TravisSwicegood.com

If you eat and breathe INNER JOINs and sub-selects, think that UNIONs shouldn't be busted, and like to shard databases on the weekend for fun followed by late nights of drinking, SugarCRM's got a place for you. Ok, so we're not looking for all of that. The drinking part is optional. ;-)

Seriously, we're looking for a top notch MySQL DBA to add to the ranks. Someone with experience in PHP too is great, but the database experience and a willingness to learn the other parts of the job are even more important.

If this fits you, shoot me an email at tswicegood [at] sugarcrm [dot] com with your resume or a great cover letter if you're so good you don't need a resume. Even if this doesn't fit you, we're looking for lots of positions. From VP's in Sales to Engineers and everything in between. If you're looking for work and want to work for one of the coolest big small companies in PHP-land, just let me know.

Oh, and given Cal's recent comments on telecommuting I should touch on that here. If you do your job, you can do it from a sailboat (as one of the guys in Professional Services often does) for all we care. Translated: we're telecommute-friendly.

Nothing like a post from the co-founder of your company to remind you that you're giving a presentation in a few days and need to get some slides done. Oops... :-)

I'll be giving a talk titled Tuning Sugar Databases. It's free and open to anyone with 45 minutes or so of time Wednesday at 10 AM PDT. It is focused on SugarCRM and its interaction with MySQL, but a lot of the content is of general interest to anyone wanting to tune MySQL.

I'm trying to keep from finishing up my packing and killing some time online to do so when I thought I'd Google "SugarCon" to see what was up.

Yup - that's right. First Sugar, then Reuters, then me. :-)

His presentation was good - he's an engaging speaker who's only fault is that he puts too much data on his slides which is just a preference thing with me. I feel like I'm getting distracted when I read it. At any rate, it's kind of weird seeing people in rapture of what he's talking about because I'm part of the generational shift in how things are done. What he's talking about - organic user bases, everything as a social connection, etc., etc. - are just what I do.

He mentioned Threadless.com like it was this amazing thing and it's just natural for me to check it out if I'm looking for a cool shirt. The fact that the designs are user contributed and voted on is a footnote for me, for him that's the ball game. It's definitely interesting to see an "outsiders" perspective on the current state of the markets.

His website is http://the56group.typepad.com/.

• parallels between Facebook as a social utility and electricity as a social utility. Interesting idea...
• "open source serves as the building blocks to the new social utilities"
• "IT Decision Paths are Changing" - from the CIO who used to make choices at the top, to CTOs and developers who push technology, to consumers who demand certain technologies.
• Customers don't like "don't worry, just buy everything from us", they want choice
• The MySQL slide is titled "The Heart of the Web Economy"
• OpenOffice.org gets a million downloads a week and has 100 million registered users
• "if they're using our free solution, they're not using our competitors solutions"
• Standard Chartered bank started passing out phones to build their banking institution in South Africa. They viewed it as fighting poverty as one of the root causes of it is lack of access to information. Interesting view.
• The first question was about Microsoft and Yahoo!
• "I think that could be seen as one company obsessing about their competition."
• He's focusing on the fact that they don't compete with companies, they serve their customers. Interesting way to look at it.
• Answering how to stay relavent "We're going to pull the J off of the JVM" and make it the VM platform for other languages as well.

Here's a bunch of the funnier remarks from the Fake Steve Jobs.

• 3,000 customers, some of those even pay... some of those even pay on time.
• 'did you ever notice that guys who are in to Eastern religions are the biggest assholes?'
• "I don't hate freedom, it's like hating freedom!"
• "Freetards"
• "If you the biggest thing in your life is that you can't hack your Tivo, you need to get more things in your life."
• "we have crazy right-wing born again people running our country and the thing that gets people crazy is DRM in iTunes?"
• "You don't to raise $10 or $20 million dollars to start a company. It's really bad news for Sun..."
• "They (SugarCRM) were so excited [about the MySQL Sun deal] that they could hardly contain themselves"
• The End of Open-Source Culture - talking about how open-source is mainstreamed now. He ripped the title from the article The End f Gay Culture which talks about it mainstreaming.
• He thinks John will have body guards by the end of next year...
• "The Cheap Revolutions"
• Oracle isn't distributing Linux because they're nice - it's cause I think they want to kill Red Hat.
• on Oracle's Linux: "You've been screwing up my database for a dozen years, so here, let me bend over and you can shove your OS in too..."
• "The Pyramids of Giza, the Great Wall of China, then Properitary Software."
• "We'll be wow, that really happy."
• "Larry's accomplished everything in his life, except beat Wilt Chamberlin's record. And I'm not talking about in basketball. [laughter] Some of you got that, right?"
• "He's closing in - thanks to Vi-agra"
• "I think MS and Yahoo coming together is like a taking a hundred yard dash and tying to legs of the 2nd and 3rd place runner together and asking for a rematch"
• "the new office is like the dashboard of the spaceshuttle"
• "you have to have help desk and a suicide line"
• "The problem with the Stalinites don't buy anything..."
• They love petitions, but they don't buy anything.
• The COO of Delta is the now head of Red Hat? That's like flying Microsoft
• I don't want to joke about Red Hat because I think they might buy you...
• Red Hat is like the Bermuda Triangle, they buy companies and they're never heard of again.
• Question: "You've made fun of everyone but SugarCRM. What do you say about them when you're at other people's conferences?"
• "It's hard to make fun of these guys when they're on the right side..."

His presentation was suffixed by a "in the 8 point font, these views weren't necessarily the views of SugarCRM." :-)

I'm tracking SugarCon at Twitter. Follow me if you're interested. Apparently Cal Evans is in the building too and is tweeting.

Update: I'm using Twitter at tswicegood.

John Roberts Keynote

• 3 guys and a $25 internet server
• focusing on we versus me
• sharing ideas are critical
• Commerializing Knowledge - SugarExchange to create devs to sell their modules
• 3 to 160 people
• "Cloud Computing" has been listed on a half dozen slides thus far...

Martin used Google Earth to do a "tour" of how SugarCRM grew. It's not cooperating too well though. IT guy to the rescue. We have a lot of deployments in Brazil. "It's like watching bacteria" in describing how SugarCRM is spreading in Europe. We've got a lot of coverage in Japan and China too, but the mainland in Europe is completely covered.

• "It's great to do good, but you have to do well as well," from John Roberts describing the financial side of things.
• "In the beginning it was a rebellion." in talking about open-source CRM.