Tag: conference

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!

Something everyone should know!
Роберт Хааз — человек, уважающий свою аудиторию, и очень много делающий для поддержки начинающих
As always, I went to Robet Haas talk!

Summary: lots of positive emotions and good ideas, but too many people!

Flights – A Lot Of Them

My current trip was planned several months ago, but I was utterly not prepared by my departure time on October 18. Just one thing to mention: I was not packed in the morning of the day of my departure.

My flight to Helsinki had a connection in London, and when Boris and I flew to Athens on Sunday, we had a connection in London again. Both times, it was horrible: long security lines and no priority line, and taking all the things out. Both times, there was no time to stop in the lounge.

The good part was that I had a Business class upgrade on the flight from London to Helsinki, and for some reason, they had a larger aircraft on this flight, so the business class was a real thing, with all these cool seats, and a nice lunch, and a cinnamon bun for a dessert.

I arrived in Helsinki at about 4-40 PM on Saturday, and on Sunday morning, we took off to Athens, with yet another connection in London, and the flight was delayed again, and no business class this time :).

On Saturday, when I was doing an early hotel check-in, I realized that I accidentally booked one extra day, and it turned out that removing this extra day was considered a late cancellation, but it was too late to do anything about it.

That will be the end of the complaints, because the hotel is great, and we did a day and a half of touring, and now the conference is happening, and although I am not presenting this time, I do not have a second to spare!

PG Day Lowlands

Friday, September 13 – the Pg Day Lowlands team was brave enough to have their first event scheduled on that day :). And it went really well! I liked a lot of things about it, and I definitely want to use some of them for PG Day Chicago, including the rule that Boriss Mejias mentioned about always leaving a space for a fith person to join a group of four. I also loved the idae of Sponsor Passports, which encoraged the participants to visit all sponsor tables.

I started this post three days ago, but never had time to finish because the moment I returned to work, I had no time for anything else. But now, I have pictures taken by a professional photographer, so instead of posting whatever pictures I took, I can post really high-quality ones. So now, there just a couple of mine left :).

Here are some of them (of cause, I am shamelessly posting the pictures of myself:))

Speakers gifts
Sponsors
It was a different photographer than two years ago, and Boris was not even in the front row, but still 🙂
Sponsor passports ready for drawing

PG Day UK

I believe that was the first conference I was late to! Maybe just for 15 minutes, but still – I always arrive early.

My talk went really well, and I am glad I rehearsed it multiple times. It’s not something “revolutionary” in terms of concepts, but I am glad I presented a new and very useful tool for performance analysis.

I think the biggest problem with the conference was a relatively low attendance, which, I think was a combination of being a relatively new event and not enough advertizing. Thereby, the audience was “polarized” – there were many people who “knew everything” and many total novices, and a very little number of people “from the middle.”

Also, the social event after was non-existent: everybody could stop at the pub and use one free drink ticket, but it was so loud and so crowded that the only place you could speak was outside 🙂

POSETTE Online Conference

I didn’t want to repost my professional blog here, but I wanted to mention that it was a surprisingly positive experience. With all my reservations about online conferences, I really like how Microsoft is doing it! As with everything during the last several months, my participation was rushed, and I felt horrible about it. I thought that my recorded presentation was terrible, but it ended up not being as bad as I thought! OK, I believe they edited it a little bit, but still! I had to be present at Discord during and after my talk for Q&A, and then I realized that there was nothing so much ach

PG Day Chicago – We Did It!

Hey Chicago – We did it!!!

Conference Setup

Five Days Before TheConference

My two colleagues (one remote from Texas and one from our London office) arrived in Chicago on Saturday night, and I spent the whole Sunday showing them Chicago my way. We started with the Architectural Cruise, and then I showed Millennium Park, the Chicago Cultural Center, The Art Institute, Chagall’s mosaic, and the first skyscrapers. We made it around the Loop on the Pink Line and went back to see the Chicago Public Library and the Fine Arts Building.

I left behind several old skyscrapers, Picasso, and the Riverwalk, but it’s only that much you can fit in one day. I mean, I could feet more, but I’m afraid the guests reached their Chicago capacity limit:)

Boris arrived last night, and he only told me a day earlier that he had been sick for that whole week. Now he has no voice at all, so I it looks like I will have to find another room host!

How My Days Look Like

The things that I need to decide/figure out with the conference keep piling up on top of the work things, which are piling up on their own.

For the past two weeks, I get up at 4-30 and go to bed at 11-30 every day (plus/minus 15 minutes). I am genuinely happy that I am still able to produce something meaningful at work – I figured out a couple of non-trivial things in the course of the past two weeks, which makes me feel good in terms that I am not completely neglecting my work 🙂

I am going out way less than I usually do, but I still go out sometimes, and I am trying not to abandon my volunteering. Once again, it’s not easy, but I am doing my best.

One more time: meals at work are huge time savers. Since I also do not need to do dishes or brew my coffee, it’s at least 1.5 hours a day, and I know how to use them for more important things 🙂 I even stopped baking at home (the last time I baked something was for Easter), and I am planning to hold off baking until after the conference (help me God!)

No time to get into details, it’s just that life is very intense!

Pasadena

Since I have already reposted my post about the conference, I will continue mixing up two trips.

I arrived in Pasadena on Wednesday evening. I had never been to Pasadena before. I have been to SF multiple times, and I’ve been to LA once, but never to Pasadena. I never loved California like many people do, and I didn’t expect anything different this time, but Pasadena took me by surprise. I entered my hotel room at 7 PM on Wednesday, looked around, saw a balcony and a couch by it, crushed on it, stretched my legs, and all of a sudden felt relaxed like I had never been for a long time. I didn’t even want to think “why”, I just enjoyed this moment.

During the conference, I used all the opportunities to walk around and look around.

Continue reading “Pasadena” →