I am Sheeri K. Cabral, and I work for the Pythian Group, who just signed a unique partner deal with Sun -- see the details at tinyurl.com/pythiansun. I'm here to show you how YOU can be a community superhero. I would first like to note that the slides for this talk and all the links I will throw out are online at tinyurl.com/mysqlcommkeynote NEXT In 2007 and 2008 I won the MySQL Community Advocate of the year award. I have written blog posts, given sessions at conferences and user groups, provide free videos of other people's sessions at conferences and user groups, produced 25 episodes of a MySQL podcast, Organize the Boston MySQL User group and was a Google Summer of Code mentor for a MySQL project. Some have called me Wonder Woman. NEXT. There are other award winners -- I won for being a community advocate. Roland Bouman won for being a Forum leader and Paul McCullough won for contributing code with the PBXT storage engine. NEXT (show pics) NEXT (show the 5 others) Giuseppe Maxia and Baron Schwartz have also been awarded for their code contributions, Diego Medina and Martin Friebe have won for quality contributions such as bugs and helping others on forums and mailing lists, and Markus Popp won for writing blog posts and giving people free database access at db4free.net. NEXT (show pics) And yesterday's winners.... NEXT BUT I have to say: we may be super heroes, but we actually don't have super powers. So on to the point: let's look at what you can do to be a community superhero. Write! Blog posts, articles for online and print magazines, tutorials and HOWTOs. The MySQL documentation team accepts community contributions, which will only get easier if MySQL does indeed GPL the manual. The next thing you can do is NEXT Teach others. Share what you know at Birds of a Feather sessions this week, you can write in your own session on the schedule boards. There are tons of MySQL user groups, and if there isn't one in your area there is information on how to start a user group on the forge wiki, which I'll link to later on. You can also NEXT Record video and audio of people's presentations -- with their permission. If you need a place to host audio and video or need editing help, www.technocation.org can provide both. NEXT The internet has thrived because of the phenomenon of social networking. I am onstage talking to 2,000 people, but each one of you knows many people I don't. So if you could NEXT Relay important information for me, I'd really appreciate it. You can retweet messages on Twitter, make a new blog post linking to some ideas from another post, and help kill any fear, uncertainty and doubt that lies in the community. I know that everyone is asking, "how will Oracle's acquisition of Sun affect MySQL?" I know that Oracle is very committed to their community, they have a great community portal online. Oracle's biggest conference, Oracle OpenWorld, has an entire track made up of sessions that are voted on by community members. Oracle has an official program to recognize community contributors at 2 levels, the Oracle Ace and the Oracle Ace director. So I am confident that Oracle will continue to appreciate community as they have in the past. NEXT social networking is very important, and one of the most important things you can do to be a community superhero is to meet people, listen to what they do and what they need, and be able to say, "I can't help you with that, but I know someone who can." NEXT And then of course there's your opinion. Talk to people this week at the conference, you can twitter using the #mysqlconf tag, comment on blog posts at planet.mysql.com, and discuss on the forums, mailing lists and #mysqlconf on irc.freenode.net. NEXT But let's say you want to go more low-tech than that. There's always help needed -- use your organizational skills to organize a user group, podcast, videocast, magazine, conference or unconference like MySQL Camp. If you are low-tech, you can find other people to speak and write the content, but there is always organization help needed. Last week during the MySQL Campus tour, which I participated in with Giuseppe Maxia, I took 20 minutes to fold t-shirts to make it easier for them to be distributed. When all else fails, you can fold t-shirts. NEXT However, I'd like to tell you that you know more than you think you do. Ask yourslf, What was my last technological challenge? How did I solve it? Even if it's not the best solution, it may be one that another person is looking for. Share your ideas. NEXT If all you've ever done is install MySQL, then you can help someone else install MySQL. NEXT There are plenty of resources available to you -- blogspot.com and blogger.com host free blogs. There's also a team of folks at MySQL, Sun, Oracle, whatever that are dedicated to community. NEXT Clockwise from the left, in black and white, Kaj Arno is the VP of Community at MySQL Giuseppe Maxia in the white shirt Lenz Grimmer is to Giuseppe's right Underneath Lenz is Dups, the Community Liasion for North America, And last but certainly not least, colin Charles in the purple shirt and Afro that he has thankfully gotten rid of. Colin organized this Conference, so give Colin a round of applause! Buy him a drink at the bar and let him know how happy you are, as I am, that there is finally a community keynote at the MySQL Conference. NEXT The MySQL Forge wiki has tons of information including slides and videos of sessions at this year's conference. NEXT Planet.mysql.com is your one-stop destination for many blogs about MySQL. NEXT And as I mentioned before, IRC, forums and lists are great places to both ask and answer MySQL questions. NEXT If you want a place to host videos and audio for free, e-mail info@technocation.org to talk to a volunteer for Technocation, a 501(c)3 not-for-profit organization dedicated to providing resources for IT professionals. NEXT Don't be afraid to make mistakes. I made a blog post very early on with a naive opinion, and plenty of folks nicely corrected me. How early? Well, check out: NEXT Blog post 13 was my original post, and post 14 was where I said, "hey, I was wrong in that blog post I made, and thank you to everyone for guiding me in the right direction." And years later, here i am, a MySQL guru, despite the fact that I wasn't always perfect. So what can you do TODAY??? Liveblog and livetweet sessions Record audio and video update the wiki page linking to conference material send twitter messages with the tag #mysqlconf to share information, speaker feedback, and also notes like "there's no water in ballroom H!" NEXT When sending speaker feedback, try to use the presentation number in the tweet. For example, this keynote is presentation number 9098, so a tweet might look like this NEXT Finally, don't help because you think it would be awesome to win an award, or because you want to be like me. Really, I'm flattered. but you should help because you want to. It takes time and effort and may feel like you're only doing little things, but added all together they indeed make a difference. So to close I will share a clip from the movie "Before Sunset", starring Ethan Hawke: NEXT NEXT If you're trying to be a superhero for the fame and glory, you're not going to be happy. Do what you love, and help people doing it, and you will be happy. I am. The very last point I'd like to make is that you shouldn't go at it alone. I've had tons of support from the Community Team at MySQL, various community members, and my own friends and family. Take a break if you start to feel frazzled by volunteer work. Burning out is the worst thing you can do. I wouldn't be up here today if not for my husband, Tony Cabral, and his unwavering support of me, even when I was doing volunteer work instead of spending time with him. Thank you very much, if you want to contact me, I'm sheeri on twitter, and my e-mail is cabral@pythian.com. If you enjoyed this keynote and think it's valuable to have a community keynote in the future, please stand up as I leave the stage, so that everyone can have a visual idea of exactly how much the community would like a community keynote in the future. Have a great conference!