I’ve stolen photos from every blog post about our conference :), and I hope nobody minds.
It was an amazing event! I am so glad I didn’t give up and was able to deliver a good event for my community!
PG Day Chicago
Category: professional
Last Thursday
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!
Our NFP Updates
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 🙂
Welcome Prairie
One more reblog
PostgreSQL Meetup
Giving some visibility to my non-professional social network 🙂
What I Was Doing Yesterday…
Having Fun At SCaLE!
Other Things That Keep Me Busy
Work is nonstop, but I also have almost as much (if not more) going on with my Postgres Community activities (and what’s not). The things that are falling apart are so many that I do not want to talk about them. If I didn’t receive some positive signals from the Universe, I would assume that the Universe is telling me to give up on half of the things I am doing.
On the talk preparation side, I had to prepare three different versions of my security talk: a forty-minute talk for PG Day Chicago, a twenty-minute talk for Lighting Talks at the office, and a five-minute talk for DevOpsDay Chicago.
The last one was the most difficult and took more time than the other two combined. The problem was not even five minutes, but other requirements. Usually, I plan one slide per minute, and I know that this averages correctly. However, at this event, they requested twenty slides for a five-minute talk, and they will automatically advance a slide every 15 seconds!
I never had to do anything like that! At first, it seemed like an impossible task. Also, I was not allowed to use animation; it had to be twenty slides, not twenty clicks. I had to learn how to set up a slide show and rehearsed multiple times, each time making changes to the slides. It sounds unbelievable how much I worried about this five minutes! However, that’s the first time I was invited to talk at the DevOpsDay, and my goal is to spark interest and to make sure people approach me and talk with me after the presentation. That means the presentation has to be flawless.
I finished it last night and submitted the slides to the conference, and only then I realized how much it bothered me! I am leaving to Pasadena tomorrow, and it feels like a 40-minute talk on a different topic in front of a very large audience is less stressful 🙂
Yesterday
There was a snowstorm, and I had a meetup after work with sixty RSVPs. I reminded people to change their RSVP if they decide not to come, but only five people canceled. After some hesitation, I ordered pizza (not for all sixty, but for forty :)), and then I was wondering whether anybody would show up.
In the end, at least twenty people, if not more, showed up, and we had a great presentation and a great discussion, but one thing really touched me.
I know a person who has delivered our pizza for many years – he delivered it to six different addresses :). We are practically friends. Yesterday, when he rolled the cart in, he told me: I brought something just for you! Here is some warm soup and some cookies! Perfect for the weather!
It was the sweetest thing, and I thanked him many times and started to eat the soup right away!
Hettie's Reflections 