Category: professional

Bureaucracy

That’s the mildest term for how things went with registering our NFP with the Office of the Illinois Attorney General. When I started this journey in October 2024, everyone who was ever close to the NFP business would tell me that getting the tax-exempt status with the IRS was the most difficult and time-consuming task.

Indeed, registering an NFP took two days and was all online; setting up our EIN took only days and was all online as well. The trademark business took a couple of weeks, but only because we ran into some inconsistencies on the trademark holder’s website, and it took time to resolve it. Our greatest surprise, the tax-exempt letter arrived only fice weeks after we applied! Nobody could believe it, and I counted our blessings.

The last step was registering with the Illinois AG office, and that was the first thing we had to do on paper. We checked the list of documents we had to submit, both Anna and I signed them, I printed them and sent the package by Priority Mail.

A week later, I saw our registration fee check cashed, and I thought that we will recieve the confirmation letter soon. However, when the letter arrived, it was not the confirmation of the registration, but the list of things we did wrong!

We submitted the corrected package, and after that, somehting weird started to happen. People were not returning our calls, the documents we mailed were never received even though the tracking showed it ws delivered. It took many hours to reach anyone, and at some point, we were told that we abandoned the registration, because we never mailed missing information, and we had to start all over.

At that point of our odyssey, I started walking to the AG office and leaving the papers there, making sure they are all stampted as received. This didn’t stop the stream of the lost items. Also, by that time, the AG office finally introduced the online application submission system, but since we started on paper, we had to continue on paper, and it took even longer. Finally, when we received a new list of missing items, Anna and I got together online and wrote an email to our State Representative Constituent service, who saved us!

It still took several weeks! However, each time “something was missing” we took a note regarding how long it would take if our State Rep office won’t interfere. I believe, they saved us anothe six months!

My biggest regret is that I didn’t know we didn’t have to wait for this registration to apply for the Illinois Tax Exempt status! We could already have it, and now it’s another six months wait! At least, I could apply online!

And the moral of the story – Long live Constituent Service!

Conferences

The weather is miserable, which is good at the time when I am spending yet another weekend on conference-related work.

The first one is my presentation at PG Day Nordic, which I absolutely had to finalize this weekend, and I just did. When I submitted this proposal, I thought that this would be just the second half of the “long queries” part of my Prague tutorial. However, I realized that it won’t fly immediately after I set down for my first “cut and paste” session.

Then I had been nervous and procrastinating for a very long time, because each time I would start to modify this presentation, I felt it was falling apart, and had too many slides, and at the same time looked like “something from the middle of a tutorial”, not a complete presentation. I changed the idea of what and how I want to talk about several times. Finally, two days ago, I realized I wanted to make this presentation completely different from what I originally had in mind, which meant a significant rewrite.

Since I had several other bullet points approaching deadlines, I had a number of good excuses to keep pushing this rewrite to an uncertain future date, except that I couldn’t, and I finally finished it, and really happy with how it looks now! I don’t even want to think about how many hours it took.

And the second one is a never-ending list of things for PG DATA. I am genuinely puzzled because several volunteers are busy doing a lot, for which I am very thankful, but at the same time, I am busy with conference-related projects all the time, and there is no way to ignore them. A never-ending chain of email – check – submit – respond.

I know, nobody forced me! 😂

DePaul Industry Night

On Wednesday, March 11, our non-profit Pairie Postgres participated in the  Business & Data Analytics Industry Night at DePaul University as a resource for students. I was pleasantly surprised that our communications with DePaul are deepening, and they actually do all they can to include us in any events we might be interested in. It was great to talk with students directly. Yes, it might feel like a very modest outcome: one student registered for our June conference, and one student emailed us to tell us he wants to volunteer, but it’s so much better than nothing (which we had before!).

Carlos, the only local Board member except for me, was able to join me, and another organization member, Robert, also joined us. We had a great time at the event and appreciate the opportunity to connect with students and share that learning about databases can benefit their future careers.

I saved the last copy of our book from being silently taken 🙂

Talking To People at SCaLE

This conference was very productive: I reconnected with many of my existing professional and personal contacts and established many new connections. I know very well that out of ten people who express interest in my projects and my conference, not more than one will end up coming back to me or participating in my events. Still, I need to talk to everyone, because that’s the only way to find new partners and allies.

It was work. Both days at the conference were work and work. Today, I spent more than 10 hours emailing and messaging people solely about conference-related topics: sponsorship, volunteering, promotion, and participation. I’m tired. My head is heavy. But I am happy I’ve expanded my network, and that I did it in real-life, not following the LinkedIn algorithm :).

It’s insanely difficult, but I am building trust and recognition, and I hope that all of this contributes to community building.

At SCaLE in Pasadena

This year, I came to SCaLE for two days only, and I am busier than ever! It’s nice, warm, and sunny outside, but I was barely out both days, trying to catch up with a couple of dozen people, building new connections, and doing the outreach.

That’s me talking at the educational track! But overall, I talked to way more people!

I am still at the conference, taking a Red Eye flight back to Chicago tonight!

ACM Meetup, and What’s Next

Today was one of the rare occasions that I was able to attend an ACM meetup in person. Most of the time, they are scheduled at the last minute, and I almost certainly have conflicts (no matter how many times I ask to schedule in advance).

Today’s meetup was very interesting; the speaker talked about data visualization and appealed to the broadest possible audience. I believe we have his presentation slides available, and if so, I will share. For now, just two pictures as examples:

Tomorrow, I am going to Pasadena to SCaLE. Usually, I go there for three and a half days, but this time it will be just for two, and the number of people who want to meet with me definitely will not fit into these two days.

***

I do not want to repeat the same thing again, namely that the workload is unimaginable, but it is still the case. I had a very difficult problem at work, and I couldn’t figure it out all day yesterday. The problem was urgent, but even if it wasn’t, I won’t be able to stop thinking about it or trying to resolve it. I finally figured it out today, along with two other problems (but these ones were way easier).

When I was able to figure it out, there was nobody around who could share my joy, and no one wanted to listen to the details. I ended up calling Boris, although it was rather late for him, but at least he understood the level of my happiness – he knew how much I was annoyed by this problem.

There is no pleasure in the world that could be compared with a techinical puzzle being solved, I am convinced! At least, that’s true for me :). The most potent drug 🙂

Prairie Postgres February Meetup

Knock on wood, but for the longest time now, each meetup is a success. I can’t recall when was the last time we had a meetup with poor attendance. Once again, there was a great presenter, tons of questions, my favorite “active crowd,” and long conversations after the talk.

The thing I like the most is that attendees collaborate and interact between the meetups, without me:). I know that they come not only because I am an influencer, and not only because we have pizza, but also because they value their interactions. Yesterday, two PUG members asked me whether I wanted to know about the project they started together. I replied with an enthusiastic YES, and they told me about something really awesome they built as a follow-up to some of our “after-sessions” discussions. I love it!

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!)

The area by the hotel cafe

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.