Tag: conference

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” →

At SCale Conference in Pasadena

At SCaLE!

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:

When I left the office, it was already almost dark, and I just walked to my hotel

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.

Hi bought my book right after it became available, and asked me to sign it for him

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 🙂

My Talk At PG Conf EU

Since this talk was not really technical, I thought some of my friends will be interested in watching it:)

It’s Not Work But

The things which fill in all my time for the past couple of days are not work-related but still, very PostgreSQL-related.

The first thing is my talk. I accepted being on an official reserve list for the FOSDEM conference, which means that most likely I won’t deliver my talk; still, I need to be prepared. In order to avoid procrastination, I’ve assigned myself to be a speaker for the January Chicago PUG meetup so that I would have to prepare this talk by January 17. Since next weekend will be one more “girls’ weekend,” I have to complete it in the next couple of days. My initial plan was to be done over the weekend but almost five hours on the phone (with friends and with Boris) made it impossible, and it turned out that there was way more work anyway. So now, I am frantically trying to complete it, and hopefully, I will be done by Wednesday.

The second thing is the conference (PG Day Chicago). There is only one more week left for submissions, and although we have enough submissions, we do not have enough speakers. I spent more than two hours today emailing, composing tweets, and asking people directly on all possible media platforms. I just checked how many new presentations/speakers were submitted, and it looks like I made a material impact :). On the one hand, I am happy with that. On the other hand, it’s wrong that big events in Chicago are still driven almost exclusively by my charisma. In any case, that’s my primary focus until next Monday.  

Our Talk at PG Conf EU

Our PG Conf Talk: So, You Want To Have a PG Day In Your City?

“Postgres at Scale” Community Panel

“Postgres at Scale” Community Panel