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MySQL powers many of the social networks of Web 2.0. While it’s great that we constitute one of the tools of Web 2.0, we should also ourselves utilise the tools Web 2.0 provides for social networking. Comparing myself to colleagues, I feel like a slow follower in this discipline. “Everybody else” is already on Twitter, has hundreds and hundreds of contacts on LinkedIn, Xing and Facebook, puts their pics on Picasa and Flickr, bookmarks their pages on del.icio.us, and has fancy blogs that are registered everywhere. Myself, I have been half-heartedly entering contacts into LinkedIn, I have mismanaged my Xing account, I uploaded a tiny amount of pictures on Flickr two years ago, and have now taken my first steps trying out Twitter and Picasa. I’m not even registered on Facebook or del.icio.us.

And therefore I thought I would take a look at how to improve my online manners.

So what I’ll do over the next two months or so is to take a look at both the websites I’ve been mismanaging, and the new ones others have invited me to. I’ll do my best to fit in, but I’ll also come with some subjective commentary on what I experienced.

First in line is Dopplr, the social network for travellers.

I got invited to Dopplr by David Axmark in September 2007. I didn’t do anything with the invitation, as there were “other more important things to do”. In December 2007, I got invited by Giuseppe Maxia. One would think that these two invitations would have triggered me to do something about it, but no. I waited until I had to fix a complex set of travel involving David replacing myself in Japan so that I could go to South Africa. At the same time, I was asking Giuseppe about his travel plans and felt silly I had to ask and re-ask Giuseppe only because finding the relevant, freshest email was too cumbersome. That was the trigger that made me accept Giuseppe’s Dopplr invitation.

So I entered my basic data, which didn’t take many minutes. I could then see David’s and Giuseppe’s travel profiles, conveniently available under http://www.dopplr.com/ traveller/DavidAxmark and http://www.dopplr.com/traveller/gmaxia respectively. Looking at the right hand side on David’s data from today, it’s easy to see when he is where. I don’t need to ask him, nor does anyone else.

Next, I entered my travel plans for the rest of the year. Then, from my own itinerary, I noted something I hadn’t thought of. On the way back from Buenos Aires, I have a stopover in Frankfurt, which happens to coincide with when Giuseppe is there for a meeting. If the stopover is long enough, or Giuseppe has extra time to come to the airport, we might meet just because we happen to be in the same place at the same time. And that’s what Doppler is a lot about: Facilitating serendipitous meetings with people you know.

Next, I saw all the cool stats that Giuseppe and David had, based on having joined Dopplr a lot earlier. So I entered my 2008 travel, which took quite a while as I’ve travelled a lot and emitted carbon in a most horrible way. But it didn’t help — Dopplr still said I had travelled “0 km so far”. All that data entry in vain! Too bad.

But luckily, the stats were calculated for me overnight, in some kind of a batch job. I now have a nice timeline, telling me that I’ve been more on the road than at home in 2008:


I also have learnt that I’m as fast as a squirrel, with an average speed of 22,93 km/h.

Coolest of all is The Dopplr Raumzeitgeist, which tells me where I’ve been for the time period for which I’ve entered data into Dopplr:

If I had a cool web page to which I aggregate blogs and other stuff, such as Colin Charles does, I could paste the nice badge Dopplr provides me onto it. Either the small format (the first pic on this blog), or a big one, like this:

And this brings me to my first frustration with Dopplr. It tells me I’ve frequently been to “Nauvo”. No, no, no! I most certainly refer to the place I’ve been to as “Nagu”, not “Nauvo”. It’s a place with two names, of which in this case, I happen to use the same name as the majority of people living there. In the case of the second-most frequently visited place, I personally use “Helsingfors” (the Swedish name), but I can understand most people would use “Helsinki” (Finnish). And again, on fourth place, I’ve got one more place with multiple names. With most people I’ve discussed that trip, I’ve used the name “Wolkenstein“, which Dopplr expands to a long dual name, “Selva di Val Gardena - Wolkenstein in Groeden”. Better than just Selva, but still, not what I would pick myself.

