Recently (on April 19, 2010), Monty gave a Google Tech Talk, titled: MariaDB: The Backward Compatible Branch of the MySQL Database Server. The talk is under 47-minutes long, and the video is embedded below. Its a good introduction to what MariaDB has been up to for the last year+, aims, goals, and the future.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AL1l9Puh0sk