Are you coming to the MySQL Users Conference 2006? This year it’s April 24-27, 2006 in Santa Clara, CA. Sadly for me, I don’t get to travel anywhere for the conference: It’s practically in my backyard.

I’m presenting a session and a tutorial, and participating in a Panel and a Hackfest session this year:

• MySQL GIS: Overview and Tools — I’ll talk about what GIS is useful for, how to get data in and out, and give some demos using PHP.
• Replication for Scaling and High Availability — An honest look at how replication really works, when it doesn’t work, …

I snapped this picture of Kaliya Hamlin from SpikeSource at the MySQL User Conference. I don’t think I’ve seen quite so many stickers on a single laptop… she obviously loves Open Source.

That’s one of the things I like about Open Source… many people involved in it don’t just use it, they love it.

Yesterday, at the MySQL User Conference 2005, I hosted a Birds of a Feather session on MySQL and GIS. I spoke with a couple of guys from Trakm8, a company from Dorset, England. They have a very fascinating system built on top of MySQL’s GIS support and some of their custom tracking devices. They showed me their software and we discussed their platform. I gave them some (hopefully useful) tips regarding MySQL.

Their system includes an embedded PC, a GPS, and a GPRS modem (cell phone), and given some power is able to track a vehicle (or anything else) anywhere within coverage of the cell network. This is exactly the kind of people and projects/products I was hoping to get at my BoF session. As an aside, there’s a …