Everybody has been writing lately of their likes of sessions and events for the MySQL User Conference, time for my 2 cents worth, with a twist.

I’ll be leaving early tomorrow at 7am (Friday my time), that’s Thursday 2pm Conference time. A taxi, two trains, two planes, and some 21 hours later, I’ll be at San Jose. In time to get a car and head to Davis California, a small town, where I have lived previously. After some catchup, I’m off to Lake Tahoe, (all up about 3 hrs from San Jose), for some R & R, and a weekend of Skiing, starting at Heavenly. No snow in the last few days, but 4 feet in the past week, and a bumper season to date. (The added benefit is it’s much cooler, I’m not a warm weather person, and my current home in Brisbane Australia is just too warm for my liking)

A lazy Sunday afternoon drive back, and ready for the MySQL User Conference starting on Monday. My presentation is nearer to the end on Thursday, so I’ll have plenty of time to soak in what’s on offer. Too much on the MySQL front to mention, performance and new features including clustering highlights, but also keen to hear Tim O’Reilly as I’m become more interested in Web 2.0, where it is and where it’s going. I see this philosophy of Services rather then Products, and highly user driven in features, functionality and content, in line with some of my principles and strong thoughts of Extreme Programming and Agile Development Methodologies.

I’ve also had positive comments and feedback from a number of MySQL colleagues of the past months, so it will be great to expand not only my intellect from the conference content, but my circle of new friends from the MySQL community. (And places in the world to visit in the future)