Joshua D. Drake Blog Posts

2017, the year PostgresConf and Postgres reached the masses

 
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No year has been better for PostgreSQL or the Postgres Ecosystem than 2017. The continued adoption and growth of open source communities over the last 40 years shows a mature and strong ecosystem. It is true what they say, "Middle age is the best time of your life." Here are just a few of the great results of 2017:
  • Amazing work from PostgreSQL.Org with the release of v10 which brought much sought after technologies such as native table partitioning, integrated logical replication, and mature support for federated tables.
  • Pivotal announced multi-cloud support for their Open Source, BigData, MPP Postgres variant Greenplum.
  • Increased support and features from Cloud Industry heavy weights AWS, Compose.IO, and Microsoft. Microsoft released Azure Database for PostgreSQL, Compose increased their high availability options, and AWS announced the availability of Amazon Aurora with PostgreSQL compatibility.
  • Enterprise Consulting and Support continued to grow with support from PostgreSQL.Org Major Sponsors 2ndQuadrant and OpenSCG.
2017 was also the year we saw the launch of the International Postgres Conference, PostgresConf. The PostgresConf project is a globally aware, ecosystem centric conference focused on People, Postgres, Data. The project organized more events this year than any other Postgres Advocacy and Education project. In the United States there was PGConf US (now PostgresConf US), Austin Mini, Philadelphia, (2) NYC Minis, Seattle, and finally a full Austin event. The project also hosted PostgresConf South Africa and has several International events planned in 2018.
 
The PostgresConf International efforts wouldn't be possible without the fundamental support of the community and our ecosystem partners:
 
 
 

We have nothing but confidence in the continued growth of PostgreSQL and the Postgres related ecosystem through 2018. Thank you to the PostgreSQL.Org community, our ecosystem partners, and the global Postgres Ecosystem community; without you our efforts would not continue to succeed as a volunteer organized, non-profit Postgres conference. We are looking forward to a fantastic 2018, centered on People, Postgres, Data.


 
 
Joshua D. Drake     January 08, 2018

People, Postgres, Data


People, Postgres, Data is not just an advocacy term. It is the mission of PostgresConf.Org. It is our rule of thumb, our mantra, and our purpose. When we determine which presentations to approve, which workshops to support, which individuals to receive scholarships, which events to organize, and any task big or small, it must follow: People, Postgres, Data. It is our belief that this mantra allows us to maintain our growth and continue to advocate for the Postgres community and ecosystem in a positive and productive way.

When you attend PostgresConf the first thing you will notice is the diversity of the supported ecosystem; whether you want to discuss the finer points of contribution with the major PostgreSQL.Org sponsors such as 2ndQuadrant or EnterpriseDB, or you want to embrace the Postgres ecosystem with the Greenplum Summit or TimeScaleDB.

The following is a small sampling of content that will be presented April 16 - 20 at the Westin Jersey City Newport:

Learn to Administer Postgres with this comprehensive training opportunity:

Understand the risks of securing your data during this Regulated Industry Summit presentation:

Struggle with time management? We have professional development training such as:

Educate yourself on how to contribute back to the PostgreSQL community:

We are a community driven and volunteer organized ecosystem conference. We want to help the community become stronger, increase education about Postgres, and offer career opportunities and knowledge about the entire ecosystem. Please join us in April!

Joshua D. Drake     February 27, 2018

PGConf US Local: Ohio schedule published

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PGConf US, in partnership with Ohio Linux Fest, is pleased to announce the schedule PGConf Local: Ohio is now available.

The inaugural PGConf US Local: Ohio Conference (PGConf Ohio) will be held September 29th - 30th at the Hyatt Regency Columbus Ohio (350 North High Street Columbus, Ohio, USA, 43215).

This two day, single track conference is a perfect opportunity for users, developers, business analysts, and enthusiasts from Ohio to amplify Postgres and participate in the Postgres community.


Conference Schedule:


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Mastering Postgres Administration: Bruce Momjian

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Conference speakers receive complimentary entry to the breakout sessions on September 30th as well as attendance to Ohio Linux Fest as well. The half-day training options on September 29th are separately priced sessions. As a nonprofit event series, funding is currently not available for speaker travel and lodging accommodations.


