The one thing that has consumed my days (and nights) recently, has been the organising of the MySQL Conference & Expo 2009 (hereinafter, referred to as the CE2009).
For starters, we’ve had 356 proposals. That basically provides a 1:3 acceptance:rejection ratio. So the voting committee had a really, really hard task to look at talks. Some even cross-referenced submissions with other submissions. Some even made suggestions of combining talks (successful, even). So my great thanks to the voting committee for the CE2009 – you guys all rock.
Then, once the voting committee has done the hard work, you’ve got to sanely schedule the talks. This is really, not an easy task. Very quickly, you realise that you want to be in all track, and you’ve got to split yourselves. This, being impossible, however, leaves room for the community (and in the past, Sheeri has done a great job at this, and I’m sure she’ll continue for the CE2009) to start making recordings. Good news is that we’re also looking into this, so it might be professionally done, for CE2009! Watch this space, for more details.
As of today, about 84% of the conference schedule is filled up. The tutorials are all 100% filled up. So come registration time, you can already be excited and start registering for your tutorials. And seeing most of the conference schedule, should be a positive thing, to help drive registrations.
Early registration is expected to open up sometime today. Early registrants, especially those that do so in December, I’m told will get a special gift.
The conference site even has features for you to now customise your own schedule. Even better, you can share this with others, if you choose (oh so, social networking :)). We also have a MySQL Conference & Expo Facebook Group.
Note: Some people are getting acceptance notes, and blogging, which is great. Some people are getting rejection notes, with discounts. And some people just aren’t getting any notes yet, because hey, we’ve got about 15% of the conference to fill up :-)
Anyway, this is your humble Program Chair, signing off for now.
