Yes, I know. JavaOne is about Duke, the friendly mascot of Java technology. Created and maintained by James Gosling and all.

But MySQL also introduces Sakila to the JavaOne attendees. Sakila is also friendly, and the mascot of MySQL technology. The dolphin was chosen by MySQL founders Michael “Monty” Widenius and David Axmark, as was its name Sakila (which came from a naming contest in the early days).

Together with Giuseppe (in the picture above) and the rest of the MySQL Community Team, I will be handing out incarnations of Sakila (also seen above in the pic) at CommunityOne and JavaOne as follows:

• Monday 5 May 2008 09:30-10:45: CommunityOne General Session: Ian Murdock, Sun Microsystems; Panel: Matt Asay, Alfresco CNET, Mårten Mickos, MySQL, Jim Zemlin, Linux Foundation, Ted Leung, Python, Stormy Peters, OpenLogic; Rich Green, Sun Microsystems
• Monday 5 May 2008 12:25-13:20, Moscone South - Esplanade 307: S297794 Creative Programming with the MySQL Management System, Giuseppe Maxia, MySQL
• Monday 5 May 2008 13:30-14:25, Moscone South - Esplanade 307:
  S297257 Scaling MySQL, Scott Feldstein, Hyperic
• Monday 5 May 2008 16:00-16:55, Moscone South - Esplanade 307: S297136 Streamlined Web Applications with MySQL Cluster and mod_ndb, John David Duncan, MySQL
• Tuesday 6 May 2008 15:20-16:20: TS-7813 The MySQL JDBC API Driver, And Making It Do What You Want, Mark Matthews, Darren Oldag, MySQL
• Tuesday 6 May 2008 16:40-17:40: TS-7814 MySQL Cluster and Java Technology (and Python, and Ruby, And…), Monty Taylor, MySQL
• Tuesday 6 May 2008 19:30-20:20: BOF-5039 JDBC 4.1 Specification Overview, Lance Andersen, Sun Microsystems, Inc.; Mark Matthews, MySQL

Ah, and rumour has it that Jonathan may pop in during Giuseppe’s presentation!

Come, ask a smart question, interact, and get a Sakila!

Earlier, I noted that Julian Cash was to do some “light painting” at the MySQL Users Conference. And boy, did he do it!

He had a normal conference room, the Bayshore at the MySQL Conference, made a bit darker. Not pitch dark, but let’s say too dark to read. Then, he had us sit down on a chair in front of a neutral background, and took the pics with his camera mounted on a tripod. A picture took perhaps 30 to 60 seconds. After opening the shutter, the object was supposed to sit still. Julian then lit up our faces, in my case with blue and red light sources (”mini-torches”) which he moved top-down. Then, he sprinkled in some additional stray light in various colours.

I had asked for a picture of an angel (with halo, above — perhaps to be used at my own funeral?) and a devil (with red horns, below — perhaps as an alternate funeral picture, depending on my then-current CV?). Being the guinea pig for the setup, Julian spent over a quarter of an hour on the pics.

It was great fun, and I remain a great admirer of Julian’s.

Ah, and just to be clear: Note that the pictures are not digitally edited. They’re originals. I.e., the tricks work also with granddaddy’s analog cameras. However, seeing the pics on the camera display does help; in my case, the final pics were the fifth and sixths tries. So if you experiment yourself (and at least I will), do go with a normal, modern camera, mount it on a tripod, and use some creative sources of light.

If you click on the thumbnails below, you’ll see a number of other pics taken by Julian in that session.

References:

• Julian Cash’s Flickr set “MySQL 2008″: http://www.flickr.com/photos/juliancash/sets/72157604716923223/
• Julian Cash’s web site: http://www.juliancash.com/
• The Human Creativity Project: http://www.humancreativity.com/about.html

Who’s Barton George?

Barton is a colleague from Sun, who “looks after Sun’s relationships with the various GNU/Linux communities as well as our relationship with the FSF” according to his blog. I spent time with him at the MySQL Users Conference last week. He is a fun guy to be around, and isn’t as US-centric as his remark “Last year, my family and I emigrated from Silicon Valley to Austin, TX.” would lead one to believe.

Barton is also an avid blogger. And, on top, a diligent podcaster.

