On the road again - FOSSAsia

On the road again - FOSSAsia

It has been a few busy months until now. I have moved from Italy to Thailand, and the move has been my first priority, keeping me from attending FOSDEM and interacting with social media. Now I start catching my breath, and looking around for new events to attend. But before I get into this, let’s make a few things clear:

• I am still working for Continuent. Actually, it’s because of my company flexibility that I could move to a different country (a different continent, 6 time zones away) without much trouble. Thanks, Continuent! (BTW: Continuent is hiring! )
• I am still involved with MySQL activities, events, and community matters. I just happen to be in a different time zone, where direct talk with people in Europe and US need to happen on a different schedule.

I am already committed to attend Percona Live MySQL Conference & Expo in Santa Clara, where I will present a tutorial on MySQL replication features and a regular session on multi-master topologies with Tungsten.

But in the meantime, Colin encouraged me to submit talk proposals at FOSSAsia, and both my submissions were accepted. So, at the end of February I will be talking about some of my favorite topics:

• Easy MySQL multi master replication with Tungsten
• Data in the cloud: mastering the ephemeral

The exact schedule will be announced shortly. I am eager to attend an open source event in Asia. It’s been a long time since I went to a similar event in Malaysia, which was much pleasant.

North East Linux Fest and Open Database Camp - Boston, March 16-17 2013

On Thursday, I will travel to Boston, MA, to attend the Northeast LinuxFest, which includes also an edition of the Open Database Camp. The events will be at one of my favorite places on earth: The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a.k.a. the MIT. Every time I speak at an event there, I feel at home, and I look forward to be there once more.

The Open Database Camp is organized, as usual, with the formula of an un-conference, where the schedule is finalized on the spot.

There are a few ideas for sessions. I have proposed two of the topics I am most familiar with:

• MySQL 5.6 replication - features and usability
• Creating multi-master clusters with Tungsten replicator

In addition so seeing the MIT again, I will be also pleased to meet colleagues and friends from all over the place. If you happen to be nearby, let's get together!

Time to vote for MySQL sessions at FOSDEM

There is a room dedicated to MySQL at FOSDEM 2012. (Thanks to @lefred for organizing). The CfP has received 37 submissions, but there will be time slots only for 12 to 15 talks. So now it's up to the community. If you want to attend a particular talk, you should vote for it. Like in previous years, the selection of the talks is public. You can see the list of the proposals, with the instructions, which I repeat here. You can vote either publicly, using Twitter, or privately, by sending an email. Each talk proposal will be referred by the number immediately after the title in this page. This number indicates the order in which the proposals were received. In public, you should send a tweet to @opensqlcamp, indicating a maximum of 12 talks that you would like to see, in the order you like them. e.g. "@opensqlcamp #FOSDEM2012 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12 http://bit.ly/mysql_fosdem_2012" (adding the link will help others to find the page. In private, by email at mysqlfriends AT gmail DOT com, using the same method used for Twitter. Maximum 12 talks, in the order of your preference. In both cases, votes for your preferences will result in 1 point for each talk. In case of equal voting, we will assign 12 points to the first in the list, 11 to the second, and so on. We'll do the tally, and choose the most popular ones. Anonymous votes either by Twitter or email won't be counted. If you want your vote to count, make sure your twitter account has a recognized name (or known nick) on it. If your email address doesn't spell your name, please sign the message with your real one. DEADLINE: Your votes must be entered by January 8th, 2011.

Tungsten Replicator and MySQL Sandbox at Percona Live London 2011

I will be a speaker at Percona Live - London 2011, and I am looking forward to the event, which is packed with great content. A whopping 40 session of MySQL content, plus 3 keynotes and 14 tutorials. It's enough to keep every MySQL enthusiast busy. Continuent speakers will be particularly busy, as between me and Robert Hodges, we will be on stage four times on Tuesday, October 25th. Robert, at 10:15am: Teaching an Old Dog New Tricks: Tungsten Enterprise Clusters for MySQL, Bishopsgate Suite Robert, at 1:30pm: MySQL Parallel Replication in 5 Minutes or Less, Newgate Suite me, at 2:30pm: MySQL Replication outside the box : multiple masters, fan-in, parallel apply, Ludgate Suite me, at 4:30pm: MySQL Sandbox: a framework for productive laziness,Ludgate Suite This event feels good from the beginning. There are plenty of participants, many names from all over the MySQL community, covering large and small companies, experienced speakers, well known names in the MySQL engineering arena, and a wealth of topics that will make me feel sorry for not being able to attend them all. It's the usual dilemma that attendees have at this kind of conferences. Not so much at Oracle Open World 2011, where there weren't that many MySQL sessions to choose from, although it was great for networking.

