The response to a good book review.

I read many years ago now Maverick written by Ricardo Semler. It was a brillant book,that I greatly enjoyed. This book is based on what Ricardo did when he took over his father’s company in Brazil called Semco. His book was on the top sellers list for a very long time.

So what did he do that was so great. “Semco has let his employees set the terms of their employment: hours, wages, even their office technology.” Of course one line can’t describe the book.

I recommended this book to a friend, and then I eventually bought him a copy some months ago. Well, this evening in a meeting I’d found that he actually got around to reading Maverick. He was so impressed he bought 9 copies to give to other business collegues. You can’t get a better response to a good book review then that.

If you have never heard of him, Google has some matches 90,000 matches for Ricardo Semler.

Tagged with: General

Building your first VillageSQL Extension with AI skills

This is a technical walkthrough of the vsql-extension-builder recently released May 28 at Percona Live Bay Area 2026 and found at https://github.com/villagesql/villagesql-skills . Highlights Install VillageSQL pre-built binary first Install SDK with pre-built binary second Install the skill Run it with your AI tool The output can be found at https://github.

Why using production workloads over simulated workloads is critical

AI-Assisted SQL Tuning Last week in his keynote speech at Percona Live Bay Area 2026 , Andy Pavlo presented Databases: The Final Boss of Agents and provided some useful insights into query optimization of simulated workloads leveraging AI.

Improving your MySQL Security Posture Presentation

At the MySQL BR Conference 2025 I had the opportunity to speak about Improving Your MySQL Security Posture. You can find a copy of my slides on my Presentations , and a Portugese (Brazil) translation.