MySQL Conference, Chapter 2

The team just finished our second successful MySQL Con. Many thanks to Marten & Zack and all the folks at O’Reilly that put on such a great conference.

This year definitely had a different feel, and of course that had a lot to do with Sun’s influence. It felt like it was almost a new event, a chapter 2 for MySQL, and its ecosystem of vendors and customers. There were more people – I don’t know exact numbers, but it felt appeared to be twice as packed. The exhibit hall was the same, but we took up a bit more space than last year and certainly there were much fancier booths – ours included! We even gave away multiple prizes this year – our fun 8-ball tshirts, and a couple remote control helicopters. Scott Baird and Mike Hogan were the lucky winners this year.

The one thing that hasn’t changed is our fit with the MySQL customers. This year we met several of our own customers and users face-to-face – including an entire legion of the Rackspace/Mosso guys. I had dozens of conversations with MySQL users managing the LAM-* stack, and showed them how Hyperic helps wrangle all the moving parts. Several of them were lined up when the exhibit hall opened the next day to tell me how their deployment went the night before! Very cool. We spend a lot of time talking to users – via the forums, email and phone – so to see their faces the next day after they deployed is a really cool experience.

And this experience wasn’t mine alone, Hyperic has grown quite a bit in the past year, almost tripling in size. So we had many more people from all departments hanging out on the floor and interacting live with users. Check out our own Mark Deadder, sales guru, wooing a small crowd while flashing his broken wing. (Minutes before, Mark fatally crashed the demo helicopter – perhaps if we could monitor it with HQ, the wing would still be attached!)

Thanks, MySQL – we’re looking forward to next year already!

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