As for blogging, he has recent MySQL relevant entries on partying (with Mårten of MySQL, and with Jonathan & Rich of Sun at the Pre-Conf Community Dinner), and with pics from the UC.

As for podcasts, he has already posted four entries from the MySQL UC, i.e. interviews with Mårten Mickos, with Zack Urlocker, with Baron Schwartz of Maatkit & Community Award fame, and with Jennifer Venable of Red Hat.

The podcasts are about 10 minutes each. To help you decide whether you want to spend those 10 mins or not, his blog entries provide tips on the contents, such as this one about the Zack blog:

• Exceeding expectations at the MySQL conference
• The availability of MySQL’s 5.1 later this quarter and all the cool new features
• The GA of Workbench - a modeling tool for DBAs
• The morning’s keynotes (here is the video Zack shot)
• The challenges that Werner Vogels, Amazon’s CTO, faces
• Sun’s performance tuning team and how it helps MySQL shine
• Zack’s impressions of his first six weeks at Sun

Barton tells me there will be more podcasts posted soon, with Brian Aker of MySQL (now live!), and with Erica Brescia, CEO of BitRock (now also live!).

References:

• Barton George’s blog: http://blogs.sun.com/barton808/
• MySQL Conf Kicks off with Parties at Marten’s and Pedro’s: http://blogs.sun.com/barton808/entry/mysql_conf_kicks_off_with
  
• Pics from MySQL Conference ‘08: http://blogs.sun.com/barton808/entry/pics_from_mysql_conference_08
• MySQL Conf08 - Chattin’ with Zack Urlocker: http://blogs.sun.com/barton808/entry/mysql_conf08_chattin_with_zack
• MySQL Conf08 - Marten Mickos tells all: http://blogs.sun.com/barton808/entry/mysql_conf08_marten_mickos_tells
• MySQL Conf08 - My Interview with Jennifer Venable of Red Hat: http://blogs.sun.com/barton808/entry/mysql_conf08_my_interview_with
• MySQL Conf08 - Talkin’ to Baron Schwartz, Community Award Winner: http://blogs.sun.com/barton808/entry/mysql_conf08_talkin_to_baron
• MySQL Conf08 - Hangin’ with Brian Aker: http://blogs.sun.com/barton808/entry/mysql_conf08_hangin_with_brian
• MySQL Conf08 - Erica Brescia, CEO BitRock: http://blogs.sun.com/barton808/entry/mysql_conf08_erica_brescia_ceo
  

We had over 400 participants in yesterday’s MySQL-Sun event in China! Plus another 30 or so in the press event, happening in parallel.

Beijing, if nobody noticed, is preparing for the Olympics. Here’s the so called Birds Nest, that we passed several times on the way to various meetings — including yesterday’s event.

After initial linguistic difficulties, Larry Stefonic (MySQL VP APAC) found our way to the event.

This was the first MySQL-Sun event with a banner across a street!

Everything takes place in Chinese here. About as much as it’s Japanese in Japan. In Europe, we seem to give way too much way for English.

And to accommodate to the local situation, I gave my presentation (on MySQL-Sun integration) in Chinese. It was about 8 minutes, and I was happy to be several times interrupted for applause. And I didn’t say anything particularly smart — just read aloud my normal presentation, albeit in Chinese. Judging by the warm reception, that’s not an everyday gesture by Westerners in Beijing.

Now, after nearly three weeks on the road, I’m finally going back home. Hence the popular Chinese gesture: the Thumbs Up sign.

Thanks to everyone who arranged the event — especially, Scott Chen at Sun in Beijing, and Yoko Suga-san with the MySQL APAC team!

First of all, thank you, Jay Pipes, for setting up the Bayshore Room tomorrow between 10am and 2pm, for Julian Cash to take pictures of us!

Second, I am a big fan of descriptive subject headers. So I thought I could promote this memorable event even more explicitly than what Jay did in his posting “Yes, It’s That Time of the Year Again…“.

It’s Julian’s fault that I bought my 8mm Sigma lens. He has one, and takes weird pictures with it. As opposed to mine, his are good (yup, he uses fancy high-tech equipment like flashes, and white background paper — one day I’ll go there, too).

