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As the MySQL track coordinator for Collaborate and having attended and spoken at the O'Reilly MySQL conference in previous years, I have my own feedback about this year's Collaborate.  This post goes through why I planned the track the way I did, what really happened, and my recommendations for the future.

The summary comes down to this:  The MySQL track was extremely successful, considering the goal was to educate people.  The low audience turnout caused speakers to feel it was not cost-effective.  My recommendation for the future is to continue to have MySQL content at Collaborate, but until signs point otherwise, make it more cost-effective for the speakers.

For those who want ALL the details, here goes!

Planning Collaborate 11 MySQL Content

In planning for MySQL at this year's Collaborate, we had little information.  The attendance at the MySQL sessions at Collaborate in 2010 was high.  There were very few sessions (I believe it was 4 or 5 sessions total throughout the week) and the ones that were in the program guide had very high attendance, about 75-100 people.  As for other data points, Kaleidoscope 2010 had one room for the MySQL track, and had about 10-20 people in each session. Kaleidoscope is a smaller conference overall, though.  The last piece of planning information I had was that IOUG did not dictate how many rooms the MySQL track could have.

So my expectations were based mostly on my assumption that there would be 100 or more folks in the existing Collaborate community who would attend MySQL sessions.  Given that, I wanted to have a few choices each time, and as best as possible tried not to schedule similar talks at the same time -- for example, I tried not to schedule two talks on performance tuning at the same time.

We had a lot of excellent speakers, so I figured with 3 or 4 choices each time, there would be good attendance as well as happy attendees getting a good amount of information.

What Really Happened

At Collaborate this year, there were about 40 attendees overall who went to MySQL sessions.  There were an additional 20 or so speakers.  This means that that the largest possible audience was 60 people.  Most of the presentations accepted were from rock-star speakers, so of course it was disheartening for those presenters (myself included) to speak to a room of 10 people.

There was no way to predict this, unfortunately.  The good news is that the feedback from attendees is that the information was good.  The bad news is that speakers (myself included) spent a lot of money and time away from our day jobs, only to teach 40 people.

The MySQL track was extremely successful, considering the goal was to educate people.  The low audience turnout means that speakers are feeling it was not cost-effective (cost being time and money) for the number of people that were reached.

So what is the future of MySQL at Collaborate?  I believe there's an audience for MySQL at Collaborate, and that through the years that audience will grow.  For next year's Collaborate I would recommend making it more cost-effective to the speakers by having 2-3 choices per session, for 1 or 2 days of the conference instead of having all the MySQL content evenly spread over the 5 conference days.

Having the content as almost a "mini conference within a conference" means that speakers do not have to spend an entire week away from their day job, and they do not have to pay for an entire week at a hotel.

You may have noticed that I have not said that the O'Reilly MySQL Conference being the same week was a drawback.  It surely was, for speakers who chose one or the other as well as for speakers who went to both.  However, just on cost-effectiveness alone, even without another conference at the same time, Collaborate was not a success from a speaker's point of view.

Case in point:  The cost for me to attend Collaborate totalled $2,150, which comes out to having spent over $50 for each attendee I reached, plus the 5 days away from my own clients.  If Collaborate were held in October, the numbers are still not cost-effective.  However, if I had only spent 2 nights, the cost would have been around $600, which is much more cost-effective ($15 per person that was reached, and only 2 days away from work).

On Sunday at Collaborate 11, I delivered a 6-hour presentaton on "Configuring MySQL for Optimal Performance".  While there was a lot of discussion and points made that are not captured in the slides and their notes, if you want to download the slides/notes there is a 1.0 Mb PDF at http://bit.ly/iiKjoJ.

Also, you may have noticed that PalominoDB's website features a new "Community" section, which includes a Presentations page where all our slides and videos can be found.

So, you are going to Collaborate (or thinking of going) and you wonder if, as a MySQL beginner, there will be enough content for you. Or you wonder if there will be too much, and how you will ever decide on what to go to. I have put together this list of what I would recommend to a MySQL Beginner at Collaborate.  The schedule is still being tweaked at this point, so there may be great sessions being added or times may be changed, but I will try to re-post closer to the event.  The most up-to-date schedule is at the Agenda Builder - to see only MySQL content, choose MySQL in the "Product Lines" section.

