The only way to be on time with American Airlines is to take the first morning flight on Sunday! I am saying it for the second time within the past two months! Also, that was the only way to get to the airport from my house in 35 minutes!
Hotel Alt in Montreal:
The conference didn’t even start yet, and I already had so many interesting conversations, and learned about so many additional events which will happen during this week! I regret that I didn’t check all of them out earlier and didn’t sign up for some of the activities. My excuse is that the last couple of months were all bloody fights, and making sure the conference would be a great event, regardless of these fights. I hope that next year will be better, though! At least now I know what to expect and will look for the opportunities.
I hope I will have more time to reflect on the actual days of action, but for now, I just want to say that there were no major issues, things went well, and all my efforts were well paid off.
I had to be at the venue at 7 AM, which meant I had to wake up my houseguests by five, and we had to be out of the house by 6 AM (so that I won’t subject them to running to the train station with my speed :)).
I had fewer people on the training day than signed up, but that’s because I was limited in how much I could advertise, and because it was new. Those who attended loved it and said it was a useful thing before the conference.
Also, it was great that we had to test everything before the main conference day (although some new technical issues came up later). My co-workers helped with stuffing the bags, otherwise we won’t make it 🙂
No pictures from the training itself, since I was running around all the time.
Anns came to help me; she was sick the week before, and ended up having an ear infection and bronchitis, which she found out when she finally went to a Minute Clinic in the evening. I do appreciate her sacrifices, and I can’t even say she shouldn’t have done it, because her help was more than essential.
After the training, I managed to fit in a very short meetup with Jay Miller:
I worked very hard to ensure that this event was held in collaboration with our Black Employees resource group, and that’s part of my commitment to supporting DEI, no matter what the rest of the world does.
And the day was not over yet – we had a speakers and volunteers dinner, which was set up in a great way, and I am very thankful for the catering company for making it just the way I wanted and on a budget!
It is now official: a not-for-profit that I founded with two other brave women is now a recognized Postgres NPO and is proudly present on the postgresql.org website.
That means we will have fewer battles to fight and more time to focus on real work to benefit the community.
There is a conference week ahead, and two million things are still not done, but I see the light 🙂
Hettie's Reflections 