Giving some visibility to my non-professional social network 🙂
PostgreSQL Meetup
Giving some visibility to my non-professional social network 🙂
Category: professional
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!
Conferences
It’s a perfect storm of upcoming events.
- One of my talks was accepted for the SCaLE conference (first week of March in Pasadena). This one is the easiest – I can reuse my September talk, I just need to refresh my memory regarding the examples, and as usual, I need to advertise it on social media
- I was invited to give a short talk at the Chicago DevOps Day on March 27. They chose my security talk, but I need to create a “Lighting version” of it, which will be extremely challenging
- I am (maybe) invited to a financial conference in Chicago on March 27, I will talk with them on Monday and hopefully figure out whether I am doing it or not.
- I am invited to do a podcast on Data Bene. I am talking with them on Tuesday, and we will decide on a date.
- My security talk was accepted for PG Day Chicago. The last time I gave it was a year ago, and many things have changed since then, so I need to prepare a new version of it
- On top of that, I need to address all aspects of the conference itself (a list too long to put here) and even a longer list for DevDay, which will precede it.
- None of my talks for PgCon.dev were accepted, but the Community Summit proposal to which I was last-minute invited was, and now we have a lot of work ahead!
And this has been all along with work and other aspects of life!
Prague Dev Day
On Monday evening, I flew to Prague to deliver training at the Prague PostgreSQL Developer Day. I used my full-size (10 hours long) PostgreSQL Query Optimization Training, cut out about 1/3 of it, and updated it with the examples from the book’s second edition. The preparation took way longer than I expected when I submitted this training proposal, but I am happy with the result.
It was a super-short visit to Prague; I barely was outside. I upgraded both my flights to business class because I have nine European upgrades, and I can only use them on Finnair flights. There were only two business class passengers besides me on the way there, and I was the only one on the way back 🙂
My professional New Year Resolution
How The New Year Started
Obviously, it’s a new year – a new crisis at work, but in addition, I realized about a week ago that I need to rework the training I am doing in Prague at the end of January. When I submitted this training proposal, I knew “I had it,” but what I didn’t realize was that :
- It has been two years since the last time I ran this training, and all examples are from the book’s first edition and from the year 2020
- I need to apply different template/different formatting
- I have almost three times more material than the training time, so I needed to decide what to keep!
And… that all takes time! And it’s about 220 slides!
And About The Conference
And of course, there was a conference! And I am blogging about it a week later! PGConf.EU 2024 took place in Athens, and that was my primary reason for traveling. It’s the world’s largest Postgres conference, but this year, it was the largest ever Postgres conference – almost 800 participants!
This time, I didn’t have any accepted talks, but as I told everybody who was wondering – nothing can prevent me from talking! And I talked a lot! Of course, I was also listening to the presentations – there was only one session in three days when I didn’t attend any talks (Boris and I went to see the archeological site of the Temple of Zuess during this time), and it was only because of the last-minute speaker substitution.
I met with a lot of people: my old friends and colleagues, people who heard about me or read my blogs and were happy to meet me IRL, and people whom I helped in different ways. Unfortunately, there were also many stressful moments. I tried to meet with a couple of people to solve some long-running issues, and that didn’t happen, and I keep chasing them from the first day of the conference till the last day.
No pictures of me, but plenty of pictures of my good friends:
9I made sure to attend almost all talks of female speakers!
Summary: lots of positive emotions and good ideas, but too many people!
Hettie's Reflections 