Last week someone sent me an article about the “dueling” MySQL conferences from IOUG and O’Reilly. On the one hand, I find it really entertaining that there’s a perception that, three years ago, when the Sun acquisition wasn’t even on the radar, we purposefully scheduled our conferences against each other in anticipation of this moment. If we had a crystal ball or the ability to see the future that well, I would have picked better lottery numbers three weeks ago.

The sad part is all the focus is placed on a hypothetical negative, and it overshadows the real point of the article – that a collection of MySQL community supporters are pooling their time and effort to make sure the community stays strong. I’m lucky enough to