Joshua D. Drake Blog Posts

Invisible Disease Awareness

“According to the Disabled World website, an estimated 10% of the U.S. population has what could be considered an ‘invisible’ disease, defined as a health condition that causes significant impairment and undermines the overall quality of life but does not outwardly manifest itself in ways that are apparent to others.” [1]

While normally our focus is Postgres, we wanted to take a moment to bring attention to the People side of People, Postgres, Data. May is mental health and Ehlers-Danlos awareness month. Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (EDS) is a rare condition that affects the collagen throughout the entire body, resulting in dislocations, subluxations, lack of joint stability and support, tendinosis, and debilitating pain. There is no cure and the symptoms are life long.

In 2020, PostgresWarrior (AKA Amanda Nystrom) was diagnosed with Hypermobile EDS and Fibromyalgia. She is an instrumental and invaluable member of the People, Postgres, Data community. She has driven us forward in ways that so many of us never see and yet require to succeed. Many of our community are affected by invisible diseases - let's take a moment to appreciate what they accomplish and fight for in Postgres/Open Source.

Upcoming webinars | RSVP here

• May 25, 1pm ET: Creating a Resilient PostgreSQL Cluster with Kubegres

• June 15, 1pm ET: When it All Goes Wrong - Incident Response in Large Postgres Databases

• June 23, 1pm ET: Making Postgres Fly on Kubernetes

• June 29, 1pm ET: Implementing Cluster File Encryption in Postgres

Community Chat

Our Discord Channel has 2000 community members waiting to participate in your Postgres success. Join us today with a community that has rule #1 of: Be Nice.

Podcasts

• Building Your Data Warehouse On Top Of PostgreSQL - Episode 186
• More than a Refresh: Stephanie Kirmer, Data Scientist for Saturn Cloud

1. https://www.socialworktoday.com/archive/072417p32.shtml

Like most conference organizers we are learning to adapt to the new world; a world where physical events are no longer viable (at least in 2020). A world where people are genuinely and realistically concerned that an in-person event would increase their chances of receiving or spreading a life threatening virus.

The question is: Are in-person events a thing of the past?

The answer to that question is a difficult one. Our friends at O'reilly and Associates have permanently canceled their in person events. Our friends in Europe recently canceled the well respected PgConf.EU and Ibiza. We had to cancel our 2020 marque event in NYC in March and our upcoming Silicon Valley conference. The local community organizer website Meetup.com has even modified their capabilities to allow for online meetups. 

Humans in general seek out fellow human contact. That contact is usually of reasonably like minded individuals or at least mutual interests. This is why events like Postgres Conference are successful, because irrespective of any personal beliefs we are all there to learn and enjoy fellow Postgres professionals. But are virtual meetups and conferences going to be enough to satisfy that connection or are people going to demand a return to a historical norm?

Challenges

Even before COVID-19, in-person events came with challenges that put significant pressure on volunteers. Between cultural communication differences, having an independent Code of Conduct committee, pricing, economies of scale, partner demands, and now social distancing, conferences are now going to be more complicated than ever. A room that once could comfortably seat 100 can now only properly sit 30. An exhibit hall is likely out of the question and one-on-one mentoring and networking are likely not going to be viable.  How do we work around these limitations? Is it worth it? Are the people in our community even interested anymore or is it time to accept a new norm?

Opportunity

Without question this is a time of reflection, continued development of relationships, and looking into the magic 8-ball; a continual asking of questions to find the right path forward. The pandemic is a tough foe but true leaders are looking forward and trying to find ways to continue to serve. For that to be successful we need your help. We have put together a poll (that can be found here) to gain insight into what opportunities we may be able to pursue in the future. Please take a couple minutes and help shape the future of Open Source events. 

As a closing, we are actively moving forward with Digital Events across the globe and have an unending Call for Presentations open for Webinars. If you have any feedback or brilliant ideas, please send them to us via organizers@postgresconf.org.

Blatant Poll Link 

As Postgres Conference pushes forward in the brave new world, we evolve and increase the ability for the People, Postgres, Data community to succeed. As a part of our positive adaptation we have a new website that features upcoming events, professional content (written and video), and the best in our written community via “Community Content”.

Discord

In an effort to provide a modern, friendly, and inclusive community platform, we have launched a Discord server for all things Postgres. We are providing a helpful experience with rule #1 being: Be Nice. Our discussions will branch out beyond the core of PostgreSQL and provide a forum for success with Postgres and related technologies. Join us for what is guaranteed to be a refreshing experience for the community: https://discord.gg/tjxNBCz

2021

We are seeking feedback from our community on 2021 in-person events. We are currently considering the East Coast event for October 2021 and the West Coast event for December 2021. Please help us in determining the type of event you would like to participate in!

Upcoming live events

We currently have the following webinars scheduled through October:

• September 9th, 10AM PST: PostgreSQL Parallelism Do’s and Don’ts
• September 15th, 10AM PT: Monitoring Strategy Considerations
• September 29th, 10AM PST: Introduction to PostgreSQL ColumnStore Indexes

• September 16, 10AM PT: How To Query Against Multiple Postgres Instances As If They're One Server Using Starburst Presto
• September 29, 10AM PST:Introduction to PostgreSQL ColumnStore Indexes
• September 30, 10AM PT: Live Demo: Creating A Single Point Of Access To Multiple Postgres Servers Using Starburst Presto
• October 14, 10AM PT: Live Demo: Live Demo: Unlock Data In Postgres Servers To Query It With Other Data Sources LIke Hive, Kafka, Other DBMSs, And More.

PostgresConf US 2018 is in 9 days. Here is the obligatory "Buy your tickets" reminder! If you look around (a Google search of Gold sponsor Google Cloud is a good place to start) you will find a lot of discount codes.

In 2017 we launched a community wide effort to better recognize contributors for not only the conference but the wider Postgres Community. We continued this effort in 2018 and are pleased to have many speaker profiles available, with more being published every day:

• Les McMonagle
• Malcolm McLean
• Elizabeth Zalman
• Hubert Zhang of Pivotal
• Baron Schwartz
• Jignesh Shah
• Tim Gorman
• Tom Limoncelli

People, Postgres, Data,

Due to the health risks and travel restrictions created by the Coronavirus we unfortunately have to cancel Postgres Conference 2020 which was to be held at the Marriott Marquis on March 23rd, 2020 thru March 27th, 2020.

We want to thank all of our attendees, partners and volunteers for all the hard work we all put in to try and pull this event off. Sadly, the stars were not aligned this year. We now focus our efforts on Postgres Conference Silicon Valley 2020 and our Digital Events. 

Thank you all for your patience and support,

Postgres Conference Chairs

PostgresConf Silicon Valley is being held October 15th-16th at the Hilton San Jose and the schedule is now available.

The two day event received over 80 submissions! A lot of the usual and legendary speakers are present but we were pleasantly surprised to find that so many new (to the conference) speakers submitted. It shows that the mission of People, Postgres, Data is growing at an amplified rate. The presentations are all of the "best-in-class quality" our attendees have come to expect from PostgresConf events.

• Using TimescaleDB for time-series storage and analytics in Postgres
• Designing applications on top of a distributed PostgreSQL

Due to a rise in concern around the Omnicron variant of COVID-19 and surprise remodeling/construction from the Hilton, Postgres Conference Silicon Valley 2022 has been rescheduled. The hotel has been apologetic and accommodating. The new dates for the conference are:

April 7-8 (Thursday - Friday)

Though this was an unexpected decision, we are confident that the delay of the event will result in a positive outcome for all involved.

Thank you for your support!

Get your tickets here.