Which brings me to my summary:

	Positive experiences: Many, and significant   + Great to instantly see where friends and colleagues travel + Great not to have disturb them with questions on “when are you where” + Great to get alerted to serendipitous presence in the same location, for my own planned trips + Cool to get all kinds of travel stat + Cool to see pics from Flickr automatically associated with trips
	Negative experiences: Few, and all related to Dopplr Big-Brother-changing place names   - Very irritating that Dopplr converted names like “Mariehamn” and “Nagu” to “Maarianhamina” and “Nauvo”, which are used only by a small minority of their respective inhabitants - Irritating that Dopplr converted “Helsingfors” (which is how I refer to my birth town) to “Helsinki” - Irritating that Dopplr converted “Wolkenstein” to the very long “Selva di Val Gardena - Wolkenstein in Groeden”
	My own confusion — no fault of the social network itself  I was first disappointed that Dopplr didn’t calculate my past travel stats, but happy again the following morning when they had been done My bad conscience for my carbon footprint didn’t exactly diminish It isn’t 100% clear to me whether it’s in my interest to allow the data to be visible for everyone, or just my approved co-travellers
	Remaining questions from my side   Will I have any real benefit from entering past data from years before 2008? Will there be an easy way to enter many past trips in batch, e.g. over email? When will fellow travellers allow me to see their travel plans? Should I enter “travel tips”? Will I find some benefit from using the data entry from my mobile phone or Twitter?

All in all, Dopplr was a very positive experience, and I do expect to manage my travel in it, and get lots of good vibes from it going forward.

Links:

• Dopplr: http://www.dopplr.com
• My Dopplr page: http://www.dopplr.com/traveller/KajArno
• Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dopplr

To understand a bit of Italian, I just need a comparatively small amount of vino bianco. By contrast, to get any information flow going at all in Russian requires larger amounts of … preparation. That doesn’t have to be vodka, it can also be interesting discussions with Russians, or the opportunity to give a speech.

Now, a blog is the scalable way to interact with the rest of humanity, and I’m trying to increase my fluency in all things Web 2.0. So, here goes, may I present my Russian blog:

Like in the case of presenting my Italian blog, let me quote Google Translate’s automatic translation of some of my “writings” — deliberately doing so without making any improvements on the automatic translation:

Why this blog?

When I learned to read when I was five years old, I decided to learn the Cyrillic alphabet. This is not a normal thing to do in Finland at the time, but how was I supposed to know? A television program called “Good evening, ‘and learn to read Russian, appears to be a smart career move for a five-year-old boy.

And I learned Russian alphabet. Nevertheless, I did not learn the Russian language.

Although I grew up in a neighboring country, the Soviet Union, it took until 1985 before I first went there. I went with two friends, and we stayed at the Hotel Europe. Incidentally, in Finland, Archbishop John Vikström was there at the same time.

Now it’s time for me to learn Russian. In addition, I visit Russia more than once a year, so I decided to start a blog in Russian.

The purpose of my blog is to

• learn more Russian
• to learn more about Russia
• be inspired to visit Russia more

I go to Russia for work and for pleasure, and I use blogs for both purposes.

Why not write a blog in Russian?

The fact that I do not speak English is not an excuse, not a blog in Russian.

I want to prove the point: these days, it is possible to create a blog in Russian, even if you do not speak Russian, but only pretends to do so.

I have occasionally tried to pick up a little Russian language for many years, but what makes this blog Google Translate. Usually, I write in Swedish, but unfortunately the Russian language has a high quality, starting with English. That is why I first write something in English. Next, I ask Google to translate my text in Russian. I look at the translation and make the first guess as to whether it is perhaps understandable. Finally, I ask Google to translate it back from Russian to English. If I can understand it, I finally publish my text.

Let’s see where this experiment takes me!

Tags: gladness, friendship, contacts, Russian, Respect, language

Fandorin: Naming issues

How to choose the name “blogs.arno.fi / fandorin /” to my blog?

Well, “blogs” should be easy and self explanatory.

And “arno” should also be fairly easy to understand: That’s because my name Arnö, and people used 7-bit domain names (why I bought arno.fi but not arnö.fi).

“. Fi” part, of course, must be self-evident: I am from Finland. I grew up in Finland. I have always lived in Finland, except for 2002-04 (in Munich) and 2006 - the year (in Munich). Summary: I am a Finnish citizen, as all my ancestors over many generations [1].

“/ Fandorin” part deserves more explanation. I chose it because my closeness to Russian literature, particularly for my favorite characters Erast Petrovich Fandorin books Boris Akunin. I think I have read all of them (unfortunately, not in Russian, but also in German).

