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
Tag: conference
PG Day 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.
At SCale Conference in Pasadena
Conference Prep
We have the conference schedule published. Our Talk Selection Committee did a really fantastic job. I don’t remember when (or whether it was!) the authors’ notifications, final acceptance, and scheduling – everything was on time!
But even with the best CfP committee ever, the conference takes all the time I have, plus more. Just saying 🙂
All Postgres-Related
Although my initial desire was to have a short vacation in January, my trip ended up being work-related and Postgres-related. I spent the first day of my trip in our London office, and although the weather was great, I only saw it through the office window:
I had to wake up at 4 AM the next day, so I couldn’t do much. Of course, it turned out that I needed to login to work, and then I met with one of my Postgres colleagues for dinner.
Then I flew to Helsinki, but because of the strike, we had to leave for Brussels the next day. We had a day for museums, and then on Friday, there was a Postgres Day at FOSDEM, which we both attended. I am not going to talk about technical things here (there is another blog for that), but there was one more book signing:
There was also a dinner for Aiven community advocates, which was in a very cool place, where I should have taken more pictures, but I was too busy talking.
And then, it was FOSDEM itself, a very popular and super-crowded event. I was happy that I met most of the people I wanted to meet, and I think I will try to get there next year as well – there are a lot of opportunities to step out of the world of Postgres into a bigger Open Source world.
Fast Forward
On Monday, I was in London, working for the whole day, not leaving the office. Then on Tuesday morning, I flew to Helsinki, and then I found out about the strike and about our flight cancellation and our new flight. Now we are in Brussels, and we have a great time here, but I find it very difficult to detach from work entirely. It was fine for most of the day today, but then we rerutrend to the hotel, and there were some conference-related things, and then something not-really-ork-but-sort-of. So…
That’s our second time in Brussels, and we like it again. Brussels has been good to us 🙂
Hettie's Reflections 