On MySQL Belgian Days 2025. Q&A with Frederic Descamps
Q1. You just announced that the MySQL Belgian Days 2025 event will be held before FOSDEM. What is FOSDEM? And why is it relevant to the MySQL Community?
FOSDEM is a free event for software developers to meet, share ideas and collaborate. This is the largest one in Europe.
Every year, thousands of developers of free and open source software from all over the world gather at the event in Brussels. There is a main track and a large amount of devroom allocated for open source projects. We, MySQL, have been present since the beginning, but with a pause last year.
FOSDEM provides an opportunity for all those developers too meet in a friendly environment where everything is made for those thousands of geek to feel comfortable and collaborate.
The atmosphere is unique and not comparable to anything else.
Q2. When do the MySQL Belgian Days 2025 exactly take place and where?
FOSDEM takes place always the first weekend of February. The MySQL Belgian Days will take place two days before, Thursday 30 and Friday 31 January. This will happen also in Brussels in very nice location, a startup incubator!
Q3. Is this primarily a technical event? Who should attend?
It’s indeed a technical event, marketing and sales speeches are not welcome. The audience is very large but mainly DBAs, operators, developers hacking MySQL or making third party applications that integrates with MySQL.
We also have customers, as this is a unique opportunity to meet MySQL Engineers and discuss with them. The FOSDEM MySQL Devroom is only about open-source.
The MySQL Belgian Days is about everything we do in Oracle around MySQL, Community Edition, Enterprise Edition and Cloud, but always technical. We also have external speakers, customers and Community users.
Q4. When do you plan to publish the agenda for the event?
The agenda is always published a bit late as first we wait to see who will be accepted for the devroom. The devroom content is managed by an external committee. Then if we have MySQL staff accepted to talk, then we take the opportunity to also provide a slot at the Belgian Days to the speaker but on another topic.
Q5. Is it possible to register to the event already?
Yes, registration is open and tickets are limited. Even before the publication of the Agenda, usually we are sold out!
Q6. You have announced a special action during the Belgian Days, 30Y anniversary of MySQL, can you please tell more about what people can expect?
We will celebrate during the all year this important milestone for MySQL and we will start during the pre FOSDEM MySQL Belgian Days.
We have created goodies with a new dedicated logo especially for the anniversary. And as for each birthday we will have a celebration with a cake, etc.
Q7: Are there planned other celebrations outside of Belgian MySQL Days people can attend?
For the full year, we will celebrate the anniversary to every event we participate like meet ups and conferences, but there will be 3 majors events: FOSDEM, MySQL Summit in April in California and 2 or 3 other events, in ASIA, Middle East and South America. We still need to confirm those.
Q8: Since it is 30Y anniversary of MySQL, are there any big milestone during the long MySQL journey from beginning to now, your remember and find interesting to share?
They are a lot of course, and I discovered MySQL with the version 3.20 (I still have the copy). But for me, each version brought very significant changes, like having InnoDB as plugin in 5.1, and in 5.5 it became already the default storage engine. But my favorite version is the 8.0 as it brought so many innovation to MySQL and in many different domains.
Q9: Any funny story during the time you are part of MySQL?
I have a lot of stories but the best memories are when traveling was easier and larger meeting across different teams happened. The funniest moments are more related to encounters than to specific moments or technique. But I really enjoyed my travels to Japan and we had a lot of fun with culture shock, especially with a French colleague, but I won’t say more 🙂
Q10: And maybe also something about whether we have any special guests or anything different from past Belgian days and what we expect to achieve this year differently than in previous years…
If you’re a regular at the event, you’ll probably know that I take some engineers from the MySQL Team with me, and this year we’ll be lucky enough to meet someone we don’t see very often and who’s come from quite a distance, Harin Vadodaria. Harin is working as security lead in MySQL Engineering team. He has been part of the server development team for more than 12 years now. During his tenure at MySQL he has worked on various features such as new authentication plugins, user and privilege management enhancements, database auditing and activity monitoring, SQL firewall, communication security improvements, keyring, data encryption etc.
These topics are very important and the Community doesn’t have many opportunities to meet developers working in those areas.
Q11: And also question about our Rockstars, such as what is the program about, what are the criteria, who and how can join the program, what are the benefits of being Rockstar, how many people do we award this year…
MySQL Rockstars is a prize awarded by the MySQL Community Team with the help of previous Rockstars and Oracle ACEs for MySQL to some personality that represent MySQL. Their names should echo in our heads when we think of MySQL.
Unlike the Oracle ACEs, the Rockstar title is awarded only once and is acquired forever.
To be a Rockstar is to be recognized by one’s peers, and we invite them to calls during which we discuss various MySQL-related aspects, as well as inviting them to participate directly in the various activities we organize.
We also ask them to provide feedback and participate to surveys. Additionally, they have the opportunity to discuss with Product Managers and executives.
Belgian MySQL Days 2025, Thursday 30th January 2025 9:00AM
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Frederic Descamps (lefred), MySQL Community Manager
lefred has been consulting OpenSource and MySQL for almost 20 years. After graduating in Management Information Technology, Frédéric started his career as a developer for an ERP under HPUX. He will then opt for a career in the world of open-source by joining one of the first Belgian start-up dedicated 100% to free projects around GNU/Linux. It is in 2011 that lefred joined Percona, one of the leading MySQL-based specialists. He decided to join the MySQL Community Team in 2016 as a MySQL Community Manager for EMEA & APAC. Frédéric is also a regular speaker of OpenSource Conferences. His blog mostly dedicated to MySQL is https://lefred.be
Fred is also the devoted father of three adorable daughters: Wilhelmine, Héloïse & Barbara.
Sponsored by MySQL/Oracle.