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OSDC, sponsoring, the state of the economy, MySQL jobs

Preparing for the Open Source Developers’ Conference in Sydney next week. Of course I’m curious how it’ll develop further this year, since I was the lead organiser last year… in any case it should be a great event, with an interesting bunch of people gathering, and a good program.

Somehow I got cajoled into doing three talks:
– Architecting for Success – Just in Case (30m)
– Optimisation by Design (30m)
– Scaling your Business: Approach Defines Outcome (2h)
The first one is not MySQL specific, and the last one is about business and development strategy.

Open Query’s PHP expert trainer Sebastian Bergmann has been scheduled in parallel with my last session – pity, I would’ve liked to listen to that one.

Open Query is also sponsoring the OSDC event together with our partner The Pythian Group. Why do we bother, since most companies don’t sponsor anything? Sponsorship tends to not provide direct benefits; speaking at a conf provides the best exposure, and opportunity to meet with people. So…

Well, first of all OSDC is affordable. And it’s important to support good conferences, to prevent them from either going too expensive for attendees, or just stop happening. I think it’s essential to participate fully in the community that we operate in on a daily basis, and since we’re a functional business, sometimes a financial contribution is the most suitable and appropriate way to help – at least for a conference, it tends to be. I’m not just going on about money blah to impress, who cares. It’s a nudge to other companies to consider doing the same, surely they have a little spare in their budget for valuable events?

Somewhat related, people have been asking concerned questions about how business is going. And actually, it’s going well, you’ve seen the job ad. Our friends at Pythian are also looking for more people in this region; if you’re interested I’d be happy to introduce you. Or just catch us in Sydney during the OSDC conference!

Jonathan Schwartz recently wrote in a blog entry that he expects the OSS-related marketplace to actually do well in tougher economic times, since obviously people are looking to saving on their budget – and I think he’s quite right. Some OSS-using companies will have a tough time, but that’s an entirely separate issue often related to their business/revenue model (such as advetising). The old ways tend to don’t apply now, and that is true for database and application architecture, but I reckon just as much for the “design” of a business.

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