Lenz Grimmer's blog

I am happy to announce that there now is a MySQL User Group in Los Angeles, California! Their first meetup will take place on Nov. 19th at 7:30pm, Carl Gelbart will give a presentation about "Infobright, an Open Source Data Warehouse". The location has not been finalized yet, it seems: Sun offered them to choose between one of their locations in Universal City, El Segundo or Irvine. Thanks a lot to Joe Devon for stepping up and volunteering to organize this group, it's appreciated!

And if you are not able to join the LA MySQL User Group because you live somewhere else - take a look at http://mysql.meetup.com/ for a local MySQL User Group in your area! If there isn't one yet, have you considered organizing one by yourself? It's easy and fun and we will actually sponsor the Meetup.com fees for you! Also take a look at the MySQL Forge Wiki for some hints on how to create and run a user group (and make sure to add your own findings and experiences to these pages).

I had a nice chat with Kieran from Acquia at DrupalCon last week - we discussed how people running local Drupal user groups could expand their outreach into other communities, in particular into the MySQL User Groups. Scott Mattoon captured our conversation on video, which is now available on blip.tv:

Click To Play

The gist of what we talked about: if you are organizing a local Drupal User Group Meetup, check out http://mysql.meetup.com to find out if there is a local MySQL user group nearby. Chances are high that there is! And if not, you may find at least people in the area that would be interested in meeting about this subject. We also maintain list of user groups on the MySQL Forge Wiki. Consider extending your invitation for your next meetup to these folks as well! It's very likely that someone would be interested to learn more about Drupal. The same applies to other user groups, e.g. from the PHP community.

 

I personally run a MySQL User Group here in Hamburg, and I usually extend my invitations to a number of channels and mailinglists, including the local PHP, Perl and Linux User Groups. Every once in a while, a new member from these communities shows up.

So this thing works the other way around, too: if you are the organizer of a MySQL Meetup, have you thought about looking at http://groups.drupal.org/ yet? Maybe you will find a Drupal User Group in your very own town that you could invite to learn more about MySQL and exchange contacts? If you are looking for more tips on how to run and expand your User Group, I've created a page with useful hints about this topic on the MySQL Forge Wiki. Your feedback and additions are very welcome!

Are you a member of a local Linux User Group? Or a MySQL User Group? Or any other group that is related to open source software? Have you heard of the Software Freedom Day yet? This is a good opportunity to spread the word and showcase what OSS is all about to a wider audience. Some quotes from their Software Freedom Day website:

Software Freedom Day is a global, grassroots effort to educate the public about the importance of software freedom and the virtues and availability of Free and Open Source Software. Local teams from all over the world organise events on the third Saturday in September.
Software Freedom Day is a global celebration and education of why transparent and sustainable technologies are now more important than ever. With over 200 teams in 60 countries participating, it is a fantastic event to get your schools and communities involved in.
Go along to your local event or start your own event and meet a wide range of people, all working together to help ensure our freedoms are maintained by the technologies of tomorrow. Forming a Local SFD Team can be a fun, effective community building experience for your local user group and community.
Software Freedom Day is an outreach day where you can inspire newcomers with the values and quality of Free Software and communicate the broader issues of Software Freedom through a variety of activities of your choice. Is there something locally relevant to your country or region that you need to express? Is there some great local success story you want to tell? Software Freedom Day is your chance to stand united with the entire Free Software world with what you care about. Freedom.

Events will take place all over the world, organized by volunteers and local user groups. If you are interested to participate, here are some ideas and instructions:

• Instructions for forming a local team
• Registering your team on the Software Freedom Day site

A gentle reminder: next week, there will be two more stops of the MySQL Meetup Mashup Tour:

• Monday, April 7th, 19:00: Hamburg, Germany. We will meet in the meeting rooms of the local Sun Microsystems offices ( Nagelsweg 55, 22097 Hamburg). There will be two technical sessions: Giuseppe will talk about the MySQL Sandbox, Kay Koll will give a presentation about how to combine MySQL with OpenOffice.org. He will also describe the new report generator and give an overview over the future of OpenOffice. You can register for this event via meetup.com or Xing.com.
• Tuesday, April 8th, 17:00: Berlin, Germany. This event will take place in the rooms of the Berlin offices of Sun Microsystems (Komturstrasse 18a, 12099 Berlin). This time, Giuseppe will talk about MySQL as an open platform, Kristian Köhntopp will share a few hints he gathered while doing consulting work at customer sites. Please use Xing.com to register for this event.

