Greetings Planet MySQL readers,

I am new to Planet MySQL.. so I thought I should introduce myself.

I am Trent Lloyd (some may know me online as 'lathiat'), based in Perth, Western Australia and presently working for Sun Microsystems as a MySQL Support Engineer providing support to Sun's MySQL customers. I have been with Sun for 12 months, and previous to that was working for MySQL AB before it was acquired for 8 months. My background before that is in the ISP industry working for HostAway in a combination System/Network administration and support role.

I have also given a number of papers, often related to either Avahi or IPv6 at a few conferences.. mainly Linux.conf.au - you can view them on my web-site www.lathiat.net.

I have an open-source/free-software community background.. I co-authored …

#mysql isn’t too fair to include, as it’s really about users, not dev. #mysql-ndb is there because i heart ndb.

Oh, and linux.conf.au is there because it’s *awesome* and you should go.

Totally unscientific due to i’m only taking a sample once and whatever… but it kinda interests me…

Open Source is global in nature. You can develop a database in, say, Finland or Sweden, and become known in, say, Ukraine or the United States.

This would imply that Open Source knows no borders.

In practice, borders hamper Open Source work a lot. I have been familiar with the hassle involving MySQLers in Russia and the Ukraine trying to get Schengen (European Union) and US visas for meetings. And I have myself gone through a lot of hassle travelling to Russia and once even (out of my own stupidity and carelessness, though) been denied entry to India when I already was on Indira Gandhi airport in New Delhi.

But now, I’ve experienced what I had expected the least:

Several Sun Microsystems Inc employees, especially related to the Database Group, have been denied short stay business visas to Australia, over the last few months, …

Going to LCA? We have two days of glory for what is known as The Open Source Databases MiniConf. We have a webpage on the wiki, the announcement went out a few days ago, and the call for participation is open!

Tasmania is a fabulous place to be in January. 19-20 January 2009 is when the OSDB-MiniConf happens… topics on MySQL, PostgreSQL, Derby/JavaDB, Drizzle, CouchDB and many more are to be accepted.

What are you waiting for, submit a talk already!

It is no secret that I am the Program Chair for the MySQL Conference & Expo 2009, and am truly excited about it (big shoes to fill in from Jay). I expect it to be a great conference, with over 2,000 attendees and lots and lots of great talks. The paper submissions have been coming through, the excellent voters have been voting, and the progress is impressive. Its a great learning experience.

Now, I’m excited to tell you that I’m also going to organise the Open Source Databases MiniConf at linux.conf.au 2009. Its going to be in Hobart, Tasmania, in January 2009, and again, I’m excited. Read the …

So, last night a group of us sat down and went through all the mini-conf proposals for linux.conf.au 2008

There were a lot of proposals. There were also a lot of good ones.

We’re not announcing anything yet… but in the interest of openness… here’s the procedure.

We started out as any responsible group of selectors would…. looking at the proposals over beer:

a few jokes thrown in… frank discussion and all that. But really, we came to the conclusion that it’d been all done before and we needed to somehow narrow down all the excellent suggestions…

Luckily, the pub we were meeting at had the right …

So Jay Pipes pointed out that Eben Moglen is speaking at the upcoming MySQL Conference in his attention grabbing post: Getting Drunk with Eben Moglen.

I saw Eben speak at linux.conf.au 2005 in Canberra - which was totally totally awesome.

I’m really looking forward to seeing him again - honestly, it’s probably worth the conference admission fee just to see this session.

I’ve added a LCA2007 section to my Gallery with a bunch of photos I took at and around the conference. Feel free to have a look. I’ve posted a bunch of these to flickr already, so you’ve likely seen some if you follow my flickr feed.

Note that this gallery install is usually running a top-of-tree mysql cluster install on a box that has a bunch of other load on it… so things may work, may not - whatever :)

Those of you listening in on Planet MySQL - you should be able to spot a few other MySQLers around there, and there’s photos from the MySQL miniconf.

lca2007 already totally rocks.

did the speaker thing this morning, which was awesome (and i won’t spoil the surprise)

mysql miniconf today, should rock.

The Programme for linux.conf.au 2007 has hit the streets (err.. web) and it’s looking pretty neat.

I’m glad to see the MySQL and PostgreSQL miniconfs on different days - means I should be able to pop into the PostgreSQL one as well. Kernel could be interesting too… I guess it can depend on the sessions and stuff though.

Greg Banks’ session on “Making NFS Suck Faster” should be interesting. Tridge’s session on “clustering tdb - a little database meets big iron” should be really interesting (after all, I hack on a clustered database for a crust). After lunch, I’m a bit torn between a few sessions - but Matthew Garrett’s “Fixing suspend for fun and profit” could be a laugh. …