It has been a long time since I’ve been to Manila, so we’re happy to have a meetup group there with the hopes of turning it regular. If you’re in the Makati area of metro Manila on Tuesday, September 11 2012 at 7pm, feel free to come to the first MariaDB/MySQL Meetup in Manila. RSVP and I hope to see you next Tuesday.

Learned a few things during my trip to the Philippines this time. Another country that amazes me. For the first time in history, Philippines attracted more foreign direct investments (FDI) than Malaysia, in 2010 (see: Malaysia’s FDI plunge).

Mobiles

There are a lot of people here using prepaid phones as opposed to postpaid phones. This is because the requirements of getting a postpaid account is quite tough (you need bank documents, etc. before they give you an account).

Many people carry more than one phone (or have more than one SIM). Smartphones face an uphill battle – they cost too much and there is generally no operator subsidy because everyone prefers prepaid accounts. It makes economic sense to have more than one SIM, as you’ll end up saving money (operators like to offer free text, calls, …

I will be in Manila, Philippines from September 13 – 17 2010. If you want to learn more about MariaDB, talk about MySQL, or just talk about open source in general, there are several opportunities for this:

• Y4iT 2010 (event is September 14-17): Thursday, September 16 2010, 1.50pm, the talk I will give is titled: MariaDB: The new M in LAMP. It was a popular attention grabber during OSCON, where we had a MariaDB booth, and this is a completely new talk, so should be fun to give in front of a huge audience.
• MySQL/MariaDB Meetup on September 16 2010, 4-6pm, at Bahay ng Alumni. This is a meetup, and will be informal, so good for Q&A. Manila doesn’t have a regular MySQL Meetup group, and we’re hoping to kick something off here. Much thanks to Rom Feria, who helped putting everyone together to …

In what I think must be MySQL’s first time in the Philippines, there will be a presence there next week. Well, its not the first time, but in terms of a community/developer event, I think it might be. The Sun Tech Days is happening from 17-19 June 2008, in the Shangri-La Makati.

Besides MySQL, expect great talks on NetBeans, GlassFish, OpenSolaris, and so much more. I’ll be the guy walking around in the MySQL shirt, so feel free to stop me and ask questions. Its exciting for me, as we’ve not really paid much attention to the Philippines, in terms of community growth (and the Philippines is in the APAC region!).

This isn’t a free event (its 1,000 PHP = ~USD23), and registration should still be available. If you’d like to meet up, and talk MySQL, shoot me an email at colinATmysqlDOTcom or …