The annual MySQL Conference & Expo will be held in this year on April 20-23 in Santa Clara, California with a double twist.

Not one, but *two* FREE additional MySQL Conferences are running at the same time, in the same hotel. If you on the west coast you can effectively get a free conference with many MySQL experts speaking at them. I am speaking at all three on three different topics.

The first announcement was the 2009 MySQL Camp organized by Sheeri K. Cabral – The She-BA in line with the O’Reilly approach of having a smaller un-conference within a conference such as with Web 2.0 NY last year.

However the big news was the Percona Performance Conference which was to be held in an adjacent location at the same time, is available now within the same hotel, the Hyatt Regency. In some regards, the Schedule is a better lineup then the official conference.

Percona is a major player in providing services to the MySQL eco-system, the failure to include Percona speakers such as Baron Schwartz was seen as a bizarre move. As a member of the MySQL Conference review committee, Percona submitted a number of presentations, and a number received high scores, more then sufficient in comparison to others accepted.

The MySQL eco-system is at a very fragile junction point, there are numerous independent versions, patches and forks now available, and the recent decision by Sun Microsystems, the trademark owner of the ‘mysql’ term to request Google to enforce trademark usage within Google Ad Words did not seem a productive move for a open source produce. Read more at
Hurting the little guy and MySQL Banned In Google Adword Campaigns. Combined with recent news that MySQL, may now become part of IBM, greater uncertainty may prevail.

These conferences will be unique opportunity to see and hear hopefully more details of what’s happening in the MySQL World.