Every year, there’s a task that is both difficult and pleasant at the same time: Picking three outstanding contributors from the MySQL Community. Mårten Mickos, MySQL’s former-CEO and Sun’s now-SVP of the Database Group, has just presented the results by handing out the 2008 MySQL Community Awards.

Rich Green, Diego Medina, Baron “xaprb” Schwartz, Sheeri Kritzer Cabral, Mårten Mickos at the award ceremony

This time, our choice fell upon these three community members, whose contributions we very much appreciate:

Code Contributor of the Year: Baron “Xaprb” Schwartz, for the Maatkit toolkit
From the creation of the most popular MySQL toolkit, Maatkit, to his outstanding and comprehensive blogging, we would like to recognize Baron Schwartz for his extraordinary contributions to the greater MySQL …

Diamond NotesApril 16, 2008Faster, Greener, Cheaper (Why every MySQL server will one day have a SQL chip) (http://www.paragon-cs.com/wordpress/2008/04/16/raj-cherabuddi-faster-greener-cheaper-why-every-mysql-server-will-one-day-have-a-sql-chip-uc/)

Following Marten Mickos, the second opening keynote at the 2008 MySQL Conference and Expo was by Jonathan Schwartz CEO and President of Sun Microsystems. Blog

His opening joke was about dinner with Marten, to which Marten said “You not going to get a keynote, unless you buy the company.”

So what was striking for me in his presentation “What is Sun’s Agenda?”

• There is no open-source phone yet, but that’s an industry that needs disrupting.
• Like the need for water or electricity, The Network Has Become A Social Utility.
• We want to work with the community, create greater innovation.
• The future, the price tag of Free, the philosophy of Freedom

I had a chance to meet Jonathan and Rich Green on Sunday …

Just a quick note from the MySQL User’s Conference - I hope all of you attending today will stop by and listen to a couple of talks I’m giving.  I’m first talking about building multi-TB data warehouses with some great help from the Infobright folks (10:50 in ballroom G) and then I’m going to present what you can expect from MySQL in the coming years (11:55 ballroom B).  Hope to see you there!

The good: male restroom has a baby changetable!
The bad: Arjen takes photo in a restroom ;-)
The ugly: My dear Americans, a koala is not a bear.

(This in contrast to the dropbear, which is natively Australian.)

I wish I had better notes, but I was enthralled by Jonathan Schwartz’s (CEO, President, Sun Microsystems) keynote. It was truly, very amazing an influential. He’s a great speaker, and very motivated (and I think he’s motivated a lot of the audience).

What is Sun’s Agenda?
Similar values, cultures, and similar dysfunction’s like any family.

The Texas Advanced Computing Center - 500 teraflop “open” super-comptuing facility.

“Computational science is the third mode of discovery, complementing physical experimentation and theory” — Daniel Atkins III, Director, Office of Cyberinfrastruture, National Science Foundation

The industry has valid, legitimate scientific purpose.

Improving society as a result of that understanding. What does it take to fuel developing economies? Or to make new scientific discoveries?

In Africa, a bank is giving mobile phones, to allow folk to …

Yes, late post... had to sort out and upload my photos first, so others beat me to it with their blog. My take...

So there was a MySQL Community Dinner Sunday night. People kept saying I organised it, but really I only did the initial blog post and set up a wiki page, the rest arranged itself: over 50 people came to the restaurant. And there was this guy in jeans/t-shirt with long hair lingering near the front door, who conspicuously looked like someone whose face I'd seen online somewhere. Jay and I went back outside to invite him in.



So, I had a very nice chat with Jonathan Schwartz, and I now reckon he actually understands Open Source and community. This includes his approach to the meeting and general demeanor. He got it right. Well done and thanks, Jonathan. Above is Paul Vallee (Pythian Group) talking with him. (I …

Live blogging from Marten Mickos’ (SVP Database Group) keynote at the MySQL Conference and Expo 2008.

Why did Sun acquire us?
The culture and the vision. Biggest match with Sun. “Network is the computer” and “Best Online Database”. Great affinity.

Its a 1 billion dollar vote for the LAMP stack.

Integrating better with OpenOffice.org, run better with Glassfish, and so on. Now, performance and scaling is number one, to make databases run faster. It will take time, but it will be very positive.

This conference itself is just as big as LinuxWorld was seven years ago.

An amazing photo of burning the IPO Prospectus - a bonfire in Santa Cruz. Getting rid of the past!

Scale exponentially, but keep the cost growth at a linear scale. World is flat - build your software in Russia, China, etc. and deploy elsewhere even. Fail fast? Remember to scale fast.

If the whole world is …

2008 MySQL Application of the Year
Social Network - MySQL powered with over 70 million active users (Facebook)
Mobile operator - Highly available LAMP platform at the heart of SMS, mobile and CRM applications (Virgin Mobile France)
eCommerce site - Built caching tier using MySQL for 4 billion transactions per day (eBay)

2008 MySQL Partner of the Year
Open source backup solution (Zmanda)
Expanding support for open source (Microsoft)
Leading reseller (Computercenter)

2008 MySQL Community Member of the Year
Code Contributor (Baron Schwartz)
Quality Contributor (Diego Medina)
Community Advocate (Sheeri Kritzer Cabral (again!))

…

Announced this morning is this year’s MySQL award winners.

2008 MySQL Application of the Year

• FaceBook - Social Network
• Virgin Mobile France - Mobile Operator
• eBay - ECommerce Site

2008 MySQL Partner of the Year

• Zmanda
• Microsoft
• Computer center

2008 MySQL Community Member of the Year

• Baron Schwartz - Code Contributor www.xaprb.com
• Diego Medina - Quality Contributor www.fmpwizard.com
• Sheeri Kritzer Cabral Communicate Advocate www.sheeri.com