sunday, July 11th, 2010 (12:00pm PST).

Sponsoring OpenSQLCamp

The next OpenSQLCamp will be held in Portland, Oregon, USA. It is being organized by Eric Day, well known to the open source community for his active and productive participation to several projects (especially Drizzle and Gearman).

The event is public and free. Therefore, it needs public sponsoring. I don't know yet if I can attend, but I have already donated something to the organizers, and I am officially a sponsor. You can be one too. Simply go to the sponsors page and donate a minimum of $100 as in individual or $250 as an organization.
And of course, if you plan to participate, register yourselfand eventually propose a session.
OpenSQLCamp is a fun, equal level event. If you have something to say, write a proposal, and the other participants will tell you if they want to hear it or not. Either way, you will learn something.

MySQL Sandbox and Spider at FrOSCon and OpenSQLCamp

FrOSCon and the OpenSQLCamp are about to start. I am packing for Sankt Augustin, where I will attend the fourth edition of FrOSCon and the second OpenSQLCamp. I will have two sessions, Sharding for the masses, about the Spider storage engine and MySQL Sandbox 3, about one of my favorite tools.

The program is very rich. There will be several tracks in the main event and in the associated conferences. If you have any involvement or simply some curiority in open source matters, You will find something interesting at FrOSCon.

OpenSQLCamp democracy

We have seen this before. Actually, we got the idea from Drupal, where talk proposals are public, and the most voted ones get in the schedule. Nonetheless, it's a pleasure to see that a transparent voting system is accepted and used.

The OpenSQLCamp 2009 European edition, is under scrutiny. There are 27 session proposals, from which we will need to get 12 in the schedule.
The open voting is done via Twitter or the mailing list.
I have a good feeling about it. Since I am proposing a public talk, I must be prepared for public scrutiny. It's only fair that my proposal is evaluated by the same audience that will later decide to come see my presentation. It's an incentive to write a clear and compelling proposal. I can't get away with "I am well known. I will say something about replication."
If you are attending OpenSQLCamp at FrOSCon, let us know what you would like to see. Let the best proposals win.

Speaking at FrOSCon 2009 and getting ready to OpenSQLCamp-Europe

For the fourth time in a row, I will be speaking at FrOSCon, one of the most charming open source events in Europe.
Hosted in the bright environment of the Department of Computer Science of the University of Applied Sciences Bonn-Rhein-Sieg, this event will get you hooked from the beginning. The organization is done by volunteers, who have always done an amazing job, with even better results than more expensive and famous conferences.
This year, there will be some more action than ever before. In addition to the main event, the organizers have given away a few developers rooms, to let some projects build their own event within the main one. There will be a Java subconference, and, closer to my interests, the European edition of the OpenSQLCamp 2009, which applies to all open database related projects, such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, JavaDB, and many others that are listed in the announcements page. The principal organizer is Lenz Grimmer, who is looking for volunteers to share the burden.
The organizers have also launched a creative contest, which most geeks will find irresistible. Check it out!
FrOSCon started as one of the many LAMP events, and in its fourth year it has emerged as an example for others. I warmly recommend it to all people interested in open source.

OpenSQLCamp - Good Job, Baron!

Kudos to Baron Schwartz, who has shown everyone that you can organize a conference from scratch, without the logistics of a company. He has motivated other people in the community and received spontaneous help, which in turn became a web site, sponsor donations, free food for the participants, T-shirt, bags, internet connection, and a glorious feeling of camaraderie throughout the event.
Well done, Baron!

The picture shows a surprised Baron holding a T-shirt covered with "thank you Baron"s, secretly signed by all participants and finally awarded to him in public.

OpenSQLCamp - Pictures from the first day

The OpenSQLCamp started yesterday in Charlottesville, VA.
As expected, the gathering is impressive. There are many well known names from the open source database world. MySQL is probably overrepresented, but that's fair, considering its wide adoption.

Yesterday was an informal "meet anyone and let's see what we do tomorrow". The schedule, as you can see, is very dynamic.

At the Open SQL Camp

Just arrived to Charlottesville, VA, with Dups. We drove from Baltimore, MD, where we had an enjoyable MySQL meetup yesterday. The room was small, but packed to capacity with open source enthusiasts. Now waiting for the "opening ceremony" at 6pm, when we will fine tune tomorrow's schedule. The list of attendees is impressive. More than 100 people are registered. It seems to be a very interesting gathering.

On the road with Dups

Now that Dups is the Community Relations Manager for North America, we'll start working together in the most active way. Next week, we'll be busy at meetups in New York and Baltimore, and then it will be full immersion in Charlottesville for the Open SQL Camp.

Preparing for Open SQL Camp

The Open SQL Camp will take place in Charlottesville, VA, USA, on November 14, 15, and 16. Attendees are requested to register in the event's Wiki, and if you are interested in presenting something, there is a mailing list to discuss your intended topics.

I have proposed a topic about the MySQL community driven replication monitoring project, a hackish solution to the old problem of replication monitoring, implemented entirely on the server side, without using system applications.