Sponsorship Opportunities
The PGConf US Local series is supported by its generous sponsors: Diamond Sponsor Amazon Web Services and Platinum Sponsors Compose, 2ndQuadrant, and OpenSCG. Please contact us if you are interested in joining our wonderful sponsors for Ohio or National!

About PGConf US:
PGConf US is a nonprofit conference series with a focus on growing the community through increased awareness and education of Postgres. PGConf US is known for its highly attended national conference held in Jersey City, New Jersey, and has expanded to a local series for 2017.

The PGConf Local series partners with regional Postgres and open source groups to bring dynamic and engaging Postgres related content and professional training experiences to local communities. Host cities of 2017 include Philadelphia, Ohio, Seattle, Austin, and Cape Town, South Africa, with more locations to follow.

Contact: organizers@pgconf.us
Joshua D. Drake     August 30, 2017

3 presentations, 1 PGConf: NYC Mini!

We are having yet another PGConf Mini in NYC. The event is scheduled for December 14th, 2017 and Work Bench is hosting:

 
 
The event is part of the PGConf Mini series and is free to attend. The PGConf Mini series works directly with user groups and external communities to organize events for the local community. The events are held as a larger meetup style event with networking opportunities and up to 4 presentations. The current agenda for the latest PGConf Mini: NYC is:
 
Agenda: 
 
• 6:30 - 7:00: Jonathan Katz, (TBD), Postgresql Contributor and PGConf Chair Emeritus

Efficiently and Safely Propagate Data Changes Without Triggers!

 

Prior to PostgreSQL 9.4, the primary way to distribute data-driven changes across multiple tables was to use triggers. While triggers guarantee that these changes will be propagated, they can have a significant impact application performance, both technically and with development time (see: "debugging"). PostgreSQL 9.4 introduced logical decoding, which provides a way to stream all changes in a database to a consumer. Using a logical decoder, you can read all changes that are made in a table into your programming language of choice to perform many tasks: cache invalidation, data propagation, submitting changes to remote services, and more. Many PostgreSQL drivers, such as psycopg2 and JDBC support the logical replication protocol, which lets you easily stream your database changes to be manipulated using your favorite programming language. This talk will demonstrate how you can setup logical decoding for your application, look at architecture strategies for working with a logical decoder, and look at a case-study that shows how using logical decoding led to a big performance boost over a similar trigger-based system.
 
• 7:00 - 7:30:  Kevin Jernigan, Senior Product Manager, Amazon
Technical Architecture of Postgres Aurora 
 
Amazon Aurora is a cloud-optimized relational database that combines the speed and availability of high-end commercial databases with the simplicity and cost-effectiveness of open source databases. The recently announced PostgreSQL-compatibility, together with the original MySQL compatibility, are perfect for new application development and for migrations from overpriced, restrictive commercial databases. In this session, we’ll do a deep dive into the new architectural model and distributed systems techniques behind Amazon Aurora, discuss best practices and configurations, look at migration options and share customer experience from the field. 
 
• 7:30 - 8:20: Joshua (JD) Drake POSTPONED due to flight cancellation)
The Power of Postgres Replication, Postgres Expert - Lead Consultant Command Prompt, Inc and Co-Chair PGConf!
 
With PostgreSQL v10 a new replication engine has come to town. Let's explore Postgres Logical Replication, how to use it, optimize it and let it best fit in with your organization. We will also discuss its interactions with external tools as well as Binary Replication and features such as Hot Standby. 
 
 
 
 
Joshua D. Drake     November 20, 2017

PostgresConf US 2018: Schedule almost granite!

With more than 200 events submitted and approximately 80 slots to be filled, this has been the most difficult schedule to arrange in the history of PostgresConf. By far, the majority of content received we wanted to include in the schedule. It is that level of community support that we work so hard to achieve and we are thankful to the community for supporting PostgresConf. There is no doubt that the number one hurdle the community must overcome is effective access to education on Postgres. The US 2018 event achieves this with two full days of training and three full days of breakout sessions, including the Regulated Industry Summit and Greenplum Summit.


