Percona Live MySQL Conference 2013 wrap-up

The Percona Live MySQL Conference & Expo 2013 was April 22-25 in Santa Clara, California. This was Percona’s second year organizing the conference and we were very pleased with the event and the feedback (check the #perconalive hashtag for a sampling of the great comments such as this from Tom Krouper or this from John Goulah or this from Jeremy Tinley or this from SF MySQL Meetup).

There are so many people involved with putting on this event that it’s impossible to list them all. The conference would be meaningless, though, without great content. Our heartfelt appreciation goes out to all of the great keynote, tutorial, and breakout session speakers who presented insights into MySQL and MySQL-related technologies in over 110 sessions across four days. Special thanks go to our Conference Committee and, in particular, to the Committee Chair, Shlomi Noach, for working through over 300 submissions to create the final agenda of tutorials and breakout sessions.

I particularly enjoyed the Percona Live MySQL Conference keynote presentations this year. I heard very positive comments on the sponsor sessions including the talks from Simone Brunozzi from Amazon Web Services, Robert Hodges from Continuent, Brian Aker from HP Cloud Services, and Peter Zaitsev from Percona and the keynote panel on MySQL 5.6 and the future of MySQL in the cloud with all of these speakers as panelists.

I found the invited keynote presentations from Tomas Ulin of Oracle and Matt Aslett of 451 Research very insightful. My major takeaways from those talks were:

• Oracle is investing a tremendous amount of time and energy into development of MySQL with an engineering team of over 200 developers
• The release process is more agile, predictable, and effective than ever before thanks to adoption of the Oracle development discipline
• MySQL 5.0 and 5.1 were rushed and not properly tested but 5.5 and 5.6 were significantly improved and 5.7 promises to be more of the same

• The future for the MySQL community remains bright with a total projected market size of nearly US$1 billion within the next few years despite the buzz created by NoSQL alternatives
• Despite the buzz, MySQL is still much more common than even the most popular NoSQL database when viewing indicators such as inclusion in LinkedIn bios
• Oracle MySQL may diminish in importance within the ecosystem as alternatives including Percona Server and MariaDB grow in relevance

I invite you to read Matt Aslett’s summary of 451 Research’s database survey by viewing the research report “451 Research database survey points to MySQL gravitational tug of war” on the 451 Research website.

Unlike last year, Oracle sent both executives and technical staff to the conference so it included all significant MySQL server development teams (Oracle, Percona, & MariaDB). The Percona Live MySQL Conference was a gathering place for the entire MySQL community with the industry thought leaders presenting insights on technology, the market, and the community in a cooperative atmosphere. We run Percona Live MySQL conferences to bring together all MySQL users, vendors, and technologies. This was the first of what I hope are many such events where all members of the community, including Oracle, come together and connect.

If you could not attend the Percona Live MySQL Conference, there are a few options for accessing the conference content:

• Visit the Percona Live MySQL Conference & Expo 2013 website and go to the individual session descriptions to download the speaker slides (we depend on the speakers to provide their slides following the conference so please check in a few days if the slides you would like to access are not yet available)
• Visit the conference website and go to the individual keynote descriptions to watch the session recordings
• To access all of the currently available slides from one web page, visit the conference website and complete the Sessions Slides form
• To view all of the keynote recordings on a single web page, complete the Keynotes Recordings form
• To view the keynote recordings without slides, visit the Percona MySQL YouTube channel (please visit the channel often as we will be posting webinar recordings to this channel going forward as well)

As with last year, the Wednesday night Community Networking Reception was a highlight of the conference. A hearty congratulations go out to all of the MySQL Community Awards winners with a special thanks to Henrik Ingo and Shlomi Noach for running the awards program. The Lightning Talks ranged from informative to very entertaining – thanks to Guiseppe Maxia for acting as MC.

Special thanks go to our Director of Conferences, Kortney Runyan, for her monumental efforts organizing the event. Kortney could not have succeeded without the support of our multiple service vendors including Ireland Presentations, Carleson Production Group, Tricord, the Hyatt Santa Clara, and the Santa Clara Convention Center, to name just a few.

Please mark your calendars now for two upcoming Percona Live events. Percona Live London 2013 will be November 11-12 at the Millenium Gloucester Conference Center. The Percona Live MySQL Conference and Expo 2014 will begin on March 31, 2014 at the Santa Clara Convention Center and Hyatt Santa Clara. Watch for the call for papers for Percona Live London.