Blue Gecko» News & Events

Remote DBA for Drizzle

Sarah Novotny — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 14:10:25 +0000

This morning at the MySQL User Conference and Expo, we’re excited to be included in Brian Aker’s keynote “The State of Drizzle” as one of the first organization to offer support for Drizzle now that it has reached GA with the release of Drizzle 7. Brian Aker is the CTO of Data Differential and is the lead developer for the Drizzle Project.

Blue Gecko will offer operational support via our remote DBA model for Drizzle environments in the same manner and with the same stellar support team as has grown to support MySQL since we added service for it in 2003. Our team can augment a company’s operational DBAs or can help a small installation move from a developer managed database to a more scalable 24×7 follow the sun operational model. We provide operational remote DBA support to organizations from the startup to divisions of Fortune 500 companies. To learn more, please check out the description of our Remote DBA Services.

Blue Gecko has additionally worked with Patrick Galbraith to contribute DBD::drizzle and Drizzle AMIs for use at Amazon AWS to the Drizzle project. In our core service space, we have worked with the Drizzle team offering infrastructure support to their project for the last two years and are excited to be included in announcement. Many congratulations to their team for making this new micro-kernel database a reality.

updated: Patrick Galbraith will be attending the Drizzle Developer Day on Friday April 15th.

Blue Gecko attending Open Source Days in Copenghagen

Chuck Edwards — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 15:35:10 +0000

Our European office in Denmark will be attending Open Source Days, Saturday, March 5.

Are you a sysadmin, a programmer, or an (upcoming?) active user of Linux, UNIX, or *BSD then you have to participate at Open Source Days – Community Edition 2011. Getting the itch scratch, get tips and tricks for the cool programs your company or your self will be using in the future!

For more information, or to register, go to http://opensourcedays.org.

Patrick Galbraith named Oracle ACE!

Chuck Edwards — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 17:00:44 +0000

A big congratulations to our very own Patrick Galbraith, who has just been recognized as an Oracle Ace for MySQL! In addition to being an absolute MySQL rock star, in his “spare time” he maintains DBD::mysql, DBD::drizzle, FederatedX storage engine and the Memcached Functions for MySQL. He has just authored “Developing Web Applications using Perl, Memcached, MySQL, and Apache”.

Patrick joined Blue Gecko in 2010 and has been nothing short of spectacular, navigating customers through an unbelievably varied word of LAMP challenges that go far beyond even the most liberal definitions of “remote DBA.” one of the most truly service-oriented technical people I’ve had the privilege of working with and just a cool guy to meet, the award couldn’t be more well-deserved.

Congrats again, Patrick!!

2011 MySQL community dinner (west) at the O’Reilly MySQL Conference

Sarah Novotny — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 08:13:08 +0000

This year’s facts:
What: MySQL community dinner (west)
Who: me, you, and many MySQL community members
When: Monday, April 11th – Meet at 6:30 at the Hyatt Santa Clara or at 7 pm at the restaurant
Where: Pedro’s Restaurant and Cantina – 3935 Freedom Circle, Santa Clara, CA 95054
How: Please RSVP and share this invitation with the community.

I was sad that last year I missed the community dinner that Sheeri hosted. Since she’s going to be in Orlando at Collaborate, I’d like to host a MySQL community dinner (west). Just as last year this will be a community (pay-your-own-way) dinner on Monday, April 11th, at Pedro’s – a Mexican restaurant that has vegetarian and vegan options.

I’m sticking with the plan of Monday after the tutorials, but before the actual conference sessions begin on Tuesday. RSVPs are being collected at Eventbrite.

Meet us at 6:30 pm on Monday in the lobby of the Hyatt Santa Clara, or at 7 pm at Pedro’s. If you want to come later, just show up at Pedro’s whenever you can. As always I look forward to seeing you all and sharing some libations!

OSCON, OpenWorld and MySQL community

Sarah Novotny — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 20:14:27 +0000

Today’s excitement for me is the announcement that I’ll be co-chair of OSCON for 2011. This has been in the works for a chunk of the summer, and I’m super excited that I can start talking about it more publicly. Edd Dumbill and I are discussing lots of awesome sessions, tracks and foci for OSCON 2011. The call for proposals will be out in early December.

All that said, I also received a note saying that Sheeri Cabral’s videos from Oracle OpenWorld’s MySQL Sunday are posted and that includes my talk “You Know Databases. (How Hard Can MySQL Be?)”. This is great content she’s sharing through the non-profit organization Technocation. Which leads me to my next point about the MySQL and open database communities in general. OpenSQLCamp is in two weeks! I’m super excited that our newest senior MySQL hire Patrick Galbraith of DBD::mysql and authorship fame will be representing Blue Gecko there. I know many other people from the community are planning to attend. If you haven’t signed up, do it now!