This is MySQL’s very own Brian Aker, as distorted by Julian.

The new thing Julian is doing is Light Painting. This means he creates pictures that look like they’ve been PhotoShopped through some strange filter, but they haven’t.

Let me quote Julian:

Light Painting

Light painting portraits are distinctive, innovative, and magical. The photos have a dreamlike futuristic feel and lend themselves to editorial work, advertising, book covers, and portraits of musicians.
I do not digitally manipulate the images. All of the effects are created simply by painting the subject and the surrounding area with colored light in a dark room while the camera shutter is open. This makes for images that feel especially organic and believable despite their surreal nature.

My subjects and I have a great time creating light portraits together. The style of the images is both unique and varied. My proficiency comes from 15 years of experience and experimentation with this type of photography. It also helps that I am an illustrator and painter as well as a portrait photographer. The process is fun and is a natural combination of painting and photography.

If there is a concept or emotion that you want expressed in the image, I especially enjoy using that as part of the creative process. I’m happy to work with an art director, or I can take the initiative to come up with a powerful and satisfying image.

So if you’re at the UC, do stop by at Julian’s event and have your picture taken!

References:

• http://www.juliancash.com
• http://www.HumanCreativity.com

Allow me to provide some relaxed photographic observations from this morning’s MySQL UC keynotes.

Warning 1: My view is distorted, by my favourite lens, Sigma 8mm.

Warning 2: I took the pics with a shaky hand in low light, so they’re not sharp ones, of the James Duncan Davidson type (the guy who takes all the great pics for O’Reilly).

On Johnny Good’s command, doors open, and the audience starts pouring in.

Zack Urlocker has challenged me in the James Callis Lookalike Contest (of Battlestar Galactica fame), but is himself clearly in the lead.

Journalist James Niccolai of IDG, taking a picture of Rich Green and Mårten Mickos (Note: I am a fan of recursion; it would have been even better if Zack had taken a picture of me taking a picture of James, Rich and Mårten).

Mårten Mickos talking to Sheeri Kritzer Cabral.

Jay Pipes’s head is moving so fast talking to Gina Blaber of O’Reilly, that it gets blurred.

James Duncan Davidson, one of my two favourite contemporary American photographers. The other one is Julian Cash, whose fault it is that I now have a Sigma 8mm lens. He takes weird pictures with his fisheye lens (way weirder — and, above all, better — than mine), and now he has turned his interest into something he calls light painting. Speaking of Julian: He is here. Do come to the Bayshore Room (on the Mezzanine level of the hotel) tomorrow between 10am and 2pm, and have your weird picture taken!

Me showing my favourite gadget (remember? the 8mm fisheye lens) to Jonathan Schwartz; Rich Green and Mike Zinner look suspicious.

Everyone has found their way in and we’re ready to go!

Mårten complains he got only 35 minutes, of which Jay had already burned 5 when Mårten got on stage.

Sheeri Kritzer Cabral’s video camera recording Mårten.

Mårten asked everyone in the audience who had reported bugs to stand up.

Mike Zinner wearing a MySQL Workbench t-shirt doing his great demoes, with an amount of superlatives that is more American than Austrian (prompting Mårten to mention that Mike could have an alternate career in Hollywood; perhaps, later, Mike could run for governor somewhere).

Ah, did you note that MySQL Workbench went GA and is ready for download today? At least Mike Hillyer did. And of course Patrik Backman did, but it would be strange if he didn’t, as he is Mike Zinner’s boss.

Mårten Mickos and his SunVisor Rich Green (Note 1: Rich Green doesn’t want Mårten to call him “boss”. Note 2: A “SunVisor” is a helpful person working for Sun Microsystems that adopts an employee of an acquired company to guide him through the first rough times with a new employer).

James Duncan Davidson taking pictures of award winners.

The Community Award Winners between Rich Green and Mårten Mickos: Diego Medina, Baron Schwartz, Sheeri Kritzer Cabral.

How bright (not)! I didn’t take any well-lit pictures of Jonathan. Perhaps because his captivating presentation kept me focusing on the content? But I did take this picture of the stage when Jonathan explained the world map in blue and green dots. The light blue dots depicted places downloading MySQL. And if you look really carefully in the top-left corner of this picture, you’ll see green dots. That’s the US East Coast, and Europe, which are eager at downloading the GlassFish application server for Java EE.

