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The Call for Papers for the OpenSQLCamp 2009 is now open!

Posted by Lenz Grimmer on
OpenSQLCamp.org Logo

The OpenSQL Camp 2009 web site is now ready for business, I've updated various pages and added some more information about the call for papers. I've also set up a Twitter account (no way without one nowadays, right?), which might also play an important role in the voting/rating of talks later on (Giuseppe came up with an interesting proposal for that).

So we're now seeking your input! Let me quote from the web pages directly:

OpenSQL Camp is a free conference of, by, and for the open-source database community of users and developers. The first OpenSQLCamp 2008 took place in Charlottesville, Virginia, USA, November 14, 15, and 16 2008.

The OpenSQLCamp 2009, European Edition will take part in parallel to the Free and Open Source Conference 2009 (FrOSCon) on Saturday 22nd and Sunday 23rd August in St. Augustin, Germany. St. Augustin is located close to Bonn and Cologne.

Attendees of this conference are mostly open source developers and end users/open source enthusiasts. The FrOSCon organizers agreed to provide us with a "Developer Room" for both days, which allows us to organize our own subconference about Open Source Databases and related technologies. The goal of this event is to spread the word about the vibrant communities and large ecosystems around Open Source Databases and to educate the attendees about what alternatives exist to commercial databases. It is a place where people come to learn, to participate and to contribute. In other words, it's a great conference, and if you attend, it will be better.

We are seeking talks related to Open Source Databases of all kind, not just relational databases! Submission about tools and technologies related to OSS databases (e.g. connectors/APIs) are also welcome.

Submitting your proposals

We will use FrOSCon's Pentabarf conference coordination system to collect talk submissions and perform the organizing and scheduling of the talks. Please create an account there, if you don't have one already. Once you have activated your account via the email address you provided, please log into the system and create a new event. Make sure to select track OpenSQLCamp for your submission!

The deadline for submitting your proposal is Sunday, July 19th, 2009!

We will try to synchronize our schedule and speaking slots with the main conference program, to allow easy switching between sessions in the Developer Rooms and the main conference. So your talk should be put into the "Lecture" format and will last one hour (incl. Q&A).

We will try to perform the review and voting about the sessions in public, so the community and potential audience will have a say about which sessions they want to listen to. The details of how this will be done are still under discussion.

A number of database-related talks have already been submitted to the general FrOSCon program. The FrOSCon organizers will evaluate if some of these talks would be more suitable for the OpenSQLCamp track, but stated that they would be interested to keep some of the submitted sessions as part of the main conference program.

Some ideas and suggestions for submissions

  • An introduction/overview about a certain database project/product or related tool
  • A deeply technical and developer-centric session about some project's internals or an API to connect to a database
  • Providing "best practices" information for administrators

Any submission is welcome, as long as it has technical content and it's not a vendor pitch for a commercial program! Open Source is a prerequisite. The conference languages are German and English, so your talk could be of either language.

You should also read Giuseppe's advice on how to get your proposal accepted (it was aimed for the MySQL Conference, but the overall message still applies).
Baron Schwartz and Colin Charles wrote about the same topic - please keep these recommendations in mind when writing up your proposal! This makes it much easier for us to rate and review your submission.

Suggested projects

Some database projects and related technologies that we would like to be present at OpenSQLCamp include the following (in alphabetical order, without claim to completeness):

We plan to approach and invite these communities directly to participate and contribute.

MySQL University session about the new MySQL release model

Posted by Lenz Grimmer on
MySQL University

As you may have heard, we're switching to a new release model with the upcoming MySQL 5.4 release.

If you are curious to learn more about what will change in the way in which future versions MySQL will be developed and released, make sure to attend our next MySQL University session about The New MySQL Release Model on Thursday, 11th of June, 14:00 UTC. Tomas Ulin, our director of MySQL server development will go through the planned changes and would also like to get your input and feedback on these changes.

We're using DimDim for broadcasting this session, which allows you to listen to the audio while watching the slides with your web browser. You can comment and discuss via a chat function, too! We're looking forward to your input. To attend, point your browser to this address (Adobe flash player required).

The session will be recorded and posted on the MySQL Forge Wiki, so you can watch the presentation later as well. You can also provide your feedback on the release model by posting on the MySQL Internals mailinglist.

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