Note that a few weeks ago Sarah Novotny and I did an OurSQL podcast about Collaborate, including information on how to get $200 off the registration price. The information there is very different from what is in this blog post, so I would recommend listening to the podcast and reading this post.

Collaborate has a Deep Dive Day on Sunday, April 10th from 9 am - 3 pm. There is one MySQL deep dive, which I am presenting, on Configuring MySQL for Optimal Performance. This is a day-long, intensive session, so it may not be appropriate for someone who has never used MySQL before, but a MySQL novice would certainly learn plenty.

Whether or not you attend the Deep Dive, I would recommend that anyone interested in MySQL come to the MySQL Community Dinner East at Maggiano's Little Italy at Pointe Orlando on Sunday, April 10th at 5 pm. There is no fee for the event, but it is a pay-your-own-way dinner. We do ask that you RSVP at http://2011mysqlcommunitydinnereast.eventbrite.com/ so that we can give the restaurant a headcount.

I have found that the community dinner lets you meet colleagues in an informal manner, and it is great to be able to meet someone on Sunday that you will see later in the week. It is a way to start the conference off by getting rid of that "I do not really know anyone" feeling.

Monday, April 11th

Tomas Ulin, Oracle's Vice President of MySQL Engineering, gives a keynote on Monday morning from 9:15 am - 10:15 am about The State of MySQL. From the conference description, "Ulin discuss how MySQL fits into Oracle's ecosystem, specifically with Oracle database. He will highlight Oracle's continued investment in MySQL, and offer you a glimpse into product enhancements and focus areas for MySQL in the upcoming year. This session will set the tone for where MySQL product development is headed."

Next up on the schedule is the 10:30 - 11:30 session. For a beginner interested in technical details, I recommend MySQL Performance Basics, given by Baron Schwartz.  For a beginner wondering about where to run MySQL, do not miss Jonah Harris of myYearbook.com speaking about Oracle or Open Source? Why not both?

During the quick tip session from 11:45 - 12:15, meet a MySQL guru and ask questions during the "MySQL Office Hours". This has not yet been put on the schedule, but it will show up soon.

After lunch, go to the keynote by Kaj Arnö about MySQL: the Ecosystem, the Product, where Kaj explains the culture of the MySQL Ecosystem.

From 2:30 to 3:30 pm, the choices get more difficult. Replication is one of the cornerstones of MySQL architectures, so I definitely recommend Oracle's own Mats Kindahl's presentation on MySQL 5.5 Replication. However, Percona's Matt Yonkovit is presenting Very Large Databases In MySQL: an Alterntive Energy Case Study, which is an excellent presentation showing how large amounts of data are collected from sensors and analyzed using MySQL.

MySQL is popular because it is fast; Oracle ACE Director Ronald Bradford gives his brilliant The most common MySQL scalability mistakes and how to avoid them so you can keep your database fast. However, beginners must know about backups and security, so I would also recommend seeing Lenz Grimmer speak about MySQL Backup and Security - Best practices.

Monday evening is the Welcome Reception in the Exhibitor Showcase from 6-8 pm.

Tuesday, April 12th

Sessions start bright and early on Tuesday morning, so if you are awake at 8 am I recommend seeing Morgan Tocker speak about Using Cacti to Graph MySQL's Metrics. At 9:15 continue to learn from Matt Yonkovit, who will give his 5 Minute MySQL DBA: Troubleshooting and Optimizations for UNDBAS where "un-DBA's" and beginners alike will learn how to laser focus on the pain points.

At 10:30, you will have had enough coffee to see Pythian's Alex Gorbachev explain the process of Building 2TB Highly Available MySQL Database. During the quick tip session from 11:45 - 12:15, meet a MySQL guru and ask questions during the "MySQL Office Hours".

After lunch, there is over an hour dedicated to the Exhibitor Showcase, so there is no need to be worried about finding time to see the exhibitor booths.

