Tag: conference

The Conference Venue

On Monday night, when we just arrived at the Radisson Blue Latvija hotel and got into our room, I sat down on the bed and listed out loud everything that was wrong with it: no drawers whatsoever, no shelves, no space in the bathroom for any of the toiletries (even nothing under the sink!). The fitness center is a part of the Spa, and as such is open only from 7 AM to 9 PM. No dial to set up a specific room temperature (just a dial with “more” and “less” arrows).

And then I started laughing, because I remembered how Boris and I used to joke about “people are getting spoiled very fast.” I thought about the first conferences we attended together, including all the fun of not being able to be in the same room if you can’t show the marriage certificate (or a stamp in your internal passport, which affirmed that you indeed have one). Also, I remembered all the weird places we stayed in over many years of travel. I should start lining up new blog posts about it 🙂

And aside of not being open when I needed it, the fitness center was amazing:

And that is not even half of it; there were even more machines, a separate room for yoga, TRX, yoga balls, and countless other things.

Speaking about the hotel, though, it was a great conference venue. I do not know what they did differently in the rooms with placing the podiums, but it was easier than ever to see the speakers and follow their presentations. There were almost no lines for food and plenty of coffee on every corner :).

I didn’t take a picture of my speaker’s gift, so I am stealing it from the official conference feed. These are small wooden trays crafted by a local shop. They smell like local cuisine, and I am sure that if you put a warm pot on it, it will smell even better.

There was also a bag of dry fruit, which I’ve already consumed :).

Otherwise, I am using this weekend to email people with whom I didn’t talk at the conference, or didn’t talk enough 🙂

The Conference Is Over

The conference is over, and I am still processing what I heard and what I learned. I am thinking about many conversations I had during the conference and about many that didn’t happen because there were too many people.

This morning, I posted on the conference chat that my deepest regret is countless conversations that didn’t happen, and dozens of people supported this comment. Some first-time attendees mentioned that they were so overwhelmed that they didn’t talk to anybody from their shortlist, because something was happening all the time. And to be honest, I feel the same way!

I owe several new professional blog posts, RSVPs, talk submissions, and I don’t know what else. My head is spinning :). Yesterday, we took a cab to the airport together with my co-worker, whose flight was a little bit earlier than ours (at least, that’s what we thought), and because of that, we missed the end of the closing remarks (and there were several things I wanted to hear; now I need to find out whether they were said!).

When we arrived at the airport, we found that since there were very few Finnair flights, the Finnair check-in was closed and would only be open 2 hours before the flight. I had luggage to check, so we couldn’t go to the lounge, and had to sit on the first level for almost two hours. Oh, well.

The flight was on time, but it was a late flight to begin with, so we were home just before midnight. Tomorrow, Europe switches to the winter time, so that extra hour will be handy. And the US switches the next week, so I will get this extra hour twice!

Still At The Conference

It’s still working around the clock, meeting with people and talking with potential sponsors.

A colleague sent me a picture from the first conference day (the Community Events Day), and I really like it:

This morning was a Women’s Breakfast. it was hosted in a different hotel, and the setup was a work of art!

That was an additional opportunity to chat with many of my friends with whom I hadn’t had a chance to exchange a word at that conference yet.

Women’s Breakfast group picture – I am at the very back, standing

It rained all day, so I was glad we had a chance to walk outside on Tuesday. Even though it was raining, we wanted to go for dinner with my UK co-worker, and we found a restaurant with mostly authentic food within walking distance.

I am really happy with how everything is going so far, with all the conversations I had, and my outlook for my upcoming conference is optimistic.

PG Conf EU: Days 1 and 2

I do not have a spare minute at the conference, but what a difference between last year and this year! I do not need to run around nervously; I talk to everyone about the conference proposal submissions and sponsorship. On Tuesday, I led the Postgres Standard discussion, and we had an amazingly productive session.

We had an afternoon free (I didn’t need to do anything during the afternoon sessions), so Boris and I went to see all the “required attractions.” I believe I already mentioned that Riga is my least favorite city among all the Baltic cities, and in addition, I have some complicated personal history with it. Also, the wind was brutal, and it felt even colder than it was. I made two more attempts to buy a warmer coat, both without any result. Surprisingly, I felt OK in my very old coat, and hopefully, I will be able to manage for the rest of my stay (or I will finally find something!)

A shopping center where I didn’t find what I was looking for
Freedom Statue, which survived all regime changes
The old mot
The only fortress tower that survived
Continue reading “PG Conf EU: Days 1 and 2” →

Tampere City Hall Reception

Tampere City Hall visit was an absolutely new experience for me, and I wish I took more pictures! The best part was that we could walk arond the whole building, not just a reception hall. Imagine you visit a museum, and you are allowed to sit on all of these beautiful chairs, and come close to these timy wooden tables, and touch the cabinets and vases, and feel it all like a liveable space!

As for the reception itself, the information about it was misleading. The conference program said that we will have this city walk, which will end with the “event” in the city hall. Boris, who should have some visibility into the details said that “there should be food”.

The event started at 7 PM, and all guests were offered champaign flutes upon arriving the the reception hall, and then there were individual plates with four pieces of appetizers (I didn’t realized that I should have taken picture of them, because I thought there will be something else, but that was it :)). The Mayor of Tampere greeted the conference and delivered a short speech about the importance of data technologies, etc; then the trio of musicians was performing something with people keeping talking, and that was it. My point is that they didn’t have to feed us, but the event ended at 8:30 PM, and it was nine by the time we reached the hotel, and it was too late to look for any other food (the hotel kitchen closes at 9 PM, and I didn’t want to go out and wait anywhere for anything ).