Alternative names for your blog could be “yevski”, as I always joked that I wanted someone to write an operating system with the same name. Why? Because I could write a utility for converting files yevsky (and move them into DOS). The title of this utility will dostoyevski. However, as DOS virtually obsolete, I have concluded that there would be no market for these products.

[1] my father’s father’s father’s father’s father’s father’s father, Jakob Saktmodig of Dragsfjärd in Finland, was in line with the church books (1712) “rysk afföda”, which I always interpreted as a “lower-quality Russian origin” (but handwriting in the book was bad)

Tags: Fandorin, Boris Akunin, Dostoevsky, Fandorin, Finland, Erast Petrovich Fandorin

Providing a presentation in Russian

Yesterday and today I had the opportunity to make a presentation in Russian. Colleagues of MySQL and Sun have helped me to translate from English to Russian what I wanted to say.

The presentation takes about six minutes to deliver, and I was very happy to get a lot of questions afterwards.

As I clearly do not speak Russian, it seems to be strange, the idea of simply reading aloud from the paper for six minutes. Let me explain why I think it was a good idea, but first let me paste the contents of my speech:

Dear users of MySQL, dear Sun customers and students of St. Petersburg University, Ladies and Gentlemen! Good evening! I am pleased to welcome you today at this meeting where we gather to celebrate and discuss the company’s acquisition of MySQL by Sun Microsystems. I hope this meeting will give a better idea of what benefit each of you can draw from combining our companies. [...]

Now you may ask yourself: Why am I talking in English, when it is obvious that I can hardly even understand what I am talking about?

I tried to explain why I do it in my blog entry in blogs.mysql.com / kaj /. Here are some central parts of it:

“Why” and “How to” make the presentation more local than this can be done in English

English as a language of communication greatly exaggerated. In the international context, English may be sufficient for the transfer of meaning, but it has serious drawbacks when it comes to creating social ties, showing respect, to build confidence and having fun.

In general, there is nothing wrong in English. This is a good language, just as many others. But just as in biology, monoculture causes many risks, and diversity is good. Let’s celebrate it, let’s enjoy it, and let us reap commercial benefits from it!

Tags: MySQL, Sun Microsystems, use, acquisition, Respect, Language

To my surprise, I got comments on my Russian blog even before announcing it. Thank you, karidola! You seem to share my interest in the Finland Swedish author Tove Jansson (she’s the one with the Moomins that I found in Japan) and in the Icelandic language

For those of you who, unlike me, can read Russian faster than a five-year-old, I suggest you to take a look at these pages that I pretended to write, and for which I used no other help than what can be obtained through Wikipedia and Google Translate (specifically, I used no human / Russian help):

I’m just back home from Brazil, where I went last Sunday in order to launch MySQL’s presence in Brazil and meet with MySQL users, developers, Sun customers, the press as well as with numerou Sun colleagues. “Is this your first time in Brazil?” was a frequent question (as one could expect), and I was happy to respond that it wasn’t. In fact, I have particularly fond memories of my first visit to Brazil in 2001, as that was the trip when I decided to join MySQL AB.

They say Rio de Janeiro is one of the most beautiful cities on the planet. Whoever “they” are, they’re right. The cone in the middle is Pão de Açúcar (Sugarloaf Mountain, der Zuckerhut, Sockertoppen).

As a European, I again noted that Brazil frequently feels much more like home than the US does. In Brazil, they use the metric system, they measure temperature in Celsius, they write dates and times of day in a familiar way, they cheer for Formula 1 drivers and they play football. My Brazilian colleagues and I fought a bit over whether Finland or Brazil produces the better F1 drivers, but despite Finland nearly beating Germany (thanks Jonatan Johansson, Mika Väyrynen and Daniel Sjölund!) in the World Championship qualifications last month, I had to concede to the football superiority of the Brazilians. Nonetheless, it felt good to meet with colleagues to whom I could describe the ethical dilemma my son Alexander faced (and explained in his newly started German language football blog) when MySQL 5.1 user Corrado Pandiani from Inter Milan sent him gadgets that on the one hand are objectively speaking very cool (such as a poster signed by Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Luis Figo and Marco Materazzi), but on the other hand represent a team which a Bayern München fan like him has hard to identify with.