Our talks

Robert will open the dances with Teaching an Old Dog New Tricks: Tungsten Enterprise Clusters for MySQL, a talk about Tungsten Enterprise, my company's commercial product, which is a professional managing tool for demanding companies. Robert, again in the afternoon, with one of the most amazing features of our open source product, Tungsten Replicator: MySQL Parallel Replication in 5 Minutes or Less. This is a feature for large replication systems where the slave can't cope with large data streams, due to the singled-thread MySQL slave. This talk will show how easy is it to plug Tungsten Replicator to a lagging slave, start parallel replication until the lag has been zeroed, and then hand over the control to the native replication again. Then it will be my turn, with a general presentation about Tungsten Replicator, the open source product. I like the idea of calling it MySQL Replication outside the box : multiple masters, fan-in, parallel apply. The reasoning is that MySQL replication, although wildly successful in the web economy of the last decade, it is also constrained by several limits, which Tungsten, acting outside the boundaries, sets free. This will be a quick intro to Tungsten and its new user-friendly installation, with a few demos. Finally, a classic presentation with some new content, on MySQL Sandbox: a framework for productive laziness. The news is that MySQL Sandbox now supports Percona and MariaDB builds. Again, some demos will be shown, with old and new features mixed together.

First Kosovo Free Software Conference

The first Free Software Conference in Kosovo is being held on August 29-30 in Prishtina, Kosovo. The newborn state, which declared independence in 2008, is growing in several ways. Besides economic and political growth, also technology is expanding. In this fresh environment, free and open source software can have an important role. The conference schedule includes local and international speakers.

I have a strong professional and personal relationship with Kosovo. Before and after the war, from 1998 to 2002, I was part of the OSCE-UN mission that helped the country in its first steps towards independence. And there I found my wife. Thus, it's with great pleasure that I will do a keynote on the theme of Freedom beyond free of charge.
And although the talk won't be about MySQL, it will nonetheless have a role in the story. Some of the freedom that was achieved during the UN Mission in Kosovo days is also due a combination of Linux, FreeBSD, MySQL, and many more free software projects.

Thanks GNU!

I met GNU for the first time fifteen years ago. I was working as a consultant in support of a criminal investigation, and as part of my duties I had to analyze a database hosted on a SCO server.
As often happens, the database was proprietary, and it did not include any facility to analyze data. I needed to build an application to explore the data thoroughly.
Most of my working libraries were written in C, which I used in other operating systems. So I contacted SCO and asked to buy a C compiler. I was told that it would cost me quite a lot (I was prepared for that, although not for the price they told me, but since I was going to expense it, I would not care), and that it would take one month to get the software. I did not have one month at my disposal. I needed to nail down the evidence for the investigation immediately. So I started asking around. I was doing some side work for my town university, and I mentioned the difficulty of getting the right software.
Then, a friend said: "You may use Linux." And this was the first time I heard the name. And I also heard about the GNU C compiler that looked like the right tool for the job.
So, instead of buying a software package, I bought a tape streamer, and transferred all the SCO server contents into tapes. Then I had fun installing my first Linux server (version 0.99c) and loaded all the SCO material into a free disk.
In less than two days, using gcc, I had in place all the analysis tools that I needed, and soon I delivered all the goods that my employer wanted.
That was one of the most satisfactory jobs in my career, and it had the side effect of leaving me with a server full of free software that did exactly what I wanted.
Since then, my relationship with GNU and Linux has evolved continuously, and by now I can say that GNU software has contributed largely to my professional growth, accomplishment, and satisfaction, from my consulting days to my employment with MySQL and Sun.
GNU is older than fifteen. It is in fact celebrating today its 25th birthday. It has been a bumpy ride. GNU has got much support and much debate. It is almost ubiquitous, but it is not as respected and recognized as it should be.
For my side, I am happy with all the GNU project has contributed to the evolution of the IT industry. Thanks, GNU. My professional life would be much different without free software!