Kapor and Shuttleworth to Speak at 2006 MySQL Users Conference

For Immediate Release
For more information, contact:
Suzanne Axtell (707) 827-7114 or suzanne@oreilly.com

New Keynote Speakers Announced for the 2006 MySQL Users Conference
Mitch Kapor and Mark Shuttleworth Join Conference Keynote Roster

Sebastopol, CA--Two well-known software innovators with vastly different
open source roots, Mitchell Kapor and Mark Shuttleworth, have been
recently added to present keynotes at the 2006 MySQL Users Conference.

Mitchell Kapor is the president and chair of the Open Source Applications
Foundation, a non-profit organization he founded in 2001 to promote the
development and acceptance  of high-quality application software developed
and distributed using open source methods and licenses. He is widely known
as founder of Lotus Development Corporation and the designer of Lotus
1-2-3, the "killer application" which made the personal computer
ubiquitous in the business world in the 1980s. He has been at the
forefront of the information technology revolution for a generation as an
entrepreneur, investor, social activist, and philanthropist.

For his keynote address at the conference, Kapor will present: "Beyond
Open Source: The Future of Collaboration and the New Knowledge Commons."
Kapor will call out Wikipedia and other collaborative sites that are
creating a new information commons.

Mark Shuttleworth is an African entrepreneur with a love of technology,
innovation, and space flight. Shuttleworth founded Thawte, a company
specializing in digital certificates and internet privacy. He sold Thawte
to VeriSign in 1999, and founded HBD Venture Capital and The Shuttleworth
Foundation. In April 2002, Shuttleworth flew in space as a cosmonaut
member of the crew of Soyuz mission TM34 to the International Space
Station. In early 2004 he founded the Ubuntu project, which aims to
produce a free, high quality desktop OS for everybody. The project brings
together the very best of the open source software stack, and has resulted
in the creation of a number of unique tools for open source software
developers, such as the Bzr revision control system and Launchpad.net.
Sub-projects include specialized desktop environments for schools and for
the needs of people in specific countries or industries, such as Edubuntu
and Kubuntu.

In his conference keynote, Shuttleworth will discuss the goals and
governance of the Ubuntu project. One of those goals is to increase the
efficiency of collaboration between the hundreds of free software projects
that define the GNU/Linux platform and upon which Ubuntu is based.
Shuttleworth will explore the tools and emerging technologies that are
accelerating the exchange of information between developers and
contributors in the free software space.

As MySQL Users Conference program chair Arjen Lentz points out, "These men
are software industry icons, and both are putting their energy and own
money into furthering open source projects.  We're looking forward to
hearing them share their insights on the future of FOSS as it takes on
traditional proprietary software."

Kapor and Shuttleworth join a growing list of speakers that illustrate
MySQL's global reach. Fellow keynote speakers include Milton Ngan of Weta
Digital, a New Zealand visual effects facility that won an Academy Award
for "The Lord of the Rings"; Tim O'Reilly, CEO of O'Reilly Media; and
a number of MySQL open source and database experts.

MySQL AB is once again teaming up with O'Reilly Media to co-present the
2006 event. The theme for this year's conference is "Discover. Connect.
Succeed. Scale Your Business with MySQL." The conference brings over 1,000
MySQL and open source enthusiasts together in Santa Clara, California on
April 24-27. Early registration pricing is in effect until March 6.

The MySQL Users Conference features a wide range of tutorials and
sessions, giving attendees new perspectives of the MySQL universe: from an
overview of the latest business and product developments, to an in-depth
examination of cost-effective database scale-out, performance
optimization, high-availability, and other advanced uses of MySQL. Topics
include: DBA and security; architecture and technology; business
intelligence; Data Warehousing; LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL,
PHP/Perl/Python); Java, .NET/Mono, and MaxDB; migration; community
projects; and much more.

In addition to informative and inspiring presentations, the conference
will feature an expanded exhibit hall to showcase the latest MySQL-related
technologies from sponsors such as Four J's, GoldenGate, Actuate,
BusinessObjects, Continuent, Dolphin, JasperSoft, Novell, Pentaho,
Rackspace, Red Hat, SugarCRM, Sun Microsystems, SCO, Zmanda, and vendors
and open source projects. MySQL Certification will once again be an
important component of the conference and attendees will have
opportunities to become certified in several different core topics.
Special evening events for attendees and speakers are also planned to
foster networking and fun.

The annual MySQL Users Conference is an unmatched opportunity for
developers, DBAs, users, and partners to gather together and learn the
latest MySQL and open source technology from experts and visionaries who
are successfully employing MySQL in the real world. The conference
illustrates the product's wide-ranging appeal and capabilities,
encouraging community members to help create the best database software,
gain knowledge, develop tools, and build applications that help grow
businesses and nurture individual skills. Celebrate the people, projects,
and products that comprise the global MySQL ecosystem at the 2006 MySQL
Users Conference.

Additional Resources:

For complete conference details, visit: http://www.mysqluc.com

For information on exhibition and sponsorship opportunities at O'Reilly
conferences, contact Andrew Calvo at (707) 827-7176, or
andrewc@oreilly.com

To become a media sponsor, contact Yvonne Romaine at (707) 827-7198, or
yromaine@oreilly.com

For details of the 2005 MySQL, go to:
http://www.mysqluc.com/mysqluc2005/

For news articles, blogs, announcements, and photos (available for use
with attribution) from the 2005 conference, see:
http://www.onlamp.com/mysqluc2005/

For more information about O'Reilly conferences, visit:
http://conferences.oreilly.com/

About MySQL
MySQL AB develops and supports a family of high performance, affordable
database products -- including MySQL Network, a comprehensive set of
certified software and premium support services.  The company's flagship
product is MySQL, the world's most popular open source database, with more
than 8 million active installations. Many of the world's largest
organizations, including Yahoo!, Alcatel, The Associated Press, Suzuki and
NASA are realizing significant cost savings by using MySQL to power
high-volume Web sites, business-critical enterprise applications and
packaged software.

With headquarters in Sweden and the United States -- and operations around
the world -- MySQL AB supports both open source values and corporate
customers' needs in a profitable, sustainable business. For more
information about MySQL, please visit www.mysql.com.

About O'Reilly
O'Reilly Media spreads the knowledge of innovators through its books,
online services, magazines, and conferences. Since 1978, O'Reilly has been
a chronicler and catalyst of leading-edge  development, homing in on the
technology trends that really matter and spurring their adoption by
amplifying "faint signals" from the alpha geeks who are creating the
future. An active participant in the technology community, the company has
a long history of advocacy, meme-making, and evangelism.
For more information: http://www.oreilly.com

O'Reilly conferences include: ETech, the O'Reilly Emerging Technology
Conference; OSCON, the O'Reilly Open Source Convention; the O'Reilly
European Open Source Convention (EuroOSCON); Where 2.0 Conference; ETel,
the O'Reilly Emerging Telephony Conference; and Web 2.0 (co-hosted by Tim
O'Reilly and John Battelle, and co-produced with CMP Media). O'Reilly
conferences bring together forward-thinking business and technology
leaders, shaping ideas and influencing industries around the globe. For
over 25 years, O'Reilly has facilitated the adoption of new and important
technologies by the enterprise, putting emerging technologies on the map.

# # #

MySQL is a registered trademark of MySQL AB in the U.S. and in other
countries. O'Reilly is a registered trademark of O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Other products mentioned may be trademarks of their respective companies.