Today’s keynotes were concluded by Werner Vogels, Amazon CTO, on “The Power of Infrastructure as a Service”.

There’s a reason for Sheeri winning the Community Advocate of the Year award. Her activity level is hard to beat.

If you want a chance to beat Sheeri for 2009, you need to master multitasking. Not only is Sheeri listening to Mårten presenting his keynote. She’s preparing for some vlogging, i.e. recording Mårten’s presentation. And she’s blogging at the same time. And (although she doesn’t know it until three seconds after the picture was taken) she’s getting ready for getting up on stage to receive her 2008 award.

Ah, myself I’m only listening, and taking the odd picture. (Some of them very odd).

The very first UC related parties are over, and the Users Conference hasn’t even started!

The first one was Mårten’s traditional and well-liked MySQL staff party in his garden. The coolest and most community significant one was the MySQL Community Pre-Conference Dinner party, though, as advertised on MySQL Forge Wiki. So we dropped out of Mårten’s party at six, to meet with the community.

There were 48 registered people, and I think even more turned up. And some of the guys who turned up unregistered were from Sun.

Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz crashes the party and is surrounded by community members and MySQLers alike

Rich Green, Executive VP of Software at Sun, also surrounded by Community Dinner attendees

Given that we’ve got record number of attendees at the UC, I think I will have to speed up my discussions, as I got to talk properly only with Florian Haas and Philipp Reisner of Linbit / DRBD, with Kai ‘Oswald’ Seidler of XAMPP, with Marc Delisle of phpMyAdmin, with Volker Oboda of Primebase, other than the MySQLers, ex-MySQLers and Sun employees. Note to self: Blame the jet lag, as this is my second Sunday 13 April 2008 (having got up in Tokyo at 7, and left Tokyo at 16, and arrived in San Francisco at 9 i.e. 7 hours before leaving).

And it seems I also blew my opportunity of flying Decadence Airlines again anytime soon. I was going to handle the payment using Rich Green’s credit card (Rich had to leave a bit earlier), but the restaurant gave him back the credit card and left me with merely signing a receipt. This isn’t going to buy me any aircraft fuel on Netjets.

Footnote 1: Yes, I was teased all evening for the four days we flew “Sun’s Corporate Jet“, i.e. a rental airplane by Netjets from Dublin via Stockholm, Moscow, Izhevsk, Moscow again, and Kiev to Hamburg in March. But it was good, so I suppose I deserve some teasing.

Footnote 2: I googled for “Decadence Airlines”, and funnily enough, one of the links goes directly to http://www.netjetseurope.com/eng/welcome-to-netjets/. I think I will have to plead guilty to that one.

This week’s Wednesday was a big thing for MySQL and Sun in Japan:

• Over 300 attendees to our World Tour event in Tokyo
• Over 30 press attendees to the press conference in the morning
• Availability of nine-to-five MySQL Technical Support in Japanese announced
• Availability of MySQL Enterprise Monitor in Japanese announced
• Availability of MySQL Knowledge Base articles in Japanese announced

I had the opportunity to keynote 60 minutes on the MySQL Architecture of Participation, with the first 5 minutes in Japanese.

Minasama, Konnichiwa.
Konotabi wa, Sun Microsystems toh MySQL AB no Tougou ni tsuite, *Kigaru* ni *Oiwai* shi, *Hanashiau* tameno, Launch Event he, Youkoso Okoshi Kudasaimashita.

[the following four minutes deleted]

Against all hearsay advice for gai-jins, saying that foreigners should not attempt at joking in front of a Japanese audience, I also inserted a small attempt at making the audience laugh towards the end of my presentation:

Minasama wa, Mou, Owakari kato Omoimasuga, Watashi wa Nihongo wo *Hanashi masen*. Desukara, Minasama kara Question wo Oukesuru toki wa, honyaku shi, Eigo de, Kaitou sasete itadakitaito Omoimasu.

For those of you who are in the same unfortunate position as me, not to understand the quote, what I said was

As I’m sure you’ve noticed by now, I *don’t* speak Japanese, which means that I’ll rely on translations for understanding your questions, and I will reply in English.