But back to MySQL. This week, I had the pleasure of not just attending the Sun Tech Days including its press events, but also visit many customers in both São Paulo, Brasília and Rio de Janeiro. It’s great to see the broad interest for MySQL. Yet, the interest for MySQL in Brazil didn’t surprise me. We know from the download statistics that .br is a top five country for downloads, and more concretely, MySQL had a sizable following in Brazil already in 2001. When Mårten Mickos (MySQL’s then newly appointed CEO), Michael “Monty” Widenius (co-founder) and a number of friends of ours visited the Rio Carnival wearing MySQL t-shirts, we were stopped on Copacabana beach and asked whether “we are also MySQL users“. What a feeling it was, to personally experience recognition for MySQL over seven years ago, in a country where none of us had been before!

Ah, as I am walking down Memory Lane, let me share a few other pics from 2001 (the ones from this week are still in Philip Antoniades’s camera):

Mårten and Monty looking at where to go in the Rio metro. As this was during the pre-Sakila-lithic era, Monty wore an old, dragon type “mySQL” T-shirt (yes, lower case m).

Helvécio Borges Filho from EAC  (to the right of me) hosted us in 2001, and over the years, we’ve met many times since at MySQL Users Conferences and elsewhere — such as last Tuesday at Sun Tech Days in São Paulo. Yesterday, Copacabana was quite a bit more rainy than above.

Cristo Redentor (Christ the Redeemer) at the Corcovado Mountain.

Monty evidently also wants to redeem (with Corcovado in the background). And I am always fond of teasing Monty for his taste for a particular artificial drink with a closed-source recipe.

As I’m sure you can tell, I was very impressed with Brazil both in 2001 and in 2008. I won’t wait seven years until my next visit!

On Saturday, I spent a couple of hours running with Alexander Stubb. No, Alex is not our newest recruit to the MySQL Support Team, he’s the Foreign Minister of Finland (the guy in the yellow T-shirt below).

But let me rewind to the beginning. I have been increasing my running to over 1200 km a year, and when I heard that the Münchner Stadtlauf half-marathon doesn’t crash with Finnish midsummer (something never to be missed), I registered for it and finished it in 1:45:58. And I calculated I would have a chance at going below four hours at a full marathon, so I registered for the Helsinki City Marathon, which took place last Saturday on 16.8.2008 in my native Finland.

At a restaurant close to the Olympic Stadium just before start, I met with my long-time MySQL colleagues Patrik Backman and Giuseppe Maxia, as well as our fresh Sun colleague Peter Eisentraut, of PostgreSQL fame. When the time for the start (fairly late, three o’clock in the afternoon) approached, I went for the start area, and was pleasantly surprised to hear the race moderator interview our Foreign Minister.

To continue my pleasant surprise, Alex said he was not only going to be the starter of the marathon, but he was going to run himself. The interview was started in Finnish, and then went on to Swedish. “What’s your target time?” the interviewer asked. “Oh, I have one, but I haven’t published it” — he evidently had the same marathon goal communication policy as I. The interviewer swapped away from our two domestic languages to foreign ones, going over English and German to French. And Alex continued smoothly and fluently in his colloquial, youthful jargon in all of the five languages. He had a targeted and clearly unscripted message in all languages. In German, for instance, Alex shared how Frank-Walter Steinmeier (Germany’s Foreign Minister) the day before had found him to be slighly mad for going for a marathon, right after a week full of intense Georgia related negotiations.

The interview formed a very good pep talk for us runners, and an opportunity for me to no longer have to be ashamed of the linguistic disabilities of our Foreign Minister (as used to be the case when I grew up, leading to a whole genre of jokes). I share Alex’s view that one can show respect by speaking the language of the audience (and Helsinki City Marathon has a very international audience).

So off we went, and the start went well. The weather conditions were perfect: Drizzle. And 16-18 degrees. Not too cold, not too hot. A few km after the start, I saw Patrik, Giuseppe and Peter amongst the spectators, and they took some pictures of me.

The race passed by the Parliament Building, went out through familiar parts of Helsinki (Mejlans, Tölö, Munksnäs) to Esbo close to where MySQL’s first Finnish offices were, and continued via the Nokia House to the absolute centre of Helsinki. That was the most enjoyable part of the running experience. I kept to my pace, and I felt like being on a train. I just went with the flow and didn’t feel any effort. But after a while, my left knee started to remind me of its existence. Past the 21,1 km half way mark, it evened out as my right knee also begged for some attention. But basically, everything went fine until a while beyond 30 km, when the energy reserves of my body were depleted.

