Tonight’s Hamburg MySQL Meetup was a packed room of 60-70 people at Sun in Hamburg. The most I’ve seen @ a MySQL Meetup across three cities, countries, continents and years (my first Oct 5, 2004).

As expected most was in German. Pity, I would have liked to hear about Open Office and MySQL. Giuseppe, CCO (That’s Chief Cartoon Officer – I liked that one) gave in English a general review of MySQL. He highlighted the reasons “Why did Sun by MySQL?” including most popular, most dynamic and people with the Freedom to work anywhere.

Three points I would like to re-iterate for the community.

The MySQL Forge contains the Worklogs, i.e. what is going to be developed in current & future versions and the status of tasks in next version, say in review, in development, completed development etc. This is important because this gives exposure to the world what MySQL are indeed working on.
• The MySQL University each Thursday gives a free session that includes from an expert audio and visual slides as well as the ability to ask questions via IRC. I’ve attended one of these before and I’d like to see this continue to improve and grow.
• MySQL is open and values external contributions from the community. My new co-worker Paul creator of PBXT highlights this. I hope with additional time within the MySQL Community I can help to contribute and lobby for greater differentiation of MySQL Community and MySQL Enterprise in favor of the Community.

Giuseppe did however not talk about the MySQL SandBox as scheduled. I was even prepared having wanted to use his software previously. I’d downloaded and was all ready. I did manage to get a one-on-one lesson which I found most useful, and a few points of enhancements to consider.

I didn’t know there were so many MySQL people in the area, the following attending tonight. Lenz, Giuseppe, Kai V, Kay, Jan, Ulf W and Georg whom I’d not met before. Most I’ll see next week at the MySQL Users Conference.