At both events, colleagues from Sun and MySQL will be present to answer questions and discuss the acquisition of MySQL by Sun and all things Open Source. There will be free drinks and food as well!

We look forward to welcome users from the various related Sun products/projects, e.g. OpenOffice, Java, OpenSolaris, Glassfish or Netbeans. There is so much opportunity for collaboration and exchange of experience - I am very excited to be at both meetings to meet and talk with people from these communities. See you there! 

 

 

As Kaj already pointed out, the Sun/MySQL Meetup Mashup Tour will also make a stop in Munich, Germany this Friday. I will be there as well, we will meet at 14:00 at the Hilton Munich Park Hotel. Kaj and some other Sun people will join us a bit later. If you are in the area, make sure to stop by!

By the way, the Meetup Mashup Tour will make at least one more stop in Germany - I am organizing an event in Hamburg, Germany which will take place on Monday, April 7th (19:00). This was initially planned as another regular MySQL Meetup, but I offered to expand the scope a bit. We will now meet at the Sun offices, Sun will sponsor some food and drinks! In addition to the usual MySQL Meetup crowd, we expect participation from various Sun communities (e.g. OpenOffice/StarOffice, Java or OpenSolaris). As usual, there will be a MySQL tech talk (this time held by Giuseppe).

I look forward to this event - it will be exciting to mingle with the people from these other communities and to exchange experiences and make new contacts. If you live somewhere around the Hambur area and would like to participate, please RSVP via Meetup.com or Xing.com soon!

 

Just a short reminder: the Hamburg MySQL Meetup Group will meet next week, on Monday the 4th of February! As usual, there will be a MySQL-related talk - this time I will use this opportunity to practice my talk about "Performing MySQL Backups using LVM Snapshots" that I will present at the upcoming MySQL Conference & Expo 2008 in Santa Clara, CA. In addition to that I assume that there will be some questions about the acquisition of MySQL AB by Sun - I will try to answer these as good as I can. Looking forward to meet you next week. Please make sure to RSVP either via Meetup.com or Xing.com, so I can keep track of the number of attendees! Thanks!

 

 

Just a quick reminder for those of you located near Hamburg, Germany: on Monday, June 4th at 19:00 there will be our 7th MySQL Meetup. As usual, we will gather at the Chinese Restaurant "Ni Hao". This time, Sönke Ruempler will give a talk about the PHP-ORM-Framework "Propel". If you'd like to join, don't hesitate to RSVP via meetup.com or Xing.com right away! Thanks - see you there!

Yesterday we had our sixth MySQL Meetup here in Hamburg - we had a nice crowd of 21 people. Erick Dennis and Michael Otto from epublica gave a presentation about their experiences with MySQL and scaling it to keep up with the growth of the Xing.com web site. The talk was a rehearsal for their presentation at the upcoming MySQL Conference and Expo in Santa Clara - it went very well and we had good discussions and comments during and after the session. I took some pictures during the meeting, which are now available on my picture gallery. The meeting was rounded up with excellent chinese food, thanks again for the folks at the Ni Hao for hosting us! I look forward to our next meeting, which will take place some time in May. If you have a suggestion for a presentation, please let me know!

It's time for another Meetup of the Hamburg MySQL User Group! As for previous events, we'll meet on Monday, 2nd of April at 19:00 in the Chinese restaurant Ni Hao in Hamburg-Wandsbek.

