OpenSource Connections
Category: Community
If you have noticed the earth move or shift this past weekend, do not fear I have the answer. This was the result of the evil planning of Baron “Xaprb” Schwartz who had the genius idea of inviting every big name in the open source database community for the OpenSQL Camp. The list of attendees is so awesome I cant even dare name some of the people, you can find the full list at the event site. But this is what I can say, to have all these big egos and big brains in the same room in the small city of Charlottesville is dangerous, it can create a shift in the weight balance of the earth. It is just amazing to have all these big names in the open source community all gathered together in my town.OpenSQL Camp used the open spaces conference style which means that multiple sessions took place at the same time in different rooms and the topics were suggested by the people attending. Most of the sessions were too technical and went over my head, which is a testament of the caliber of the people at the conference. I probably was the only person there who has no experience managing large databases. My favorite moment of the weekend had to be Friday night. That was the session dedicated as a kick off session where everyone got to mingle and meet everyone else. It just happened that alcohol was served that night and it was hilarious for me to watch hackers and geeks get drunk and try to discuss database technologies. I think its amazing when someone tries to juggle both keeping his balance and make a technical argument and fail, but what he fails at is the balance part. A natural skill that humans learn at age 2 becomes difficult for people like the ones who attended the conference who have spent the majority of their life sitting in front of the computer hacking away.The main thing I got from this weekend is the following: when you have people in charge of so many important projects like Postgres, MySQL and many others come from all over the world (like Finland and Australia) to Charlottesville for a conference, it says a lot about the open source community and makes me proud to be part of it.