Category: professional

Sponsor Raffles

At the PG DATA conference, we held a “Sponsor Passport” raffle: attendees could stamp their “passports” at each sponsor table, and those passports were then used as raffle tickets.

In case someone doesn’t know, I am not a lottery person at all, and the only reason I placed my passport in the box was to set a good example for others. I was called to draw, and imagine my surprise when I handed Pat the first passport and he said: Hettie!

I thought it was a joke, but it was not: I won a $100 Amazon gift certificate! Even funnier, two other organizers won the prizes, and then one of our meetup members!

Yesterday, at PG Day Boston, they also had Sponsor Passports, and I participated again, joking about my PG DATA experience. A couple of people who attended both joked about the “staged wins.” You will never believe it, but I won a $100 Amazon gift card again! And again, my name was the first to be drawn.

I became somewhat nervous, thinking that this luck is for no good. How did it turn out? I will tell you tomorrow – too tired now!

Traveling To PG Day Boston

My friend and former colleague was in charge of Pg Day Boston; it was the first event in that series, and I promised him I would come. Fortunately, there are plenty of direct flights to Boston from Chicago, but Boston is one hour ahead of us, and to make it a day trip and to get most of the conference, I had to take a 6 AM flight, which meant I had to be up at 3 AM. That was an extreme even for me, but remembering how I stayed in line three weeks ago, I decided to be on the safe side. I even pre-ordered Uber, which I almost never do.

Also, remembering that there was no food on my flight to Vancouver, and that the lounge does not open before 5 AM, I decided to upgrade to First Class. I arrived at the airport on time; the priority boarding didn’t reopen, so I stayed in the line with others, but chose a shorter line this time. Then, I waited for 25 min for the lounge to open. I got a cappuccino, a small yogurt cup, and a small cup of chai pudding, thinking I would have a proper breakfast on the plane, but they didn’t have any food, even in first class! There were drinks and some snacks, like crunchy bars, and that was it. Oh, well. First World problems:)

The conference took place on the 6th floor of the Boston Museum of Science. The great thing about it is that it is very close to the Logan Airport. Since my flight was ahead of schedule, and the ride was less than 15 minutes, I only missed a small part of the keynote. The most difficult part of the whole day was staying awake, alert, and social while being up since 3 AM. I mostly succeeded :). I had several great conversations, made some meaningful comments, and reconnected with several of my former EDB colleagues. I probably could have stayed for the whole social hour after the conference and been on time for my flight, but I chose to spend this extra hour in the airport lounge and have a proper meal. Even though it was rush hour, it still took 15 min to get to the airport (most of the way it was an underground tunnel). No lines at security, great food in the lounge, free in-flight internet (now the norm with AA), early arrival, and a quick taxi ride home (I know by now that taxi is faster on tbd way back, and not that expensive).

I spent zero time in Boston, as expected. I am thinking – it’s sort of funny how you can actually go for a day to Boston with no luggage, no packing; just a regular backpack I take to work. I am not sure whether it was a justified spending of time and money yet, but we’ll see. I mostly went to support Tom, but he appears to be fine anyway. There was enough EBD people, which made up for the lack of external audience, and overall, he is just more relaxed about the whole thing than I :). Besides, he won’t be doing these conferences anymore; there is a new team coming next year.

Anyway, I guess it was good that I went. The event was different from mine, and it’s OK.

Speakers And Travel

We had to replace several speakers because they either didn’t get visas or required sponsorship for their travel. While the latter one was no one fault, the visa situation was extremely annoying. People applied for visas way in advance, and they should not have wait for many months. I am still mad that it happened!

Additionally, there were several mini -calamities, like there were three speakers who forgot to register, and there was one speaker who’s flight was delayed multiple times, so he ended up arriving to the venue nine minutes before his talk! Our head of the CfP Committee was pacing the hallway with the phone in her hand watching for the speaker’s messages. I ran up to the registration desk and checked him in, so that he could have his badge ready. He made it!

I should also mention that our keynote was at risk until days before the event, but this was also happily resolved.

And the program was the best I could imagine!

… And Now I Need To Catch Up With Life

Yesterday, I was still meeting with the conference participants, but now I am done, and my French friend who stayed with me during the conference left yesterday afternoon.

Boris and I had 24 hours to ourselves, without any urgent tasks, without answering emails or Telegram messages, without printing additional badges or directional arrows, without replying to sponsors or updating volunteers’ schedules.

We went for a very long bike ride (almost 40 miles) and had a huge breakfast at Lea’s, so I joked that by 9:30 AM, we both burned and consumed all the calories for today :).

There is still a lot of work to close the books for the conference, including all sorts of feedback collection.

I finally feel sleepy. I thought I would sleep for nine hours after the conference, but it’s only today that I feel like going to bed early. Also, I was pushing aside so many “normal” things that I do not know where to start with getting back on track!

PG DATA Conference In Pictures

I know, I know… I know that people do not click the links, especially if this link leads you to several hundred pictures. I know, I know…

Still, I can’t select just a couple of pictures; I can’t even select a dozen or two. I love them all! I just went through the “everything”, which is around 900 photos, and painfully selected just about 300, and that’s the link I am posting here.

I am smiling, going through the photos. Although this time around, I was able to listen to some sessions, it was still a drop in the sea, and it brings me incredible joy to see an engaged audience at each session, everyone listening and asking questions; a great hallway track. Love seeing new faces, love seeing interest and curiosity!

Take a look 🙂

Conference Day 1

Looks like we are rolling! I had tons of positive feedback about the conference; there were many great talks, and it looks like there were no major hiccups (although we will know next week!)

Pre-conference

Several times a day, I think I should write down everything that happens over just a couple of hours: how many conference-related messages I receive, what they are about, and how many responses I need to send out.

It couldn’t be further from “me doing it all alone,” nothing like that! Many people are helping me and handling huge portions of the work, including catering, sending sponsor information, sending messages to attendees, managing social media, and more!

Still… each time I look at the phone or open my laptop to write something personal, I see yet another thing I need to take care of, respond to, or plan.

The conference is just a week away, and I can’t believe it. And there are so many things to do – still!

Pictures From The Conference

This year, I felt way more “in the right place” than in Montreal last year. I do not know whether to blame the conference or myself :). Below are the pictures from the conference social media or taken by other people.

“DBA confessions”
What is Postgres Compatible? with Jimmy Angelakos. Since this discussion was based on the results of a half-day event we ran in Riga, Jummy called it “Riga Consensus,” and I liked it!
After “Women’s Breasfast”
I am posing by the poster of my college together with his co-author.
With Monica

First Meetup At Chicago Innovations: I Loved It!!!

Prairie Postgres May meetup: the Mythical data Warehouse

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?