Earlier, I noted that Julian Cash was to do some “light painting” at the MySQL Users Conference. And boy, did he do it!

He had a normal conference room, the Bayshore at the MySQL Conference, made a bit darker. Not pitch dark, but let’s say too dark to read. Then, he had us sit down on a chair in front of a neutral background, and took the pics with his camera mounted on a tripod. A picture took perhaps 30 to 60 seconds. After opening the shutter, the object was supposed to sit still. Julian then lit up our faces, in my case with blue and red light sources (”mini-torches”) which he moved top-down. Then, he sprinkled in some additional stray light in various colours.

I had asked for a picture …

Who’s Barton George?

Barton is a colleague from Sun, who “looks after Sun’s relationships with the various GNU/Linux communities as well as our relationship with the FSF” according to his blog. I spent time with him at the MySQL Users Conference last week. He is a fun guy to be around, and isn’t as US-centric as his remark “Last year, my family and I emigrated from Silicon Valley to Austin, TX.” would lead one to believe.

Barton is also an avid blogger. And, on top, a diligent podcaster.

As for blogging, he has recent MySQL relevant entries on partying …

We had over 400 participants in yesterday’s MySQL-Sun event in China! Plus another 30 or so in the press event, happening in parallel.

Beijing, if nobody noticed, is preparing for the Olympics. Here’s the so called Birds Nest, that we passed several times on the way to various meetings — including yesterday’s event.

After initial linguistic difficulties, Larry Stefonic (MySQL VP APAC) found our way to the event.

This was the first MySQL-Sun event with a banner across a street!

Everything takes place in Chinese here. About as much as it’s Japanese in Japan. In Europe, we seem to give way too much way for English.

And to accommodate to the local situation, I gave my presentation (on MySQL-Sun integration) in Chinese. It was about 8 minutes, and I was happy to be several times interrupted for applause. And I didn’t say anything …

The team just finished our second successful MySQL Con. Many thanks to Marten & Zack and all the folks at O’Reilly that put on such a great conference.

This year definitely had a different feel, and of course that had a lot to do with Sun’s influence. It felt like it was almost a new event, a chapter 2 for MySQL, and its ecosystem of vendors and customers. There were more people - I don’t know exact numbers, but it felt appeared to be twice as packed. The exhibit hall was the same, but we took up a bit more space than last year and certainly there were much fancier booths - ours included! We even gave away multiple prizes this year - our fun 8-ball tshirts, and a couple remote control helicopters. Scott Baird and Mike Hogan were the lucky winners this year.

The one thing that hasn’t changed is our fit with the MySQL customers. This year we met several of our own customers and users face-to-face - including an entire …

First of all, thank you, Jay Pipes, for setting up the Bayshore Room tomorrow between 10am and 2pm, for Julian Cash to take pictures of us!

Second, I am a big fan of descriptive subject headers. So I thought I could promote this memorable event even more explicitly than what Jay did in his posting “Yes, It’s That Time of the Year Again…“.

It’s Julian’s fault that I bought my 8mm Sigma lens. He has one, and takes weird pictures with it. As opposed to mine, his are good (yup, he uses fancy high-tech equipment like flashes, and white background paper — one day I’ll go there, too).

This is MySQL’s very own Brian Aker, as distorted by Julian.

The new thing Julian is doing is Light Painting. This means he creates …

Allow me to provide some relaxed photographic observations from this morning’s MySQL UC keynotes.

Warning 1: My view is distorted, by my favourite lens, Sigma 8mm.

Warning 2: I took the pics with a shaky hand in low light, so they’re not sharp ones, of the James Duncan Davidson type (the guy who takes all the great pics for O’Reilly).

On Johnny Good’s command, doors open, and the audience starts pouring in.

Zack Urlocker has challenged me in the James Callis Lookalike Contest (of Battlestar Galactica fame), but is himself clearly in the lead.

Journalist James Niccolai of IDG, taking a picture of Rich Green and Mårten Mickos (Note: I am a fan of recursion; it would have been even better if Zack had taken a picture of me taking a picture of James, Rich and Mårten).

Mårten Mickos talking to Sheeri Kritzer Cabral.

Jay Pipes’s head is moving so fast talking to …

There’s a reason for Sheeri winning the Community Advocate of the Year award. Her activity level is hard to beat.

If you want a chance to beat Sheeri for 2009, you need to master multitasking. Not only is Sheeri listening to Mårten presenting his keynote. She’s preparing for some vlogging, i.e. recording Mårten’s presentation. And she’s blogging at the same time. And (although she doesn’t know it until three seconds after the picture was taken) she’s getting ready for getting up on stage to receive her 2008 award.

Ah, myself I’m only listening, and taking the odd picture. (Some of them very odd).

The very first UC related parties are over, and the Users Conference hasn’t even started!

The first one was Mårten’s traditional and well-liked MySQL staff party in his garden. The coolest and most community significant one was the MySQL Community Pre-Conference Dinner party, though, as advertised on MySQL Forge Wiki. So we dropped out of Mårten’s party at six, to meet with the community.

There were 48 registered people, and I think even more turned up. And some of the guys who turned up unregistered were from Sun.

Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz crashes the party and is surrounded by community members and MySQLers alike

Rich Green, Executive VP of Software …

This week’s Wednesday was a big thing for MySQL and Sun in Japan:

• Over 300 attendees to our World Tour event in Tokyo
• Over 30 press attendees to the press conference in the morning
• Availability of nine-to-five MySQL Technical Support in Japanese announced
• Availability of MySQL Enterprise Monitor in Japanese announced
• Availability of MySQL Knowledge Base articles in Japanese announced

I had the opportunity to keynote 60 minutes on the MySQL Architecture of Participation, with the first 5 minutes in Japanese.

Minasama, Konnichiwa.
Konotabi wa, Sun Microsystems toh MySQL AB no Tougou ni tsuite, *Kigaru* ni *Oiwai* shi, *Hanashiau* tameno, Launch Event he, Youkoso Okoshi Kudasaimashita.

[the following four minutes deleted]

Against all …

Right after Paris, Giuseppe and I turned our attention to Milan, Italy. The flight from Paris Roissy to Milan Malpensa (EasyJet, 57 euros/PAX) turned out to be clearly cheaper than the taxi ride from Malpensa to Sun’s Milan office, where we had the meetup.

In time before the meeting, we had some HR, integration and general planning discussions with Sun. One of the most difficult aspects turned out to be to pick the right form of coffee, as the number of alternatives in the coffee machine exceeded anything observed before.

Luckily, I’m a tea drinker, where the challenge limited itself to finding out how to change the default of adding sugar to drinking the tea straight.

The event saw over 100 participants. It was very competently arranged by Emanuela Giannetta, hosted and supported by Franco Roman and many other Italian Sun people — including Stefano De …