This time there will be a presentation about "Xing/OpenBC growing pains", held by Erick Dennis und Michael Otto from epublica, the company behind Xing.com.

The talk will be held in english and is a rehearsal for their presentation at our upcoming MySQL Conference and Expo, which will take place from April 23rd-26th in Santa Clara, California. Please subscribe to our mailing list and RSVP, if you plan to attend the Meetup. Thank you!

I just learned from my colleagues in our Dublin office that Mårten Mickos, CEO of MySQL AB will be visiting them this coming weekend. They would like to take this opportunity to arrange a MySQL User Group Meeting, which will take place on Saturday, 27th of January, 18:00 o'clock in their offices:

MySQL Ireland,
Ground Floor, Misys Building,
Eastpoint Business Park,
Dublin 3
Ireland

This is your chance to meet and talk with Mårten and other MySQLers. There will also be free food and drinks and most likely a tech talk about MySQL (details will follow). So if you are located somewhere around Dublin, make sure to attend this event!

I've already sent out the invitation and announcements to various channels, but let me repeat it once more: the 5th Hamburg MySQL User Group Meetup is coming up on Monday, 5th of Februrary. So far, 15 people have already RSVPed, so it's going to be a fun evening again. If you have not done so yet, please register via meetup.com or Xing soon! I will give a 15 minute lightning talk about "What's new at MySQL AB", but we're still looking for another MySQL-related talk. If you want to share your experiences with MySQL or talk about a certain application or tool that has a relation to MySQL, please let me know! As usual, we'll meet a 19:00 at the Chinese Restaurant "Ni Hao", Wandsbeker Zollstraße 25-29, 22041 Hamburg.

Yesterday we had our fourth MySQL User Group Meeting here in Hamburg. We had 19 attendees and a very informative talk about Ruby on Rails/Active record, held by Stefan Saasen. Thanks a lot, Stefan! It was quite insightful and we had good discussions and excellent food afterwards. I look forward to our next meeting, which I have already scheduled for February, 5th! So save the date and RSVP!

Some pictures of our meeting are in my Gallery, a PDF of Stefan's talk can be obtained from here. Enjoy and see you next time!

Just to remind you: tonight at 19:00 we'll meet at our usual place - please see me previous announcement for details. According to the RSVPs I received, we should be around 20 people. Paul McCullagh will talk about the PBXT Storage Engine, so this sounds like a fun evening. See you there!

Yesterday I sent out the invitations for our third MySQL User Group Meeting in Hamburg, which will take place on Monday, 4th of September (which is the United MySQL Meetup Day). As usual, we will meet at 19:00 in the Chinese Restaurant "Ni Hao" - the food is excellent and we can use a separate room with a video projector there. If you happen to live around Hamburg, Germany and would like to join, please RSVP and join our mailing list!

Currently I am still pondering on the topic of the presentation - I suggested to invite Paul McCullagh to talk about PrimeBase XT, his transactional pluggable storage engine for MySQL. Would you think this is a suitable topic for a user group meeting? Let me know.

Speaking of MySQL User Groups: have you considered establishing one in your area yet? It's actually a lot of fun and MySQL AB will sponsor the meetup.com fees. In particular, I would like to encourage our MySQL Users in India to take initiative - there are more than 300 people interested in meeting other MySQL people in the major Indian cities like Hyderabad, Chennai, Bangalore and others. Step up and organize a meeting! We have collected some suggestions and hints on how to get you going on the MySQL Forge Wiki. Once you are up and running, make sure to add yourself to the growing list of MySQL User Groups!

We used to maintain a list of MySQL User Groups on the MySQL Developer Zone, which made it a bit inconvenient for new User Groups to get listed there. We've now moved the User Group list and some additional info to the Wiki on MySQL Forge (which also has received a facelift, thanks a lot to Colin and Ronald!). If you know of any other MySQL User Groups not listed there, feel free to add them! We are also looking forward to seeing more helpful hints on how to successfully start and maintain a user group. If you have any suggestions, make sure to include them - thanks!