Lenz Grimmer's blog

It was ready for a while already, but now it's part of the official FOSDEM schedule as well: I am very pleased to announce the presentations and speakers of the MySQL & Friends Developer Room, which will take place this coming Saturday (5th of February) in Brussels, Belgium.

This year, our DevRoom will be located in room H.2213 (in the H Building), which has a capacity of up to 100 people and will be available to us from 13:00-19:00 o'clock. We have 12 sessions lined up, each will last 25 minutes (incl. Q&A). Without further ado, here's our schedule:

I would like to thank all speakers for their submissions and for the efforts they are willing to go through in order to make it to this event! If you happen to be at FOSDEM this year, please stop by and join us.

We also plan to head out for a meetup over dinner after the event. If you would like to attend, please register, so we can take you into account! (Thanks a lot for Kenny Gryp for organizing this meetup)

Just a quick reminder: the Oracle user groups of Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Russia are organizing a joint conference, the Harmony. It will take place on May 19th-20th in Helsinki, Finland. I've met the organizers at the IOUC summit that took place at the Oracle HQ this week and they would love to have some more MySQL content. So if you have an idea for a talk about a MySQL-related topic, please submit it! The call for papers closes on February, 1st!

Greetings from the University of Latvia in Riga, where the local activities related to Software Freedom Day 2008 are in full swing! We've just finished the introductionary talk "Software freedom in Latvia"  by Evijs Taube (LATA) and Leo Trukšāns (Linux Centre). Currently, Mark Callaghan from Google Inc. is talking about "Running a database when your business depends on it". We've more talks scheduled for the rest of the day and there also is an ongoing workshop about MySQL Performance tuning by Jay Pipes, which takes place in the University's Linux Lab. The full agenda is published on the MySQL Forge Wiki and I just published a first batch of pictures on my gallery. Enjoy!

As I mentioned some time ago, Software Freedom Day 08 will take place on Saturday, 20th of September 2008.

Coincidentally, the a large number of Sun/MySQL Engineers and other Sun folks will be in Riga, Latvia for an internal developer meeting around this day. To make use of this opportunity, we plan to give a number of sessions and presentations (in english) about various topics and to contribute to this global celebration of Open Source Software.

We've set up a Team Page on the Software Freedom Day web site for this event - the venue will be the Cafeteria Conference room in the basement of the University of Latvia, Riga, which can accomodate 60-80 people:

Raiņa bulvāris 19
Rīga, LV-1586

There is no entrance fee and you don't have to register - just come by and meet with us! There will be free coffee, refreshments and cake during the breaks.

In the evening, Sun will host a social event (incl. free drinks and food) in the SAS Radisson Daugava hotel, starting at 19:30:

Radisson SAS Daugava Hotel
Kugu 24, Rīga, LV-1048, Latvia
Tel.:+371 6706 1147; Fax: +371 6706 1101

We've set up a tentative schedule (45 minutes per session plus 15 minutes of Q&A), please check the Wiki for eventual last-minute changes!

11:00-12:00: MySQL/Open Source in Latvia (Evijs Taube, Sun Microsystems)
12:00-13:00: Open Source Business Models: how to build a business around free software (Speaker TBD)
13:00-13:30: Lunch Break / Ask the Guru your tech questions
13:30-14:30: MySQL in the Enterprise: Customer references, commercial offerings (Rob Young/Robin Schumacher, Sun Microsystems)
15:00-16:00: MySQL Community Overview: How to engage and contribute (Giuseppe Maxia/Jay Pipes/Lenz Grimmer, Sun Microsystems)
16:15-17:15: MySQL Performance tuning best practices (Jay Pipes, Sun Microsystems)
17:15-18:15: Maintaining your Open source project with Bazaar and Launchpad (Lenz Grimmer/Giuseppe Maxia, Sun Microsystems)
19.30: Social event: Software demonstration, buffet and free beer in the SAS Radisson Daugava hotel

We'd like to thank Leo Trukšāns, Michael Dexter and Georg Richter for their help and support in getting this event arranged and organized! I look forward to being there and help to spread the word about the stuff that keeps me occupied for more than 13 years now

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