“So why didn’t I drink more of the Gatorade offered?”, the running reader will ask. Well, I had prepared a perfect excuse for the scenario in which I would have to stop: When in India for the MySQL Camp in Bangalore, I had caught salmonellosis. Salmonella bacteria are not a nice companion if you run, but also not total inhibitors for running. That said, I chose not to upset my stomach any further by consuming potent, unfamiliar drinks. And the effect was that I dropped from 1606th position at 30 km to 1970th position in the goal (out of 5436 participants).

So this meant that the last few km weren’t all that enjoyable. But I still didn’t get cramps like the 55 year old male athlete who was screaming “aijaijai” less than a km from the goal, at as many decibels as his lung capacity allowed. Humbling.

I finished at 3:55:22. That’s my best marathon ever, about 45 min faster than my previous personal record. I didn’t feel well in the goal, rolling back a few of my latest drinking transactions just after crossing the finish line (honest, it was just water).

After the run, I went for something very typically Finnish: A sauna. And there can hardly be a better timing for a nice, warm bath than right after getting into the goal of a cool (at least temperature-wise) marathon run. My body is often out of balance in many ways after a marathon, including but not limited to shivering out of cold. Ah, was it nice to relax and do some joint bragging together with fellow runners in the Olympic Swimming Stadium. And after the sauna, there were still plenty of runners coming to the goal area. I felt zero superiority over them, as I still vividly remember my own first marathon with a time of 5:41. A marathon for an amateur must strictly be about competing against yourself. And if you (like me) start lousy enough, you’ve got an easy target to beat.

And, what happened with Alex Stubb?

Well, he had shared with us that he had finished a previous Helsinki marathon in 3:59 and a Brussels marathon a bit below 3:40. I suspect he might have targeted 3:30, and like me, he lost positions towards the end of the race. At any rate, he finished 688th with a fabulous time of 3:31:25. Extremely impressive for anyone, especially for a Foreign Minister!

(Yes, Alex did wear something slightly more appropriate than a suit for the marathon).

This blog posting has little to do with MySQL or Sun. It’s about experiences gathered while shuttling around the world as MySQL’s Ambassador to Sun, but it’s not about databases, it’s not about operating systems, nor computer languages: it’s about human languages, and how going beyond English provides a business advantage.

Let me try to grab your attention by first sharing my perhaps somewhat controversial conclusion:

English as a language of communication is much overrated. In an international setting, English may be sufficient for conveying meaning, but it has severe deficiencies when it comes to establishing a social relationship, to showing respect, to building trust, and to having fun.

For many years, I have attempted at learning how to say “thank you” and “please don’t smoke” and “where is the toilet” in the local language. So I know to say “gdye tualet” in Russia, “where are the restrooms” in the US, or just a simplified “donde baños” in the Spanish speaking world.

Now, early this year, I got the assignment to travel around the Sun locations of the world. And I decided to raise my ambition level. I wanted to give a five-to-ten minute introduction to my presentation in the local language, no matter what language that may be.

The inspiration for that ambition I got from the enthusiastic reception of merely greeting the audience in the local language. In 2001, I got a rock star reception in Belgrade, Serbia — just for saying “Dobar dan svima!” (good day to you all). Last year in Seoul, Korea, I got plentiful applause just for saying “Anyong haseo“. Such enthusiasm felt a bit undeserved for two-three words, so I decided to see what would happen if I raise the bar.

Now, I’ve given 5-10 minute presentations in Italian, Japanese, Chinese, Czech, Turkish and Russian. As I don’t really speak any of those languages, what I did was reading aloud from a script. And I’d like to share my experiences.

