Community Matters

Building on community

Percona is very committed to open source database software. We think of ourselves as unbiased champions of open source database solutions. With that, we also carry a responsibility to the open source database community – whether MySQL®, MongoDB®, ProxySQL or other open source database technology. We’ve seen that, and taken action by hiring a Community Manager.

That’s me. Which is great… For me!

And my job, in a nutshell, is to help to make our community great for you. By building on the good stuff that’s been done in the past and finding ways to do more.

The common thread tying the community together is the sharing of information, experience, and knowledge. Hundreds of you have taken part in Percona Live or Percona Live Europe — thank you for that! Props if you’ve done both. If you’ve proposed a paper (selected or not), presented a session, given a tutorial, staffed a booth or sponsored the event – kudos!

Maybe you’ve benefited from or run sessions at a Percona University (the next one is in Kiev in November and it’s FREE). Or caught up with Percona staff at one of the many tech conferences we attend during the year.

You might have used our code, added to our code, spotted and logged bugs, given feedback or requested new features. Helped out other users in forums, written to question-and-answer sites like Stack Overflow. Maybe you’ve blogged about using Percona software on your own blog, or looked for help on the Percona Database Performance Blog. You might have recommended our software to your company, or a colleague, or a client or a friend. Or even a stranger. Mentioned us in passing in conversation. Read our e-books, watched our webinars, shared a link or reached out to Percona via social media.

All excellent, valuable and much-appreciated contributions to the community.

Ways you can join in

Have a think about these opportunities to shine, share and make the Percona community best-in-class.

• Take part in our forum: we really try to keep up, but there are always more questions than we can address. It’s easy to think of the forums as a support queue but honestly, we are MORE than delighted when we have help from you.
• You have a passion for a particular subject, or maybe an interesting project to share. How about proposing a webinar or blog post? Contact me if you are interested.
• If you haven’t yet done it, make 2018 the year you attend Percona Live. If you’ve done it before, do it again – network with old friends and make some new ones. Get a new t-Shirt. Enjoy the company. The warmth of the welcome and the generosity of the knowledge shared made a big impression on me in Dublin, I’m convinced you’ll find the same.
• In-depth knowledge or hardcore learning on-the-job? Don’t forget that the call for papers for Percona Live is opening soon and that speakers get free attendance at the conference. It’s a competitive call, but you’re up for that right? Right! 
• Don’t want to “do stuff” on the Percona site? Maybe contributing to code or working on the question-and-answer sites is more for you. Or maybe you have a blog already and write about our software and how to use it. If so – thanks again, and please let me have the link!
• If you haven’t already, don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletters to get early warning of upcoming webinars, and the latest tech and community news

Have you thought about joining Percona? We’re hiring! Don’t forget, too, that all the contributions you make to online communities – Percona or not – really pay off when you want to demonstrate your knowledge and commitment to future employers or clients. A link is worth a thousand words.

What do you think?

Interested? Ideas or comments? Things you think we should do better? Things that you think are great? Things we used to do that were great and you miss? Things that others do and you wished we did? Things that … well, you get the idea!

Get in touch, or just get stuck in. You might find it rewarding*…

free to email me or message me on Skype.

*I have keys to the swag box … 😉