So we had a very nice dinner with Monty and the Finnish "MySQL Ab alumni". It was to my surprise augmented by Sergei Golubchick, whom I had never really met face to face and was delighted to be seated next to. Also a first for me was to meet Pekka Nousiainen, from the MySQL Cluster team. Which is funny because I kind of work together with him on IRC and email, but we had never met before "in real life" either.

Before the dinner I had asked in a rather cryptic message people to share some MySQL memories on a separate page on this site, followed up a couple days later by Kaj's less cryptic message. I printed whatever had arrived before I left for the restaurant and read a few snippets out loud. I should say that Monty liked it very much and thanked more than once for such a nice thought. He said that hearing some of the things you had written brought back many nice memories for him, and between all the Swedish drinking songs there was a sentimental moment right there. Personally I also liked the "international connection" of enabling Monty's friends to participate in this kind of virtual manner together with us Helsinki bound people that actually were there face-to-face so to speak. After all, MySQL always was an international project.

So, just wanted to share back Monty's thanks and just general greetings from a nice MySQL evening in Helsinki. You can still join in leaving your sentimental MySQL thoughts here, the comments will be open at least another month still.

PS: I also got exactly 2 complaints from people who claim they couldn't post on that site, even if it works for the rest of us. You should be able to post without any login, captcha or registration needed (and this is different from the rest of the site). If you still can't please email me with some details on how it happens. Also feel free to just email me the text you wrote, I'll copy it to that page and make sure it sticks :-)