My recipe for delivering a presentation in a language I don’t speak is this:

1. Write the presentation in a language you know
2. Target the message to the audience
   • say who you are, where you’re from, why you’re here
   • be clear on your key message, the simpler the better
   • sprinkle in some humour, but don’t be too ambitious
   • make sure your text is not generic, but specific to the audience
3. Ask a local to translate the presentation (Thanks Giuseppe for translating my original French meetup presentation to Italian! Thanks Kazumi-san for Japanese! And thanks to all Sun colleagues in Beijing, Prague, Istanbul and St Petersburg for your translation help — without it, none of this would have happened!)
4. If the language has an unknown or just hard to read character set, then transcribe it (I did so for Japanese, Chinese and Russian, but not for Italian, Czech or Turkish)
5. Study by reading a page or two (spend at least 15-30 mins) on how to pronounce that language
6. Add notes to your script, to make your pronunciation intelligible
   • Emphasis: Some languages put stress on seemingly random syllables, such as Russian — deNOTe THOse SYLlables SOMehow
   • Tone: In some languages, tone carries meaning — such as Chinese
7. Add notes to your script, to make your speech enjoyable
   • denote the *words* that you want to *underline* when *speaking* (if you stress every word in the same way, your speech will be boring and monotonous)
   • denote when you want to ask the audience for questions, such as <raise your hand, wait for audience response>
8. Practice your speech with one or more locals
   • over the phone beforehand
   • in the destination just before the presentation
   • have fun when doing it
9. Read the presentation aloud from your paper script
   • keep eye contact
   • don’t be too fast, don’t be too slow
   • enjoy the audience feedback
   • have fun! enjoy!
10. Ask how it went, afterwards
    • how many percent did the audience understand?
    • ask for honest (not just polite) feedback in private
11. Optionally: Arrange for your speech to be recorded

The outcome from following this recipe has by far exceeded my high expectations:

• the Italians, Japanese, Chinese, Czech, Turks, and Russians all gave me their undivided attention during all of the 5-10 minutes
• based on informal feedback, I estimate that 80-90% of the contents of my Chinese was understood (my ambition level was “at least 70%”), with Japanese exceeding 90%, and the other languages exceeding 95%
• a Japanese blogged about having goose bumps when listening to a gai-jin speaking (or rather pretending to speak) Japanese
• the extroverted Chinese interrupted my speech in Beijing for about eight times, for applause
• all audiences laughed at the intended spots (in particular where towards the end of the presentation, I self-deprecatingly said “As I’m sure you’ve noticed by now, I *don’t* speak <language>”)
• several Turkish attendees thanked me afterwards in person, in a way that seemed even more sincere than polite (and by all means, it was polite)
• the usually notoriously quiet Russians bombarded me with 50 minutes of questions after my presentation, and also the equally quiet Japanese had more questions than we had time

I’ve discussed and analysed the reasons behind this positive feedback, with colleagues at Sun. My going theory is this:

• I show that I’m the stupid foreigner here — common courtesy would require me to know the local language, not the locals to know a foreign language
• going out of my comfort zone, I attract attention and show respect to the locals
• making mistakes in the local language, I show I’m ready to invest in the relationship
• as so few others are ready for this extra effort, the expectation level for the quality of my language skills is surprisingly low
• the attitude I display gains trust and comfort — and better business level interaction

I always feel strange when people apologise to me for their lack of knowledge of English. True, my command of the English language may exceed that of some taxi drivers in St Petersburg, London or New York. Yet, English is and probably will remain my third language. My native language is Swedish, and I feel more comfortable in German than in English, at least when the topic isn’t strictly related to my professional life. English is also chronologically my third language, as I learned Finnish before English at school. In consequence, when I state that the official common language of MySQL is Bad English, I consider myself a case in point. And the statement seems a relief for everyone when I say it.

All in all, there’s nothing wrong with English. It’s a good language, like many others. But just like in biology, monoculture comes with many risks, and diversity is good. Let’s celebrate it, let’s enjoy it, and let’s reap business benefits out of it!

Links:

• Sun Meetup-Mashup in Italy: http://youtube.com/watch?v=UjwdhFpNR8s
• A slightly more English-centric view of Italian (by Monty Python): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9TVYCffHEE
• A video of my presentation in Chinese: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3036893738929286405&hl=en
• My blog entry on speaking Chinese: http://blogs.mysql.com/kaj/2008/04/28/nushimen-xianshengmen-a-speech-in-chinese-on-video/

“Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon and welcome to this presentation regarding the acquisition of the company MySQL AB by Sun Microsystems.”