Blue Gecko recommends the University of Washington Oracle Certificate program

Yelena Vusataya — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 20:28:11 +0000

At Blue Gecko, we believe that cultivating strong technical contributors is key to our own and our customers’ success. That’s why we are proud to be a part of one of our region’s premier Oracle educational programs: The University of Washington Certificate in Oracle Database Administration.

http://www.pce.uw.edu/prog.aspx?id=4092

The UW Oracle Certificate is a six-month program taught by Jeremiah Wilton of Blue Gecko and Venki Krishnababu of Nordstrom. Blue Gecko President Chuck Edwards serves on the advisory board for the program. These experienced professionals want to help you cultivate developers, non-Oracle DBAs and other interested IT staff into knowledgeable Oracle professionals.

Through a combination of weekly lectures and hands-on lab work, students learn the basics of Oracle’s internal architecture, PL/SQL programming skills, and basic and advanced administration. Throughout the course, students manage their own private 64-bit Oracle database on Linux, using Amazon.com’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2).

The UW offers this class simultaneously in person in downtown Seattle, and online via Adobe Connect. The distance education option allows students from all over the world to attend lectures, participate in class and complete lab work.

Recently, Jeremiah Wilton blogged on Blue Gecko’s site about the pros and cons of programs like the UW’s versus vendor certification from Oracle. You can read his post here:

http://www.bluegecko.net/education/good-ocp-bad-ocp/

Blue Gecko does not have a financial relationship with the UW Oracle certificate program; we are proud of our staff contribution to a premier University of Washington academic program.

Kinds Regards,
Your partners at Blue Gecko
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Blue Gecko named to 2010 Inc. Magazine’s 5000 fastest growing companies in America!

Yelena Vusataya — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 23:42:32 +0000

Blue Gecko is one of the fastest-growing private companies in America for the second year in a row. An Inc. 500|5000 recipient in 2009, Blue Gecko is once again listed in Inc. Magazines’s annual ranking of the fastest-growing private companies in America.

The list debuted in 1981 as a ranking of the 100 fastest-growing private companies in the U.S. The following year, it expanded to the Inc. 500, and in 2007 they inaugurated the Inc. 5000. Through each evolution, Inc. has sought to recognize and to celebrate the creativity, dedication, and hard work that entrepreneurs put into building their companies.

A big thanks to all of our customers and wonderful employees for once again earning this honor!

“Tech Café” – Blue Gecko Sponsored Event!

Yelena Vusataya — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 19:17:00 +0000

Date: June 21, 2010 4:30 pm-7:00 pm
Venue: Red Lion Terrace Garden Lounge
Address: 1415 Fifth Avenue, Seattle, United Google Map

This will be Blue Gecko‘s second time hosting and this time they are going all out! We’ll be hosting just next door at the Red Lion’s terrace deck and Avelle/ Bag Borrow or Steal, Inc will be giving a talk as will Jeremiah Wilton (who should prove interesting for all you database techies)!!

Of course the event is free to attend and there will be free drinks/food, there will also be great people to talk to and network with, and an awesome talk – we changed the name, but we didn’t change the event.

Jeremiah has worked with Oracle technology since 1994. His main claim to fame is having been Amazon.com’s first database administrator, back in the pre-IPO days. For seven years, he helped Amazon.com survive exponential scaling, and a wide variety of nearly-catastrophic technology failures. Jeremiah owned and ran ORA-600 Consulting for a number of years, until it was acquired by Blue Gecko, Inc., a global provider of remote administration for Oracle, MySQL and E-Business Suite. Jeremiah also teaches the Oracle certificate program for the University of Washington. Jeremiah is an Oracle Certified Master, a member of the Oak Table, and a frequent presenter at industry conferences and user groups. His publications and whitepapers can be found at www.bluegecko.net.

This will be a fun way to kick off the TechCafe event series – we will be opening it up to more creative events as well as trying even harder to show off cool Northwest tech companies (at their offices). There are some great events in the works for the rest of summer and there is a lot more content on the site so be sure to subscribe to the feed and stay on this mailing list for information.

“Tech Café” – Blue Gecko Sponsored Event

Yelena Vusataya — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 18:21:00 +0000

“Tech Café” - Blue Gecko sponsored event at the Red Lion Terrace Garden Lounge

Database Cloud Security Webinar

Chuck Edwards — Wed, 19 May 2010 13:28:09 +0000

Blue Gecko and Sentrigo are co-presenting a webinar on database security in the cloud. Jeremiah Wilton will present strategies for deploying databases in the cloud, and Andy Feit, Sentrigo’s VP of Marketing will present technical strategies for securing databases in the cloud.

Don’t miss these two industry leaders discussing the future of database infrastructure and security! The Webinar is scheduled for Thursday, May 27, 1pm EST, 10am PST. You can sign up here.