Category: professional

Prague Postgres Dev Days

When I planned my trip to Prague, I thought I would be able to take extra days off for an “unpaid conference,” but in 2026, the PTO tracking changed, and as a result, I no longer received “unpaid conference time.” I am still going to contest it, because I still took my work computer with me, and I still did quite a bit of work while there.

But as for Monday, it was a legit working day. I didn’t go to co-working because I had to leave for the airport before 3 PM, and I still wanted to have some time with Boris. I worked from 7:30 AM to 2:30 PM, with only a break for a 30-min walk, and then we headed to the airport, where I kept doing things from the lounge, and still did one work meeting from the hotel, and still dialed in to work a couple of times on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Aside from that, the whole trip to Prague was uneventful in a good way and very productive. The hotel where I stayed (Vienna House Diplomat) was much better than the one I stayed at last year, in all aspects. The room was better, and the gym was on-site and very well equipped. The reception told me that there was an extra charge of 10 euros per visit, but it was totally worth it. The gym had everything, was way more spacious than the one at my Helsinki coworking space, and opened at 6 AM (actually, even a little bit earlier than that!)

This time, I knew what the venue looked like, so I didn’t spend time wandering around the University campus. There were no technical issues with my workshop; the class was full, people listened, reacted, and thanked me many times.

Also, this time, I didn’t have to leave on the same day, so I could stay for the speaker’s dinner and for two-thirds of the talks on Wednesday. I met with everyone I planned to meet, had some unplanned meetings, and all conversations were very productive. I hope that I secured a couple of new sponsors for PG DATA 2026.

My friend Gulcin promised a birthday cake for my belated birthday celebration, and brought a box of delicious pastries! Everyone who was there tried at least a little bit 🙂

People still can’t believe that I turned 63. Gulcin asked me what the secret of my youthfulness is, and as usual, I responded that the secret is that I always do what I want to do, and never do the things I don’t want to do :). She and another person who was there even posted about it on LinkedIn, which was funny.

I brought cookies for those people who didn’t want to rely on the mercy of the Postal Service

Also, the Lighting talks organizer convinced me to submit a lighting talk, so I gave a five-minute into to my new project, and used this opportunity to advertise PG DATA.

Overall, despite many problems I currently have at work and with many of my non-work activities, my mood is significantly better than before the conference.

Speakers and volunteers photo

I am finishing this post on my flight to London, and for some reason, my Google Photos is not available. I will add more photos from the hotel when I am on another provider 🙂

The First Meetup Of 2026

On Tuesday, we had the first meetup of 2026, and it was such a great start to the new year! I was so happy to see many familiar faces, as well as first-timers. We had great attendance (one of those rare situations when I didn’t order enough pizza :)), and Ryan Booz, one of the speakers who never fails me, gave a great talk on configuring Postgres for effective logging and query-optimization analysis.
I liked the fact that we had thirty participants that early in the year, when people just start to get back to their regular activity level. More importantly, we now have a group of active members who not only keep coming to the meetups but also actively listen, participate in discussions, and stay long after the presentation ends, discussing what they just heard, sharing experiences, suggesting future topics, and talking about how we can make Postgres more appealing to application developers! I always have to remind the last group of people staying late that, as much as I love them all, I need to close the house, but those are my happiest moments!

On days like that, I have this strong feeling of community building happening right here, and all my work is not in vain.

Meetups (My Second, Third, And Whatever Jobs)

On Tuesday, I hosted a Prairie Postgres meetup (blog post here)

And today, there was an ACM Chicago Chapter meetup, AI and Gamification: Why Students Cheat and How to Rebuild Learning. 🙄

Actually, it was not bad at all; although no revolutionary ideas. The more I listen to “what should we do with AI” presentations, the more I feel like absolutely nothing new happens in this area, and the scare of AI is very similar to the scare of inventing books, movies, television and internet:). The reason for posting is a rare group photo of almost all of the ACM Chicago Chapter Board (plus the presenter, and plus the Student Chapter leaders).