My “limitations” in Japanese were sorely apparent by the time I mentioned that, and surely enough, there were a couple of Japanese chuckles in the audience.

The Q&A then started with an intensity of questions that I am used to from my native Finland, in other words, complete silence. After the first brave Samurai opening up the q&a session, the questions started flowing and were of the same type as elsewhere: What are our plans for storage engines? What does the Sun integration mean? Will Sun change us? Will we stay open source? (Yes, we will).

Thanks to Yoko Suga-san, and everyone at MySQL KK and Sun KK who made this great event such a success!

References from MySQL:

• Yoko Suga’s blog: http://blogs.mysql.com/teamapac/
• Our announcement (in Japanese): http://www-jp.mysql.com/news-and-events/news/article_1492.html

References from Japanese press:

• http://opentechpress.jp/enterprise/08/04/09/1352214.shtml
• http://techtarget.itmedia.co.jp/tt/news/0804/09/news05.html
• http://www.computerworld.jp/news/sw/103769.html
• http://itpro.nikkeibp.co.jp/article/NEWS/20080409/298437/
• http://itpro.nikkeibp.co.jp/article/NEWS/20080409/298444/
• http://itpro.nikkeibp.co.jp/article/NEWS/20080409/298555/
• http://release.nikkei.co.jp/detail.cfm?relID=186589&lindID=1
• http://www.nikkeibp.co.jp/news/manu08q1/567758/
• http://it.nikkei.co.jp/business/news/release.aspx?i=186589
• http://enterprise.watch.impress.co.jp/cda/software/2008/04/09/12665.html
• http://japan.internet.com/busnews/20080410/5.html
• http://journal.mycom.co.jp/news/2008/04/09/032/
• http://japan.zdnet.com/oss/story/0,3800075264,20371091,00.htm

Right after Paris, Giuseppe and I turned our attention to Milan, Italy. The flight from Paris Roissy to Milan Malpensa (EasyJet, 57 euros/PAX) turned out to be clearly cheaper than the taxi ride from Malpensa to Sun’s Milan office, where we had the meetup.

In time before the meeting, we had some HR, integration and general planning discussions with Sun. One of the most difficult aspects turned out to be to pick the right form of coffee, as the number of alternatives in the coffee machine exceeded anything observed before.

Luckily, I’m a tea drinker, where the challenge limited itself to finding out how to change the default of adding sugar to drinking the tea straight.

The event saw over 100 participants. It was very competently arranged by Emanuela Giannetta, hosted and supported by Franco Roman and many other Italian Sun people — including Stefano De Toni who presented the GlassFish Application Server and NetBeans platform/IDE projects.

My Italian Meetup-Mashup keynote also marked a first in what I plan to be a regular thing: That I present the key messages, i.e. the first 4-5 minutes, in the local language, even if I don’t speak the language but just pretend to do so. Giuseppe kindly translated my Paris presentation from French to Italian, and we then walked through the difficult passages to pronounce:

Signore e signori, benvenuti a questo incontro informale per celebrare e discUtere l’acquisizione di MySQL da parte di Sun Microsystems.

Mi chiamo Kaj Arnö, e sono il Vice Presidente per la Comunità di MySQL. Vengo da Monaco, ma non sono bavarese. Sono Finlandese come Monty, il creatore di MySQL e molti altri colleghi. Durante l’integrazione con Sun, ho anche il ruolo di Ambasciatore di MySQL, cioè vIsito tutti gli uffici Sun e spiego cos’è MySQL.

[the remaining 90% deleted for your benefit]

You might nOtice some non-standard capitalisAtion of a few words, denoting where to put the stress. How else would a stupid foreigner like me know it’s discUtere and not discutEre?

I didn’t get thrown at with raw eggs and tomatoes (perhaps the audience was just unprepared) so until further notice, I will continue the practice of presenting the beginning of my keynotes in the local language.

References:

• ATLAN66 report in Italian by Eva Balzarotti & Maria Pia Izzo: http://www.atlan66.it/news.htm
• Giuseppe Maxia’s blog entry: http://datacharmer.blogspot.com/2008/04/working-with-sun-love-at-first-sight.html