Since my speech on Sun / MySQL integration for about 400 people in Beijing last week, I have been asked a few times about what it’s like to give a speech in Chinese. Well, I wouldn’t really know, as all I did was read aloud a text for 8 minutes. I remembered what passage was about what topic, and I had noted which words to stress, when to raise my hand etc. But of the actual words, I understood perhaps 5-10 % (based on them being repeated often enough). So I know I am a fuzongcai (Vice President) with Sun Microsystems, I know the difference between a kèhù (customer) and a yònghù (user). I live in Munihei (München), but I am not deguoren (German), I am fenlanren (from Finland). And, nüshìmen, xianshéngmen, that’s Ladies and gentlemen.

So far, hen hao.

I read aloud from this paper (no, not the Chinese characters, just the pinyin).

But the ambition level could really be a bit higher. Not stressing every syllable. Speaking a bit faster. Repeating the tones once (ok, five times) more. And I could memorise more words, not 5-10 % but perhaps 25%. That would be more enjoyable for both the audience, and for myself.

That said, giving a speech in Mandarin was a very positive experience, even at my level of delivery. My ambition was for at least 70% of my message being understandable from a pronunciation standpoint, and I heard estimates of the outcome being 80% to 90%. And I got interrupted by applause at least five times, and laughter at least once (even at the intended spot). So I’m happy. And I recommend using Chinese for more than the mere greetings, for any non-Chinese wishing to be well received in China.

Xìexìe, thank you, xìexìe.

References:

• Kaj Arnö speaks Chinese to the Sun/MySQL crowd: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3036893738929286405&hl=en
• Wikipedia: Pinyin (Chinese spelling): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinyin

MySQL will be in Beijing, China, this week. Well, not MySQL per se, but I will be there. As will Kaj Arno. I arrive on 21 April 2008 and depart on 24 April 2008. I expect to be busy during the days, but my nights should be free. Drop me email at colinATmysqlDOTcom if you’d like to catch up.

There’s an event, on the 23rd of April as well. Its part of the Sun-MySQL World Tour. You definitely should be there, I’m sure there will be some nice schwag involved as well :)

Sitting in San Francisco, getting a little bored before my flight to Beijing. And Twitter is down, for 1.5 hours, for what they seem to call database maintenance. Wonder why. At least there’s IRC…

Technorati Tags: beijing, mysql, world tour, sun

Japan is a wonderful place for someone like me.

Not only do I get to have sushi to my heart’s content. I am also exposed to the wonders of the Japanese culture, and — the topic of this blog posting — Japanese cultural imports from the West.

While preparing for the Sun-MySQL event last Wednesday, I was happy to see the back of Toru Takahashi-san’s laptop, featuring a big sticker with Snusmumriken and a small sticker with Duke.

• Toru-san is a Principal Solution Architect with the Software Practice in Sun Microsystems K.K. He was involved in the planning and execution of the Tokyo event in our Sun-MySQL World Tour. You can also meet him at the MySQL Users Conference next week, if you’re there.
• Duke is the friendly mascot of Java technology.
• Snusmumriken, or Snufkin in English (sorry, I wouldn’t know what he is called in Japanese), is a Finland Swedish cultural export. He is one of the Moomin cartoons (Moomintroll’s best friend, who goes south every winter and returns in the spring), and I did know from earlier travels to Japan that the Moomins are about as popular in Japan as Victoria and David Beckham (exposure in random unrelated ads in the metro or on the streets). Ah, the humble cultural imperialist in me was happy to note that it’s not only IT (Linux, MySQL) which is spreading from our tiny group of 300.000 people in Finland, but also my favourite children’s stories, written by Tove Jansson (1914-2001).

My Finland Swedish ego trip got a further highlight later in the evening, when I noticed that the scissors I borrowed at Larry Stefonic’s place (MySQL’s VP Sales in APAC) were made by Fiskars (in the consumer goods industry).

Last week’s Wednesday (seems like ages ago, and I haven’t got any blogging time since), the Sun MySQL Meetup-Mashup World Tour got to Paris.

The Meetup-Mashup gets a local flavour wherever we are. And the local flavour in Paris was an Irish Pub, where we had an intimate meeting with a good 160 of the closest friends of MySQL.

We had some bière gratuite (free beer) to celebrate the logiciels libres (free software), as well as a presentation by Giuseppe, after a brief introduction by myself and followed by an overview by Sun.

I had good encounters with old friends and made some new ones. Damien Seguy from Nexen.net belong to the oldest, and our discussions ranged from the well-being of the French PHP community to stuffed animals, particularly those depictingo species relevant to FOSS (elephants, penguins, and, let’s not forget, dolphins).

