Category: professional
About Career Change
A couple of weeks ago, I attended a virtual event called “Women & Visibility.” I believe the name is self-explanatory. A panel of successful female professionals shared their stories about the hurdles they had to overcome to be heard, not ignored, and recognized for their contributions.
Unfortunately, nothing new! We heard these stories many, many times! One of the side discussions, however, caught my attention. The panel host asked the participants whether each of them had a significant shift in their professional career, perhaps even a career switch, that launched their future success. And all the panelists agreed.
I started thinking about what was wrong with me :), because I am one of these incredibly dull people who do the same thing all the time. I have been doing databases and almost nothing except databases for more than 40 years, and that’s the field where I transitioned from “nobody” to “somebody.” And then I thought that, in some sense, I had a career switch, and more than once. For many years, I never thought about myself as “standing out.” I knew I was good at what I was doing; good enough to always have a job, even being a single mom with three small children. Still, I was in a realm of “I need a secure job with a stable paycheck.” Only much later, I transitioned to the mindset of “I want to take responsibility for my actions, I want to make my decisions, and be responsible for the consequences.” And much later, it became: “I want to help others, I want to build a community, I want to take part in making the world a better place.”
Maybe this still counts as a career change, even though I’ve been working with databases all my life?
Other Things I’ve Been Busy With Recently
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.
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 🙂
Hettie's Reflections 