Xaprb

I wrote previously about what I’m looking forward to at the upcoming MySQL Conference (next week!). Now I want to write about the free, community-organized unconference being held concurrently, MySQL Camp 2009.

It runs from Sunday through Thursday of next week, which is even longer than the MySQL conference. It starts Sunday with a day of games, then there are really good sessions throughout the week. In fact, I daresay the schedule is at times more interesting than the main MySQL conference:

• Hackfest with Mark Callaghan.
• Ask a guru. Free advice from really expensive consultants!
• Presentations from “big name” speakers, such as the BigDBAHead pair, Jeremy Zawodny, and people from Percona.
• Predicting Performance with Queuing Models with David Lutz. (Think this doesn’t sound interesting? I bet you will change your mind if you go see.)

And a lot more. If you’re in the Bay area, you should really make an effort to come out and attend this. I’ve attended the first two MySQL Camp events, and you can read about them in my blog archives. Well worth going to, and did I mention there is no cost at all?

I caught most of the second day of MySQL Camp 2007. It was fun and educational as before. The format was a little different than the last Camp; everything was in one room. Google and Proven Scaling provided food.

Sessions were loosely organized, to say the least, but that’s what an un-conference is all about. When I got there, Ronald Bradford was presenting on MySQL Proxy. Bob Stein, creator of Visibone charts and cheat-sheets, followed with a session seeking feedback to improve the charts. By the way, the way he produces those charts is totally off the wall. Jay Pipes gave an extended tutorial on ways to make MySQL perform really badly. After lunch, I gave sort of a stand-up talk on MySQL Toolkit, which I typed up while listening to the other talks. I tried to give an overview of what the tools in the toolkit are, how they work, and what to use them for. A couple other people showed some of their own tools after that too.

Then I went to supper in Manhattan with a bunch of old and new friends from the MySQL community, played some card games, and that’s it. Worth every minute!

I’m going to try to help Jay organize the next camp in central Virginia at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. I think the tentative plan is early next May or something like that. I’m sure that is all subject to change.