There were some interesting comments and discussions, but I am so much behind on my posts, that this will have to wait for later 🙂

The End Of Work-Life Balance?

As everyone knows, I love the co-working space Valo, and all the staff know me and go out of their way to do the best for me. Back in January, a funny thing happened, and since then, I use it as an excuse to get out of work by 5 PM or 5:30 at the latest when I am in Helsinki. Otherwise, I am caught in things that are just starting to happen in the office when people start their work day in Chicago.

Last week, when I started to reserve rooms for the upcoming work week, I accidentally reserved two rooms for October 28 instead of One for 28th and one for 29th, and when I realized I made a mistake, I couldn’t cancel either of these reservations. When I came to Valo on Monday, I asked Jarko, a person who is responsible for all tech support, and who helped me many times before, to move this second reservation from Tuesday to Wednesday. He told me I should be able to do it myself, and showed me in the app how to proceed. I was able to cancel, and make a new reservation for October 29, but unfortunately, there were no rooms with extended display available, and I really need this second display for work.

I mentioned it to Jarko when I was in the co-worker’s lounge for my next cup of coffee on Tuesday, and I told him I will check the next morning whether there will be more rooms available. He replied that even if there won’t be any rooms, he should be able to bring an additional display to my room, and asked me whether I was going to come around 8:30. I told him that sometimes, I come earlier and work out before I start the working day, and that was it.

On Wednesday morning, I checked whether to room for the day was already assigned, and I saw that it was. The room number was 328, so when I came in, I dropped my stuff in the room, changed into gym clothes and went to the gym, being pretty happy with the fact that the room as assigned early, so I had time for a workout, and breakfast with no rush, and then I could check with Jarko the monitor situation.

After my workout, I came back to room 328, and my key was not opening it – it flashed red! I looked and the app on the phone and saw that the room number had changed, and now I had room 284 instead of 328, and it was a room with external display. I realized what happened, and went down to reception hoping to ask them to open theold room and letting me to take my stuff. They said that Jarko has changed my reservation, but then he realized that I was already in so he switched it back.

I knew that nothing was switched, so I went to see Jarko (all in my gym clothes, mind you). he was very apologetic, but I told him everything was great, and I am very thankful for his thoughtfullnes, I just need to get my stuff out :). He went to the third floor together with me, helped me to pick up everything and move it to the new room. After the move was completed, he asked: would you like me to extend your hours today? We usually do not rent the rooms with extended display for the evenings, but I want to make sure! I said: thank you, no need today, but in general – I might need it. He replied: any time!

… I didn’t share his response with my Chicago co-workers 😀

Still At The Conference

It’s still working around the clock, meeting with people and talking with potential sponsors.

A colleague sent me a picture from the first conference day (the Community Events Day), and I really like it:

This morning was a Women’s Breakfast. it was hosted in a different hotel, and the setup was a work of art!

That was an additional opportunity to chat with many of my friends with whom I hadn’t had a chance to exchange a word at that conference yet.

Women’s Breakfast group picture – I am at the very back, standing

It rained all day, so I was glad we had a chance to walk outside on Tuesday. Even though it was raining, we wanted to go for dinner with my UK co-worker, and we found a restaurant with mostly authentic food within walking distance.

I am really happy with how everything is going so far, with all the conversations I had, and my outlook for my upcoming conference is optimistic.

PG Conf EU: Days 1 and 2

I do not have a spare minute at the conference, but what a difference between last year and this year! I do not need to run around nervously; I talk to everyone about the conference proposal submissions and sponsorship. On Tuesday, I led the Postgres Standard discussion, and we had an amazingly productive session.

We had an afternoon free (I didn’t need to do anything during the afternoon sessions), so Boris and I went to see all the “required attractions.” I believe I already mentioned that Riga is my least favorite city among all the Baltic cities, and in addition, I have some complicated personal history with it. Also, the wind was brutal, and it felt even colder than it was. I made two more attempts to buy a warmer coat, both without any result. Surprisingly, I felt OK in my very old coat, and hopefully, I will be able to manage for the rest of my stay (or I will finally find something!)

