Colin Charles Agenda

I had the pleasure of addressing a crowd of over 1,000+ people yesterday, at the Sun Tech Days event in Hyderabad. I think this might as well be the biggest number of attendees at a talk that I’ve given. I spoke on MySQL: The Database for Web 2.0, and the notes for this talk are largely indexed at MySQL for Developers. Its more or less the standard deck for the Tech Days events these days.

The best part? The questions. I had intelligent questions, and they lasted well over twenty minutes, and there was even more chatter afterwards. Twenty minutes might not seem like a lot, but this is Asia, and in some audiences, you’d be hard pressed to get even a single question! MySQL is hot, in India. Really, really, hot.

I’m glad to see that most people are using MySQL 5 and 5.1. I’m not so glad to see that most people don’t know about storage engines – most are using MyISAM without even knowing it, and they don’t know there exist other engines. This is what I notice, every time I talk about storage engines, though. For the astute MySQL developer, the DevZone is known (thanks to the documentation, mainly), but the Forge is almost unheard of. Planet MySQL seems to be more popular, actually.

Arun Gupta has some nice pictures and videos of the event in general. For me, I was jet-lagged after a massive delay in my flight leaving Kuala Lumpur (plane was unserviceable), and I only mustered under three hours of sleep before addressing the large crowd of folk.

The Tech Days events for the (financial) year are winding down, and for the next (financial) year, we (MySQL/The Database Group, in general) need to plan to be first class citizens at the event. Not only in terms of talks, but we need booth space (we’re about the only Sun project lacking a booth). After all, we have interesting things to talk about: MySQL, Drizzle, MySQL Enterprise Tools/Merlin, Workbench, Proxy, Query Analyser/Quan, Cluster, Replication, DTrace, Virtualisation and the database (VirtualBox? xVM?), etc. This list is probably never ending, so some cool demos, lots of fact sheets, maybe even USB sticks of goodies (2GB sticks are dirt cheap, and loading it up with information not only make people want to get a stick, but makes them learn more – hopefully before they format it! :P).

In addition to having the Malaysia University Days, there’s something brewing in Singapore too.

First up, there is the Singapore MySQL Meetup Group, having a meeting in July, at a new location (Sun Solutions Centre, Central Mall). Confirm your attendance for a meetup at 7pm on Monday, July 14 2008.

And the other reason to be in Singapore, is the Sun Developer Days 2008 Singapore, happening on Tuesday, July 15, 2008. This is an all-day long event, held at the Hilton Hotel – register now! The agenda is packed, and there is a big web focus: profile applications using the NetBeans IDE, MySQL, and using DTrace on Web applications (from JavaScript to the database).

So there, two events next week, in Singapore: MySQL Meetup and Sun Developer Days. See you there.

Here’s a packed schedule. There will be a Sun crew visiting these universities between 16-17 July 2008. Will you be there? Where you’ll meet the rock stars:

• Wednesday, 16 July 2008, 9am – noon: Multimedia University, Cyberjaya
• Wednesday, 16 July 2008, 2pm – 5pm: Universiti Teknologi MARA, Shah Alam
• Thursday, 17 July 2008, 9am – noon: Management & Science University, Shah Alam
• Thursday, 17 July 2008, 2pm – 5pm: INTI, Subang

And what exactly will we be talking about? Besides the keynote, and tech demos, there will be focus on NetBeans (a fabulous IDE), an introduction to OpenSolaris, JavaFX, and of course, MySQL.

We all have 30 minute session slots, and the focus is rather developer centric, so I’m wondering what is best to cover in 30 minutes (what one can probably talk about in 5 days even)? Condensed talk on storage engines, index types, etc. ?

My fear is that I’ll largely be talking to a crowd that has seen and used a database, and its called Access. MySQL will be new to them. Not having a “front-end” per se, ala Access, might be scary. Then again, hooking up OpenOffice.org Base and Workbench might be the way to go for a glitzy presentation…

In what I think must be MySQL’s first time in the Philippines, there will be a presence there next week. Well, its not the first time, but in terms of a community/developer event, I think it might be. The Sun Tech Days is happening from 17-19 June 2008, in the Shangri-La Makati.

Besides MySQL, expect great talks on NetBeans, GlassFish, OpenSolaris, and so much more. I’ll be the guy walking around in the MySQL shirt, so feel free to stop me and ask questions. Its exciting for me, as we’ve not really paid much attention to the Philippines, in terms of community growth (and the Philippines is in the APAC region!).

This isn’t a free event (its 1,000 PHP = ~USD23), and registration should still be available. If you’d like to meet up, and talk MySQL, shoot me an email at colinATmysqlDOTcom or reach me via mobile at +6-012-204-3201. If you’d like to help organise a MySQL Meetup in Manila, do ping me too.