I just wanted to take a moment and say congratulations to all of the 2012 Community Contributor Award Winners!

The usual suspects, Baron, Sarah, Gerardo, and Sheeri, each won, and deservedly so. All 4 contribute a great deal to the MySQL Community and ecosystem, and it is very much appreciated.

However, I was especially happy to hear that James Day was also a winner (a name everyone might not be so familiar with). But, having worked with James for 5 years, I really couldn’t say it better than Henrik Ingo already did (in his initial post of this year’s winners), so let me quote him:

“James was nominated for ‘MySQL advocacy and swimming upstream to keep people informed about bugs and other issues.’ When looking into James’ activities in the community, the panel first didn’t find much evidence to support …

If you’re attending the conference, be sure to stay the extra day (this Friday) for the SkySQL and MariaDB Consulting Lounge and Solutions Day.

You can register for the Free Solutions Day here (just name, email, company, and country):

http://www.skysql.com/mysql-solutions-day

And if you’re around that day, there will be a SkySQL and MariaDB Consulting Lounge open all day long, so feel free to stop by and speak directly with the SkySQL and MariaDB Experts.

More about the Consulting Lounge can be found here too.

I just wanted to give a quick shout out and say thank you to all who have been sharing talks and exciting news from the conference for those of us who weren’t able to attend!

It’s greatly appreciated!

And please keep up the great work.

I suppose the true birthdate could be debated, but from the *Community* perspective, it can be either the 14 or 11 year birthdate for MySQL!

*Unless* of course you are Monty or David, or one of the internal testers/users, for which May 95 may hold slightly more significance

14 Years ago: The Windows [alpha] was released January 8, 1998.

11 Years ago: The first GA version of 3.23 was released in January 2001

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MySQL#Product_history

Note Monty and David first began working on MySQL in 1994, and the first internal release occurred on May 23, 1995. But, since that was all internal, January works for me.

Happy Birthday MySQL!

Those that know me know I love to send out Christmas/Holiday cards to my colleagues every year. However, with so many colleagues now past and present, and the many friends I’ve made over the years in the MySQL ecosystem, it’s hard to get everyone a card via snail mail (nor do I have everyone’s address), so I wanted to send out a virtual “Happy Holidays!” to all.

No, we don’t have children, those gifts are for the family we adopted this year.

Wishing you and yours all the best this holiday season!