I’ve started working on a session on the practice of online ombuds ? especially as it applies to Free Software and Open Source communities. The session is based on my work in the Free Software, PHP, Mozilla, MySQL and Open Source communities - in particular, recent work (which I need to get back to) on the Open Source Initiative mailing lists.

So far, the session has been pitched to the following events: CommunityOne 2008 (waiting), FOSDEM 2008 (accepted), JavaOne 2008 (declined), Open Web Vancouver 2008 (waiting) and OSCON 2008 (waiting).

I’ll start posting alpha versions of slides and so on as they are ready. …

… or, “Making Event Attendance Count”

Late last year, I gave a keynote at paired Finnish conferences MindTrek and OpenMind. While the events were well worth attending, afterwards I spent a few bleak hours thinking about the actual costs of my attendance. If I had left Canada just for these events (which, thankfully, I didn’t) then a naive estimation of costs would have been something like this:

• ~20 000 km of air travel (Vancouver to Frankfurt, Frankfurt to Helsinki. Return.)
• ~7 000+ CAD of costs (flights, hotels, taxis, meals, time) (borne by a combination of eZ Systems, the Mozilla Foundation and the …

The Linux Business Campus Nuremberg (LBCN) presents annual awards for innovative ideas, well-considered concepts and promising business plans in the field of Open Source and Free Software.

The European Open Source Business Award is presented for innovative business concepts after detailed examination by an expert jury comprising LBCN campus coaches and selected figures from the venture capital scene. The annual award seeks entrepreneurs with innovative open source software business ideas which can revolutionize the markets and set new

This award was presented for the first time in January 2007 as a highlight at the Heise congress on ?Open Source Meets Business? (http://www.heise.de/open/news/meldung/84306).

The next award presentation will take place in the old city hall in Nuremberg on Wednesday, 23 January 2008.

…

I’ve come in late for Monty’s session - everything seems to be running a bit early - how odd.

Monty’s is covering mistakes in building communities - he’s talking about Dream Box and how they have let their community fragment so deeply. Then he talks about how MySQL has provided a strong central point for the development of the server.

At this point someone asks how much contributed code is in MySQL. Monty says very little in the core server (but mentioning the Windows port as a large and notable exception). He should mention that the non-server contributions are huge, but he gets sidetracked.

He heads back to his slides and start discussion stats from MySQL’s past - how many copies have been distributed (and estimated 100 million+ - about 40k downloads per day.) Lots and lots of books (about 250 in English, 200 in German, 200 in French, 50 in Japanese and 20+ in Spanish. Also in Chinese, Russina, Portuguese, …

After a break, Tommi Mikkonen of the Tampere University of Technology introduces Monty Widenius (who is, as most readers of this blog will know is one of the founders of MySQL AB)

Monty takes the stage wearing a suit - a nice suit - something I don’t recall having seen before.

He starts with an overview of the near past of DBMSs, talking about the state of databases around 1995, covering the state of proprietary and open products around this time.

He then quickly moves to discussing the rise of databases in web apps in the mid-to-late ninties. He’s covering a lot of metaphorical ground pretty quickly, perhaps too quickly for a crowd that may not be familiar with DBMS or web apps. If I had been thinking, I would have sat in the back of the room so that I could see how well-suited the content is the for the audience.

Monty has started discussing how the use of …

Summary

A good week - we made progress on the Internet as Public Good Symposium, which is the major task on my Mozilla plate right now. However, an unexpected event at another client meant that my Friday was a bit messed up. Will work on reviewing bugs and other missed responsibilities over the weekend.

Activities

• Worked with Berkman and Harvard Business School teams to help plan and present the Internet as Public Good Symposium.
  • Event wiki now online, but still private. - started putting in content. Will make public after panel participants have a chance to review.
  • Conf. call with available IPG team members to sort out logistics, invitations and distribute tasks.
  • Set up database to store info on who’s invited, who’s coming and so on.
• Minor bits of work helping Mozilla Corp. team plan their OSCON presence …

At last month’s Vancouver PHP Conference, local journalist Bruce Byfield gave me a quick interview about how I got involved in Free Software and Open Source. We chatted for a while about my time at MySQL, my bits of work in the PHP community and what I am currently up to. The interview turned into a profile for Linux.com that was published a few days ago.

I was a bit surprised to find that there have been a few anonymous trolls for the profile - I didn’t think that there would be any comments on the profile.

The Linux.com profile: …

Mandy and I were working together on some accounting for Foo Associates earlier today. We were scratching down notes in an old notebook when I ran across some old bits and pieces from my days at MySQL - random lists of tasks, flight schedules, doodlings and this little snippet of text under the hotel address for OSCON 2002:

Flying into Salt Lake City is amazing. The terrain looks unfinished, like the surface of a moon recently given life. The Great Salt Lake spreads out past the horizon and, when low enough, you can see the weird and wonderful patterns formed by salt, evaporation and algae spreading out like plumes of gas boiling off a star.

Later, driving past the lake with an acquaintance, I remember being nearly equally amazed at the “dead sea creature in the hot sun” smell that rolls off of it.

…

While chatting with a few SVN hackers at OSCON, it occured to me that MySQL is the Perl of RDBMS. Discuss among yourselves.

I wonder how many people will attend a session at a tech conference where the start of the description reads as follows:

Hey You! Yes, You! Manager, marketeer, sales professional: are you tired of 98lb weaklings kicking silicon in your face?

I am thinking this way because my friends at MySQL AB are putting on another MySQL User Conference - this time from April 23 - 26 in Santa Clara, California.

The Call for Participation went live a few days ago and, as always, I am proposing a session. I don’t really need to go, but I definitely have a soft spot for the event, as I chaired the first two MySQL UCs. Also, I had a good deal of fun working on the …