I encourage you to join the Google Group Arjen mentioned.

Sponsors are good. There were sponsors at the PG conference. What’s important is where the initiative, responsibility, and authority is vested.

I’m not anti-MySQL, but we as a community are too dependent on MySQL. It’s not healthy for anyone. I think MySQL’s management recognize this, which is good.

The un-conferences I’ve attended (MySQL Camp 1 and 2) were organized by MySQL, and Camp 3 never happened partially because everyone waited for MySQL to organize it.

I wouldn’t be interested in a virtual conference. I’m virtual all year; I want to meet people for real. No offense, but I won’t go near Second Life :-)

To Zach’s point, I think the community will need to take responsibility to meet their own needs.

More about community in later posts. I’ll close this comment by saying the best thing that happened when I attended the PostgreSQL conference was that it brought the MySQL world into sharp focus for me. It was really eye-opening.

Also the MySQL Conference (by whatever name!) is actually jointly operated by MySQL and O’Reilly. While it is a business (O’Reilly wants to make money off it) we try to run it on a breakeven budget for MySQL, and sometimes we make money and sometimes we don’t. The name change occurred a couple of years ago and this was based on a suggestion from O’Reilly to showcase the expo. The focus has not changed though and we very much see it as a conference for our users, as well as our partners, our customers and a showcase of what we’re working on.

But we’re thrilled if there are other events that also pop up to meet the needs of our community of users.

–Zack

Indeed I think the conferences represented interests of MySQL corporate entity rather than users which needs to know the dark side as well.

As MySQL User I would like to see presentations such as “Migrating from MySQL to PostgreSQL” (not other way around) - to know what pains people had with MySQL and how other solutions solved them etc.

I know for sure that I can help out, I’ve got prior experience in doing such things, so it would be fun. I’ll say like Sheeri: “sign me up. :)”

A conference for users, by users, would be absolutely lovely :-)

Also, I am part of Technocation, Inc., a not-for-profit organization whose mission is to provide educational resources for IT professionals. Being a volunteer for a not-for-profit lets you in doors that might be otherwise closed; let me know if you want official backing.

I also do not believe that you have to take the corporation out of it to be a successful conference that focuses on users. Sun heavily sponsored the New England Database Day, http://db.csail.mit.edu/nedbday08/ as did other companies.

I do have plenty of opinions on the matter as well, so if there’s a list, sign me up. :)

I’ve been thinking about this same thing for the last couple of weeks, since I couldn’t attend this year. One of the ideas I’ve been brainstorming is creating a user conference in Second Life. I was thinking it would be database agnostic, meaning we could do not just MySQL, but all the other open source databases as well. There would be different tracks for each database, all organized much like an in person conference.

Plenty of technical details to work out, but this could be a global user conference running 24×7 for as many days as we’d like. It could be very cost effective too, since there’s no flying around, staying/eating in hotels, etc. Simply attend from the comfort of your own computer, wherever you are in the world.

I’d be willing to organize such an event, with the help of experienced Second Life users/members to assist with the technical details. This would clearly meet “by, for, and of the community”.

– Mark

We have had a few “unconferences” around MySQL over the years and I think they fit your definition. Many MySQL employees participated, but the events were not specifically organised by the company behind MySQL, they had no exhibitors, and they didn’t cost a lot (in fact, they were free as in free of charge).

I will here and now express my support for such events. But although I represent the corporate entity behind MySQL, I hope that you and others don’t see my support as an attempt to change the notion of “by, for, and of the community”.

Marten