MySQL Central is truly a MySQL Community show. This year there are five tracks and the majority of the sessions in all the tracks except Performance and Scalability had many more submissions from the MySQL Community than from Oracle/MySQL. The voting has been tough this year for me. Picking roughly fifty talks out of about two hundred submissions may sound easy. But this year I found only a few topics that were easy to score lowly as they were either off the mark for the conference or not strong enough subjects for the devotion of an hour. So that took it down from two hundred sessions to one ninety seven.

I do not know how the other selectors are making their choices but I had an exhausting time of it. The first pass took me a week part-time to read all the details of each submission without looking at the author in order to judge the talks on their content. Next I look for amazing presenters who have taught me something in the …

The presentations submitted for MySQL Connect are amazing. This year again I am very fortunate and slightly cursed to be on the selection committee again. Fortunate that I get a glimpse of some truly amazing work being done with MySQL. And cursed in that there are a lot of great talks that will not make it that I still want to see.

We had over 190 submissions for 50 some odd speaking slots. In the past there has been some over lap with two members of the same engineering team proposing slight variations on a topic that can be combined. Sometimes there are blatantly obvious marketing sessions that will not only speed you queries, brighten you teeth, but also walk your dog. Usually it is easy to pick out a few obviously poor proposals. But not this year. They are all pretty much technical raw meat, dripping with staggering loads of vital information. …

The MySQL Connect Call for Papers ends April 15th. So submit ASAP!!

Below are examples of some of the broad areas of interest our Conference Review Committee may be seeking:

• Customer Success Stories or Case Studies
• Best Practices (based on experiences and insights acquired)
• Tips and Tricks / How To Sessions (based on expertise in specific areas)
• Deep Dives
• Partner / Community Solutions
• What’s New
• Introductory, 101-type sessions
• Upgrades

Write an abstract that is easy to read and describes the value of the presentation. Explicitly mention what is being discussed during the session rather than making a marketing or strategy pitch. For example, mention product demonstrations, case studies, customer/partner participation, …