A shopping center where I didn’t find what I was looking for
Freedom Statue, which survived all regime changes
The old mot
The only fortress tower that survived
Continue reading “PG Conf EU: Days 1 and 2” →

We Just Turned One!

Yesterday was exactly one year since Dian, Anna, and I incorporated Prairie Postgres NFP. Never in my wildest dreams could I imagine myself being a founder of a not-for-profit, and even less could I imagine how it would change my life and shift my priorities.

We celebrated in the best possible way – the Illinois Prairie Postgres meetup attendance skyrocketed (I think we had more than forty attendees). We had long, deep, and engaging conversations, and we had cake!

Tampere City Hall Reception

Tampere City Hall visit was an absolutely new experience for me, and I wish I took more pictures! The best part was that we could walk arond the whole building, not just a reception hall. Imagine you visit a museum, and you are allowed to sit on all of these beautiful chairs, and come close to these timy wooden tables, and touch the cabinets and vases, and feel it all like a liveable space!

As for the reception itself, the information about it was misleading. The conference program said that we will have this city walk, which will end with the “event” in the city hall. Boris, who should have some visibility into the details said that “there should be food”.

The event started at 7 PM, and all guests were offered champaign flutes upon arriving the the reception hall, and then there were individual plates with four pieces of appetizers (I didn’t realized that I should have taken picture of them, because I thought there will be something else, but that was it :)). The Mayor of Tampere greeted the conference and delivered a short speech about the importance of data technologies, etc; then the trio of musicians was performing something with people keeping talking, and that was it. My point is that they didn’t have to feed us, but the event ended at 8:30 PM, and it was nine by the time we reached the hotel, and it was too late to look for any other food (the hotel kitchen closes at 9 PM, and I didn’t want to go out and wait anywhere for anything ).

I survived, because Boris saved an apple for me, and because we had hot chocolate packs in the room, and I didn’t really need that much, but it was definitely a planning problem 😂.

Continue reading “Tampere City Hall Reception” →

Code And Coffee

Sunday was packed with activities: in addition to Bike the Drive, it was the day of the monthly Chicago Code and Coffee meetup. I’ve been there before, and I knew that this event is loud and hectic, but I also knew that advertising there is surprisingly efficient. And since I needed to advertise both my September meetup and the conference, I had to attend.

It was the last full day for Boris being here in Chicago, but he agreed that I should go to the meetup, and even volunteered to accompany me, and stoically stayed there for more than two hours of the total havoc. I distributed my flyers and stickers and talked to a large number of people, so I hope to see some new faces in September!

Prioritization

If someone thinks I was relatively quiet in the past couple of days, that was true. The work was fine, but I had a sort of writer’s block with my tutorial, and I started to worry whether I would be able to finish it on time, with all my other responsibilities. One of the things that really bothered me was that I knew that for a workshop of that duration, I needed 100 slides. Also, I knew that even though some of the slides in my presentation were still placeholders, I had already put out there everything I wanted to cover. And when I mentally reviewed my tutorial, I felt strongly that I already had enough material.

I had several industrial slides that required a lot of time for research, but still, there was not enough, and I knew that I shouldn’t expand this part of my tutorial.

Tonight, I was finally able to overcome my writer’s block. I finished all the industrial slides, and when I moved to the next section of my presentation, I realized that there were several placeholders that should have been replaced with three slides each, not one! Finally, I had 94 slides, and I am sure that the remaining ones are somewhere there:).

Finally, I am producing the slides at a normal speed, and I should be able to (mostly) finish everything over the weekend.

And yes, about prioritization! With all being said

  • I covered an early morning escorting shift before work
  • I didn’t go to the Art Institute after work
  • I stopped at Osco for a couple of on-sale items
  • And I went to the beach at seven. The lifeguards were out, the air was cool, and the water was warmer than the air, and I knew that the swimming season was about to end!

And also, our conference website is live! But I will showcase it tomorrow 🙂