A Missed Opportunity?

Posted in: Technical Track

I am reading the announcement about the Percona MySQL event in place of the O’Reilly.
What I see and what I feel is that the whole MySQL community, including Oracle, Percona, SkySQL,MariaDB and any other company doing business with MySQL have lost a good opportunity (so far).

For many years we have seen and heard comments about having this event more focus on users, and less bound to a single company. Now what? We will have a single company promoting the event. I don’t care if it is done by Percona instead Oracle or SkySQL, actually I like all of them and I knew personally almost all of them as well.

What I care/like is to have this event NOT limited to a single company.

There was an attempt to have it organized in a different way (see Giuseppe and Sheeri comments), but then what?

I remember a long time ago (1983) when I was in Delhi and we have to run from the waiting room to the aeroplane in order to take a sit, that because the lack of coordination at the airport.
Are we in the same situation today?
The one that will move faster will get the place and the other will need to find a place after?

As a user I don’t see that as a good thing, lacking in coordination, not be able to find a way to agree on how to do things, is never good.
As someone coming from MySQL I don’t like it at all, where is the spirit of cooperation we had in MySQL is it completely gone?

After the MySQL diaspora, I have seen many time personal interest (and company interest) take over the common benefit, but at the end what happened is that we have now a potentially stronger MySQL community.
This because we need to see all of us (Oracle, Percona, SkySQL, MariaDB and any other related like Pythian where I am currently working) as competitor but also as part of the same “community”, we can compete for crumbs or we can compete for excellence, to be better. Wondering how many others community have such huge opportunity.

So I am really wonder what happened here? Are all of us so weak that we are not be able to organize an event as the MySQL conference?

I think that, as already happened in the past, all the actors would like to see this event happening as an OPEN and Independent event, focus on users and … on business as well.

Said that, is Percona acting bad? No I don’t think so, they are moving ahead, period. It is in their DNA, acting, do things.

Are them not following their own previous statements? Is too early to say that, but what I see here is also an incitation to all others to move on, and act.

What I really hope is to do not have in the next feature a SkyMySQL MySQL event, a MariaDB MySQL event and so on.

What I hope is to see all of us converging and helping each other in having this event as a common event and not as a single company.
Percona did the first move, but this doesn’t prevent all others to join and have it to become a MySQL Community event. It will be great to recognize to Percona the role of initiators, but it would also be great to see Percona able to modify his position in respect to the event, from single company event to community open event.

As always I am a dreamer, and my dream here is that $$$ are less relevant than the great work we can do all together.
Despite the fact that doing it as single company will awaken less interest (also in $$$) then doing it as community event.

Remain one big question mark … who will be in? Who is really ready to start putting effort and money to have a successful MySQL global event?

Will be nice to see statements of real commitment coming in from all actors.

Disclaimer

What I wrote is my own thinking I am writing in my own blog, and also if my employer does not censor my writing, this do not means that my writings match the company official opinion.

Great MySQL to every one.

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About the Author

With nearly three decades of experience, Marco is still fascinated by technology and its evolution, but his passion has since evolved with an emphasis on the human interaction — whether he is helping to develop his team’s capabilities or his relationships with his clients, Marco enjoys helping people personally and professionally. His colleagues and clients can always rely on him to “find a needle in a haystack” when others are unable to identify a solution. He credits this ability to using reverse brainstorming — starting with the root of an issue and working back. When he isn’t working, Marco can be found spending time with his family and playing sports.

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