At 3:15 pm, MySQL beginners will have a hard time choosing between Alex Gorbachev explaining Monitoring MySQL with Oracle Grid Control and Oracle engineers Lars Thalmann, Luis Soares and Mats Kindahl giving an Introduction to MySQL Replication.

For the last session of the day, I recommend a change that has not yet gone into the online schedule - I will be doing a session on Converting tables from MyISAM to InnoDB.  I will put the link to the session here when it is available.

On Tuesday evening, the Exhibitor Showcase hosts the Happy Hour, which is a great place to continue conversations and unwind after a day of filling your brain. This also marks the halfway point of the conference, with 2 full days of sessions behind you and 2 days of sessions to go!

Wednesday, April 13th

Make sure you are awake at 8 am, because beginners will have to figure out if Sharding Techniques for MySQL by Oracle Engineers Charles Bell, Lars Thalmann and Mats Kindahl is more appropriate for them, or if it would be better to learn about Toolkits for MySQL Users: Aspersa and Maatkit by Kenny Gryp of Percona. From there, beginners should head to Morgan Tocker's MySQL Bootcamp on Optimizing MySQL Queries By Example.

At 10:30 am, I recommend either MySQL Enterprise Backup to learn about the official backup solution for MySQL, or MySQL Troubleshooting 101 by Garmin's Ben Black and Mark Filipi.

During the quick tip session from 11:45 - 12:15, do not miss the Introduction to the InnoDB Storage Engine for MySQL.

After lunch, a beginner who deals more with query writing/optimization should go to Peter Gulutzan and Trudy Pelzer's MySQL, Oracle and ANSI Syntax, which shows how MySQL's SQL syntax is different from Oracle and the ANSI SQL syntaxes. Those who are more on the administrative side of things should not miss Giuseppe Maxia's Dealing with Large Data with MySQL Partitioning and Replication.

You will not have time for a nap in the afternoon; for beginners in dual environments, Oacle's Luca Olivari explains Integrating MySQL and Oracle - The Journey of a Transaction. Of course, for those who want to learn about the new ways to authenticate to MySQL, including how to develop their own plugins, Oracle's Georgi Kodinov explains it all in an Introduction to MySQL External Authentication.

The last session of the day on Wednesday will be well-spent at Mark Riddoch of SkySQL AB's MySQL Bootcamp When to Choose MySQL - Real Examples of Database Platforms.

Hopefully you have not been too tired out by a day of learning, because Wednesday evening is time to party it up at the COLLABORATE 11 Party at Universal Studios Islands of Adventure. I am looking forward to have the run of a huge theme park while it is closed to the public. I probably do not need to even explain my excitement about seeing The Wizarding World of Harry Potter™, but I am also excited to see Jurassic Park® and Marvel Super Hero Island® (I have special affinities for the Incredible Hulk and Spider-man). There are extra tickets available and special children's prices --  if you are bringing your children to this event, there is plenty of Dr. Seuss related fun.

Thursday, April 14th

Educational sessions start a bit later today, so it should be a bit easier to drag yourself out of bed. It is completely worth it to learn about Running Multiple MySQL Instances on a Single Server. At 9:45, I expect beginners will fill Introduction to Using MySQL in Cloud Computing. The last session for Thursday is before lunch, and I will be giving a talk about Nagios Plugins for Monitoring MySQL, because it is essential to monitor MySQL to be aware of problems.

Again, please note that the list above is not comprehensive. It is simply a list I put together of the sessions I would recommend to a colleague who is a MySQL beginner (whether or not he/she knows the Oracle base). There may be other choices I did not list which may be better for you and your organization's needs.

One week from today, on Tuesday, March 1, 3:00 PM - 4:00 PM US Eastern Standard Time  (UTC-5), I will give a free ODTUG webinar on "Finding Query Problems Proactively With Query Reviews" using mk-query-digest.

This presentation will show how to review the queries in your system on a one-time or ongoing basis. Being able to review new queries before code is released allows you to catch problematic queries before it goes to production. By saving the results in MySQL, you can take the large project of “make sure every query is optimized” and break it into manageable chunks.

Join me by registering at https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/448797747.