For your enjoyment and education here is our almost granite schedule!

See something you like? Then it is time to buy those tickets!

This event would not be possible without the continued support from the community and our ecosystem partners:

Joshua D. Drake     February 22, 2018

PostgresConf 2019: Back on the island and call for papers

We are pleased to announce that PostgresConf 2019 will be held at the Sheraton Times Square March 18th - 22nd, 2019. 
 
 
Following on the success of PostgresConf 2018, 2019 will include five days with added training and partner summits.
 

March 18th and 19th will have immersive training. Instructors are encouraged to submit half and full day material for consideration. The preferred topics are centered around Postgres but anything People, Postgres, or Data related will be considered.

Monday, March 18th through Friday, March 22nd will host several partner summits, including popular and upcoming topics within the Postgres community and the annually hosted Regulated Industry Summit. Break out sessions will be held from Wednesday - Friday.

In addition to the partner summits, PostgresConf 2019 will offer multiple program tracks with Postgres related topics including (but not limited to): 

  • Postgres Internals
  • Postgres Administration
  • Operations and Development
  • Data
  • Cloud
  • Database Security and Compliance
  • Use Cases
  • Regulated Industries
    • Telecommunications
    • Healthcare and life sciences
    • Railroad, airline and pipeline transportation
    • Oil and gas
    • Electric power and transmission
    • Financial services and trading 
Important Dates:
  • Call for Papers Open: 09/12/2018 
  • Call for Papers Close: 01/11/2019 
  • Confirmation/Acceptance: 01/18/2019
Can't wait until March? Join us at our West Coast event, PostgresConf Silicon Valley, October 15th and 16th, 2018 at the Hilton San Jose.
 
About PostgresConf:


PostgresConf is a global nonprofit conference series with a focus on growing community through increased awareness and education of Postgres and related technologies. PostgresConf is known for its highly attended national conference with the mission of:

 
 
Joshua D. Drake     September 25, 2018

PostgresConf 2019: Early bird tickets now available and CFP still open

We are pleased to announce that Early Bird tickets to Postgres Conference 2019 are now available. Whether you are seeking a world class big data and analytics learning opportunity from the Greenplum Summit, a deep dive from the Google Cloud Summit, Regulated Industry Information from the Regulated Industry track, or a dizzying amount of learning opportunities from over 100 breakout sessions, PostgresConf 2019 is the show not to miss! Oh, and did we mention there will be training options as well?

Register here:

https://postgresconf.org/conferences/2019

Call For Papers is still open! Submit your presentation at the above link.
 
Postgres Conference 2019

PostgresConf would be impossible without the generous support of our sponsors including:
EnterpriseDB, Pivotal, Google, Microsoft and 2ndQuadrant.

Thanks for all of the support and we look forward to seeing you in March!

The Postgres Conference Organizer Team

Joshua D. Drake     December 11, 2018

PGConf US Local: Seattle Call for Papers

PGConf US in partnership with SeaPug is pleased to announce that the call for papers for PostgreSQL Conference US Local: Seattle is now open. 


PostgreSQL Conference US Local: Seattle is taking place August 11th and 12th 2017! Call for Papers is now open and presentations can be submitted here.



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National Diamond Sponsor


The call for papers will be open from May 16, 2017 until July 2, 2017. Speakers will be notified of acceptance/decline no later than July 8.

The two track, two day conference is a perfect opportunity for the Vancouver, B.C., west coast, and Rocky Mountain regions to join the PostgreSQL community and increase their knowledge.
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National Platinum Sponsor

Breakdown of the Conference Layout: 

  • August 11th: Training
  • August 12th: Breakout Sessions 

All selected presenters will receive free entry to the breakout sessions (trainings are extra). There are no grants for travel and accommodations. We encourage everyone to submit a talk or training to one of our very first PostgreSQL Conference US Local events and be a part of growing the PostgreSQL community.
Joshua D. Drake     May 16, 2017

Postgres News: 09-04-19

Summer is officially over (although the calendar says otherwise), the kids are back in school, the last three-day camping weekend of the season has passed, and we are staring right at PostgresConf Silicon Valley starting September 18th! Registrations for this fantastic event have already exceeded 2018 numbers and our training day is showing great success. 

