Well I’ve been back for nearly a week already… happy New Year everybody! I am happy to note that Open Query business continued as normal while I was not around; delegation to capable co-workers is a great thing (I’ll admit to checking in on things while in Europe, but that’s about it – had a real holiday).

Barely back from the three weeks in Europe with my daughter (3 1/2 yrs old, she had a ball and good fun even on the very long 12+8 hrs flights), I’m packing for the annual Linux.conf.au which this year is in Hobart, Tasmania (that’s still Australia).

Linux.conf.au 2009 features a two-day miniconference about open source databases, with MySQL and Drizzle abundantly represented. Monty Widenius (yes the one and only!) is coming this time, possibly thanks to me prodding his wife Anna about it many months back… and it appears nearly all of the core Drizzle team (Brian Aker, Monty Taylor, Mark Atwood, Stewart Smith) will be there also. Excellent! All good friends and it’ll be great to see them again (well I did see most in Charlottesville in November, but still).

See http://linux.conf.au/programme/schedule/monday and http://linux.conf.au/programme/schedule/tuesday for the miniconf schedule as it stands now. I’m also speaking in the “Business of Open Source” miniconf, a session on “Open Source and your business and development models”. I believe Brian has a talk about Drizzle in the main LCA program.

Phoebe (my 3 1/2 year old daughter) and I are travelling “to Europe” tomorrow, for three weeks – should be a grand adventure! (so now you know what Open Query profits get spent on ;-)

Of course we’re there to see my family, friends, and expose the Phoebster to a bit more Dutch lingo and culture; she understands it quite well but generally doesn’t want to speak it (although she has done it ;-) so perhaps being surrounded by Dutchies (who’ve received specific instructions to not flip to English – Dutchies are useless for people trying to practice Dutch, any hint of foreignness and they switch to English or another common language) will help. Language = culture = heritage. And knowing a 2nd language is important for development; it doesn’t matter much which language but might as well do one that has a connection for us.

While in NL, we might also visit my friend and former MySQL colleague Roland Bouwman; see if our respective kids can play together ;-)

OQ operations will continue as normal while I’m away, the systems are in place and others are round to handle client issues – although I probably won’t be able to resist to occasionally check my email and such. Bad Arjen. Or perhaps just a sensible thing to do in a small & growing company. That’s my current angle. We’ll see.
Merry xmas & happy new year to all!

Just listened to the Net@Night #79 netcast (during my morning walk); this episode has a very interesting interview with Don Tapscott who is the author of “Grown up Digital” (follow-up from “Growing up Digital”) and many other insightful books about the online world and its humans. I was going to list some keywords of particular interest, but there’s just too much – the whole interview is excellent, go and listen to it already!

My first exposure to Don Tapscott was years ago (must’ve been around 2003), and quite accidental. I was teaching a MySQL training course at the University of Queensland, and walked past the uni bookstore which had a crate outside with old textbooks and other assorted stuff. I grabbed some useful resources on accounting and marketing, as well as one of Don’s books (Digital Capital).

Don has been writing about things since the late 70s. An early observation then was that executives didn’t want to learn to type, that was beneath them (they had secretaries for that, right?) and how this would “hinder” the uptake of computer use beyond secretaries (word processing and the like) and programmers. Well, now we know eh, today’s executive’s Blueberry has a keyboard, even ;-)

It started with Arjen doing the last lightning talk at OSDC 2008… a quick show of hands on who else had dealt with (or was dealing with) depression. Everybody had a look around, and thus knew that they weren’t alone. Afterwards, there was more positive feedback which continued over email in the days that followed. Someone suggested starting a group, and the same day bluehackers.org was born.

The objective of this initiative is to make visible that there are many fellow geeks among us who are intimately familiar with depression, anxiety, or bipolar disorder. It helps to know you’re not alone. And it’s not because we’re geeks, but because we’re human. The Australian Beyondblue site is of course an excellent resource, but, because geeks have a specific work environment, there are also particular challenges in dealing with these issues, and that’s where we feel our group can help with additional insights, tips, and posts from others with experience.

Using the logo, we can also make the topic visible at meetings and conferences around the world, ensuring that indeed no geek need feel alone in this, or feel unsupported. They can simply look around and see. Anybody will be able to show their support and understanding, in a kind and non-intrusive manner.

At the recent Barcamp Gold Coast 2, my friend Steve Dalton showed off Balsamiq Mockups. Cool and useful. The Net@Night #75 netcast (with Amber MacArthur) has an interview with the author, Giacomo ‘Peldi’ Guilizzoni.