I survived, because Boris saved an apple for me, and because we had hot chocolate packs in the room, and I didn’t really need that much, but it was definitely a planning problem 😂.

Continue reading “Tampere City Hall Reception” →

Tampere

The ADBIS conference is taking place at the Tampere University, and that’s my first time visiting Tampere. The conference itself is sort of uneventful, and I also had to spend a lot of time still doing some work, because there were always some issues. And it’s cold. Very cold. Way colder than I expected, because the wind makes it feel fifteen degrees lower than it is.

Yesterday, we had a walking tour before the reception, and I think this hour-long walk finally made me sick. I am not exactly sick, but I feel like I am about to get sick, which is even worse. That’s just to explain why I am thinking slowly and not posting about the trip.

Let me try to fix it now.

A mirror in our hotel elevator
The gym – thankfully, 24-hour for real!
The gift to the conference attendees
The swinging chairs in the University foyer
The opening of the conference

On the first day, it was so cold and windy that we decided to stay inside (the hotel is just across the street from the University), and we had dinner at the hotel.

On the second day, there was no choice other than joining this walking tour, which, now I am convinced, made me sick. However, I took some nice pictures 🙂

The city was incorporated in the 1770s (I forgot the exact date), and the old buildings we saw were mostly factory buildings, which are now repurposed for some entertainment venues

Finally, we reached the City Hall, and I will show the reception pictures in a separate post.

DjangoCon US

I think it was the first time in my life that I attended a non-academic, professional, and non-Postgres conference, and it was surprisingly interesting.

I am posting about this conference here rather than on my professional blog, because it’s more about the atmosphere than what exactly the talks were about.

First note: this community did not succumb to whatever the current “official” position is, and fosters diversity for real. Just one nice touch: when you register, they give you your name tag, and then you can add as many ribbons as you like:

I loved the idea of speakers’ ribbons! I will do it for PG DATA
Keanya Phelps made opening remarks. Later, I had a very in-depth conversation with her about how we can work together.
We share the goals and values, and that’s amazing.
The talk about community governance – I talked with the presenters later.

Django’s 20th birthday and DEFNA’s 10th birthday!

Although I am not a “programmer” or an application developer, many talks were really interesting to me because they were about building communities, supporting Open Source, fostering diversity, and working towards the common good.

And we spent a lot of time together with my friend M.

Another thing I loved about this community was how the conference participants organized to experience the best of Chicago, including multiple tours, museums, bike rides, and even an early morning lake plunge. Somehow, when I attend Postgres conferences, most of the attendees are only interested in places to have dinner. It was really refreshing :). I felt being among “my tribe.”

And More Chicago!

While Lena stayed with me over the weekend, I was constantly checking my phone for two reasons: to check what Trump was up to and to follow the moves of my friend from Kenya, who was arriving in Chicago to attend the same conference I was going to attend the next week.

I wanted to be the first person to show her the city, so after Lena left, I immediately headed to the conference venue where my friend was volunteering with the conference setup.

She didn’t even had a chance to check-in to the hotel yet, so we had only two hours, but the Wolf Point Plaza was a great starting point!

And she brought me a dress from Kenya – an amazing dress with gigantic pockets!

We did a lot of things together in Chicago this week – more to follow!

Conferences Prep

Lots of people are helping me both for PG DATA and for Prairie Postgres, but I still feel like I am doing “something” related to both non-stop.

We are waiting for our official website to be completed and released to us.

I am building our event in the EventZilla.

I am building the call for papers in Sessionize.

Communicating with the caterer, although another team member did most of the talks.

Approving social media posts and newsletters.

Our regular September meetup is coming.

My talk at Django US.

Recording of my P99 talk.

My September tutorial is still only half-done.

I have houseguests, and I feel like I do not have enough timewith them.

I can keep this list going on forever.

And summer is almost over!

At Work And Outside Work

My biggest disappointment of the last weekend was that I didn’t even start multiple projects, which I had planned to both start and finish over the weekend. I believe that my bad planning was the root cause of the problem, as the said plan was completely unrealistic. I was planning how “time-sensitive” events would fit into the schedule without giving a thought to all other activities that had to happen at some point, even if they didn’t have a pre-defined start and end time.

Not only did I leave a lot of conference-related action items incomplete, but I didn’t even start anything related to my conference talks prep, and I have four different talks to prepare, including my huge tutorial, which I barely started. I spent a significant portion of my time panicking about all of the above, along with a clear understanding that summer is short and I have only that many beach days left.

My worktime is extremely intense, and if I manage to carve some time to do something not-work-related, I have to do some work after work. The not-work-related include answering web designers questions two or three times per day, including providing new content, meeting with the whole org committee and individual members about their specific tasks.

I know that in a long run, this will save me time. For example, I talked to a person who volunteered to do our newsletter. I sent her a sample, sent a draft of the next newsletter, asked her to complete, reviewed her work, and met with her on zoom twice. She will be a huge help, but this week, it took over two hours of my time. Same goes to our social media accounts, people who will be handling catering, conference lodging, etc. Their help will be essential, but this week I am panicking because I am late with everything!

On top of that, during the first two days of this week I was asked 1) to vote up one Postgres patch (why me???) 2) to review a book proposal (I refused) 3) to write a new book (“because people like my writing”) – I said to reach out in six months 4) to give my opinion on the work of one of the Postgres “rising stars” company (I agreed and accepted a meeting invite).

… and I worked on my presentations for forty minutes only, when I need many hours!