The PHP contingency was probably the biggest developer audience in the group, but Ruby on Rails and Java were also ably represented.

From a community perspective, the most interesting discussions I had with three gentlemen from www.developpez.com: Adrien Artero in charge of the Business Intelligence column (bidvp.com@gmail.com), Nicolas Joseph and Antoine Dinémant. They asked us to help them by identifying the best articles related to MySQL on our website, so that their volunteers can translate them to French and publish them on their developer site. Talk about well-aligned interests! We’re happy to oblige, as we very much welcome spreading the word on MySQL in the languages relevant to the developers — in the case of France, French.

Some notes on www.developpez.com, the French language community that concentrates the largest number of professional IT specialists:

• Provides for free all kinds of useful services for IT specialists: newsletter, magazine, topicality events, tutorials, articles, FAQs, tests, benchmarks, debates, surveys, tools, sources, components and examples of code, blogs, and free site hosting for IT specialists.
• Up to 130.000 visits per day
• More than 1.400.000 distinct readers attend www.developpez.com at least once a month.
• With more than 5000 messages per day, it is also the most active forum of mutual support in its field.
• The largest voluntary editorial team: more than 500 authors.

A great thanks to Mick Carney, our senior Sales guy in France, to Giuseppe Maxia, who organised the event from a community perspective, and, most of all, our long-time French PR agent Véronique Loquet of AL’X Communication, who did an amazing job in planning and coordinating this event.

Looking forward to the next French event, an enterprise event directed at Sun & MySQL customers, happening in June.

References:

• Damien Seguy’s blog: http://www.nexen.net/articles/dossier/18257-rencontre_sun/mysql_du_3_avril_2008.php
• Giuseppe Maxia’s blog: http://datacharmer.blogspot.com/2008/04/meetup-in-paris-mysql-social-event.html

So, I’m leaving on a jet plane, to head to the MySQL Conference & Expo 2008. Normally, this is a flight I make via Auckland or Sydney, but this time its via Singapore.

Singapore is a hub in Asia, so let me share a few tips:

• The airport is huge. Terminal 3 reminds me of being in one of Heathrow’s terminals. Leave plenty of time to walk from gate to gate (up to 20 minutes).
• US flights probably always leave from Terminal 3, around gates A16-A20. The gates are speculation, mainly because of the extra security available out there. (A18, for Los Angeles, A16 for San Francisco, I’m pretty sure I’m right).
• Within A16-A20, you’ll not notice any power sockets available for your laptop. Clearly, very negative for the business traveller.
• You can get free wireless, via the Wireless@SG access point. Just get your mobile phone to roam to SingTel, and enter *186. You’ll be sent an SMS back, with a username and password. Happy surfing (IMAPS/SMTPS/HTTP/HTTPS/SSH all work).

Well, that’s about it. If you have more tips about flying via Singapore, don’t hesitate to share them.

A gentle reminder: next week, there will be two more stops of the MySQL Meetup Mashup Tour:

• Monday, April 7th, 19:00: Hamburg, Germany. We will meet in the meeting rooms of the local Sun Microsystems offices ( Nagelsweg 55, 22097 Hamburg). There will be two technical sessions: Giuseppe will talk about the MySQL Sandbox, Kay Koll will give a presentation about how to combine MySQL with OpenOffice.org. He will also describe the new report generator and give an overview over the future of OpenOffice. You can register for this event via meetup.com or Xing.com.
• Tuesday, April 8th, 17:00: Berlin, Germany. This event will take place in the rooms of the Berlin offices of Sun Microsystems (Komturstrasse 18a, 12099 Berlin). This time, Giuseppe will talk about MySQL as an open platform, Kristian Köhntopp will share a few hints he gathered while doing consulting work at customer sites. Please use Xing.com to register for this event.

At both events, colleagues from Sun and MySQL will be present to answer questions and discuss the acquisition of MySQL by Sun and all things Open Source. There will be free drinks and food as well!

We look forward to welcome users from the various related Sun products/projects, e.g. OpenOffice, Java, OpenSolaris, Glassfish or Netbeans. There is so much opportunity for collaboration and exchange of experience - I am very excited to be at both meetings to meet and talk with people from these communities. See you there!