Changing Name and Improving Focus

You might have noticed that this blog changed name and URL. Instead of having one single blog for everything, I decided to split my blogging activities in two separate blogs.

If you're interested in MySQL, Oracle, Databases, Business Intelligence, Open Source, Cloud, etc. this is the place to be. Blog's new name is Data & Co.
A big "Thank you!" to David Stokes who moved all the planet.mysql.com references to the old blog to this new one.

On the other hand, if you'd like to read about communication, marketing, advertising, PR, soft skills, etc. feel free look at Publicime.  Please see the introduction of my new blog here. I've moved non-technical articles to this one to make sure my posts on Data & Co are exclusively technology-centric.

This will result in better focus for both blogs and I won't annoy you with topics you're not interested in. The old url is redirecting to Data & Co. by default.

Blogging: Free or Moderated Comments?

I've just changed the settings of this blog, moving from free to moderated comments. It's impressive how many comments are coming from spammers and from people interested in optimizing their ranking in search engines (SEO). While this will imply a few more clicks from my side, I'll do all my best to approve each and every relevant comment as soon as possible.

To briefly extend the topic, I'd like to point to a few sites containing notable statistics on both legal an illicit use of communication channels:

• MessageLabs Intelligence - This website hosts the MessageLabs Intelligence report, which provides the latest threat trends to keep you informed regarding the ongoing fight against viruses, spam and other unwelcome content.
  
• Email Marketing Consumer Report - ContactLab presents the results of the latest research on the use of e-mail among Internet users. The study, in its European edition, describes and compares e-mail and newsletters habits and behaviour in Italy, Spain, France, Germany and the United Kingdom, highlighting similarities and differences between the different markets.

Email, Blogs, Wikis, Twitter, etc.. are all good ways to improve brand awareness, generate leads and deliver marketing campaigns, but unfortunately sometimes they are used in a wrong manner. I hope that in the future there will be a way to counteract this phenomenon, but for now comments are moderated and spam filters on email accounts are in place! ;)

Luca

Web Based Seminars (aka Webinars), why not?

On Thursday the 8th, we delivered the most successful italian MySQL webinar ever. We had about 350 registrations, thanks for your support and constant participation!
We also awarded a wonderful MySQL t-shirt to the one who first answered correctly to a trivia question, congratulations to the winner.

Looking into the story of italian webinars, here is the ranking in terms of registrations:

1. Getting Started with MySQL on Windows
2. Scalable MySQL High Availability Architectures
3. A guide to Scaling MySQL
4. MySQL Performance Tuning - Top 5 Tips
5. Introducing MySQL 5.0

If you were unable to participate you can click here and listen to the on-demand versions. Others noteworthy webinars are the one that we delivered with our partners:

• Pentaho
• Infobright and Talend

In conclusion, what I've learned from this fulfilling experience?
Delivering web based seminars (webinars for short) is a great way to stay in touch with customers and to address specific topics. This powerful tool can be used to update on product directions, sales offers, technical topics and present joint partner solutions. The audience can sit in the comfort of their home or office and receive a quick update without spending too much time or money.
If you are a Sales Engineer, Sales Manager, Marketing Manager, Product Manager or if you simply want to stay virtually in touch with your users, this is a delivery method worth of consideration.

Do you have advices on a topic that you wish to hear in the upcoming italian MySQL webinars? Please comment this post and we'll examine your ideas.