Conferences

Digital Events

  • YugabyteDB Distributed SQL Webinars
    • A series of free webinars discussing technical opportunities with Distributed SQL. YugabyteDB is an Open Source, Postgres compatible Distributed SQL database.

News

Learn

 

Partner Conferences

Register Today for API World 2019 and Save $200!

The API World team has offered us 25 free OPEN Passes and discounted PRO Passes to API World 2019 so our members can attend the event.

 

API World (October 8–10, San Jose Convention Center) is the world’s largest API & Microservices conference and expo with 3,500+ attendees, 60+ exhibitors, and 10+ tracks covering API Lifecycle Management, API Innovations, Microservices, Containers, Kubernetes, and more. 140+ speakers include leaders from Intuit, US Bank, IBM, Okta, Capital One, Box, Kong, GitHub, Comcast, Microsoft, Postman, Twillio, SendGrid, Oracle, Ford, UPS, Uber, Google, eBay and 100+ more. 


GitLab Commit, our premier community event, brings together the GitLab community to connect, learn, and inspire. We want to make sure the NY tech community is well-represented at Commit so we are offering a HUGE discount to members of local tech community groups. You can use code 'COMMITCOMMUNITY102' to save 50%. 

 

Joshua D. Drake     September 04, 2019

Announcing PGConf Austin 2017 -- Call for Papers now Open

PGConf US in partnership with the Austin PostgreSQL User Group (AUSPUG) is pleased to announce that the call for papers for PGConf Local: Austin is now open.


AUSTIN, June 28, 2017 -- The inaugural PGConf US Local: Austin Conference (PGConf Austin) will be held November 3 - 4, 2017, at the Norris Conference and Event Center (2525 W. Anderson Ln #365, Austin, TX 78757) located in northwest Austin.


This two day, multi track conference is a perfect opportunity for users, developers, business analysts and enthusiasts from the Southwest to amplify Postgres and participate with the Postgres community.
The Call for Papers for PGConf Austin is now open, and presentation proposals can be submitted at https://pgconf.us/conferences/Austin2017

The call for papers for PGConf Austin will be open until Sunday, August 20, 2017, and speakers will be notified of acceptance/decline no later than Monday, August 28, 2017. Registration for PGConf Austin will also open August 28.

Conference Schedule:
  • Friday, November 3, 2017: Half-day Trainings with Postgres experts
  • Saturday, November 4, 2017: Breakout Sessions (lunch and coffee break provided)


Conference speakers receive complimentary entry to the breakout sessions on November 4 -- the half-day trainings are separately priced sessions. As a nonprofit event series, funding is currently not available for speaker travel and lodging accommodations. Everyone is encouraged to submit a talk or training to the first PGConf supported nonprofit educational events in Texas, and join the growing PostgreSQL community.
Sponsorship Opportunities
PGConf Local series is supported by its generous sponsors, including Diamond Sponsor Amazon Web Services and Platinum Sponsors 2ndQuadrant, Compose, and OpenSCG, as well as Media Sponsor AmplifyPostgres. Business leaders and companies interested in sponsoring PGConf US nonprofit events can view the Conference Prospectus .


About PGConf US:
PGConf US is a nonprofit conference series with a focus on growing the Postgres community through increased awareness and education of Postgres. PGConf US is known for its highly attended national conference held in Jersey City, New Jersey, each year, and has expanded to a local series for 2017.


The PGConf Local series partners with local Postgres and open source groups to bring dynamic and engaging Postgres related content and professional training experience to their local communities in major metroplexes. 2017 host cities include Philadelphia, Seattle, and Austin, as well as Internationally in South Africa with more locations to follow.


Media Contact: organizers@pgconf.us

Joshua D. Drake     June 28, 2017