Tag: meetup

Current Events, Briefly

I have so many things going on, and so many things I am behind on, that I worry about them all the time, and barely posted anything here for almost a week. If I didn’t mention anything happening on any particular day, it means that on that day I came home from work and started crossing the things off my list; mainly different tasks, big and small, related to the conference and to the meetup, and kept doing it until late.

On Wednesday, I visited a potential new venue for our meetups. I liked what I saw a lot, but things are still in the making, and I do not want to share until they materialize.

On Thursday, I finally went to the early morning escorting shift after a long winter break, and then went to the ACM meetup after work. The meetup went well, although there were way fewer people than I expected (probably because we didn’t have pizza :)).

Then, it was Good Friday, which we have off, and I took a super-early train to Milwaukee (and I already posted about it). We had a good time there, but the weather was really bad both Friday and Saturday. I returned to Chicago on Saturday morning and walked to Lea to have breakfast there (I needed something to compensate for the cold and rain!)

Then I returned home and did the conference things until evening, almost non-stop, until it was time to go to see mom and to take her to Above the Law theater. I really like Above the Law, and they did great with “Cyrano,” but my mom was in a really bad mood and yelled at both Igor and me (and she kept doing it since then!)

On Saturday evening, our co-workers from the London office landed in Chicago, and I took them touring the city on Sunday. It was still cold, but at least sunny and no rain, and it became warmer later in the day, so we had a great time overall, and I could show them a lot!

(They still owe me my pictures, so I will post more when I have them!)

And once again, I came back home from our touring day, and started emailing/discussing/posting to speakers, volunteers, and attendees, and it feels like I will never be able to complete all the tasks I need to complete!

All this week, there will be meetings at work, and a lot of collaboration, and I still need to execute on one million community things, and I am still nervious about all of them, and about not enough conference advertisement, and mom still yells at everyone, but I have no time to be upset about it!

ACM Meetup, and What’s Next

Today was one of the rare occasions that I was able to attend an ACM meetup in person. Most of the time, they are scheduled at the last minute, and I almost certainly have conflicts (no matter how many times I ask to schedule in advance).

Today’s meetup was very interesting; the speaker talked about data visualization and appealed to the broadest possible audience. I believe we have his presentation slides available, and if so, I will share. For now, just two pictures as examples:

Tomorrow, I am going to Pasadena to SCaLE. Usually, I go there for three and a half days, but this time it will be just for two, and the number of people who want to meet with me definitely will not fit into these two days.

Meetups (My Second, Third, And Whatever Jobs)

On Tuesday, I hosted a Prairie Postgres meetup (blog post here)

And today, there was an ACM Chicago Chapter meetup, AI and Gamification: Why Students Cheat and How to Rebuild Learning. 🙄

Actually, it was not bad at all; although no revolutionary ideas. The more I listen to “what should we do with AI” presentations, the more I feel like absolutely nothing new happens in this area, and the scare of AI is very similar to the scare of inventing books, movies, television and internet:). The reason for posting is a rare group photo of almost all of the ACM Chicago Chapter Board (plus the presenter, and plus the Student Chapter leaders).

There were some interesting comments and discussions, but I am so much behind on my posts, that this will have to wait for later 🙂

Code And Coffee

Sunday was packed with activities: in addition to Bike the Drive, it was the day of the monthly Chicago Code and Coffee meetup. I’ve been there before, and I knew that this event is loud and hectic, but I also knew that advertising there is surprisingly efficient. And since I needed to advertise both my September meetup and the conference, I had to attend.

It was the last full day for Boris being here in Chicago, but he agreed that I should go to the meetup, and even volunteered to accompany me, and stoically stayed there for more than two hours of the total havoc. I distributed my flyers and stickers and talked to a large number of people, so I hope to see some new faces in September!

Prairie PUG

We couldn’t have a meetup in June because an intersection of my availability and our Training Center availability was empty:). That’s a very mathematical description of the situation, but no matter how you describe it, I didn’t have enough energy to look for an alternative, and we didn’t meet.

Yesterday’s meetup was great! I can tell it by how I felt. Finally, I was relaxed and could talk to everyone freely, and didn’t have any worries in the background. A person who was presenting was doing it for the first time; there were some issues, but he handled it well. The audience was very engaged, and the conversation after the meetup lasted until I asked people to leave because I needed to catch the train 😀.

One of the regulars said to me: I do not think I ever told you that, but what you are doing is so inspiring! You do no have to do all the things you are going, but you are doing it for the community! I am not going to lie, I was very happy to hear that!

My Community Work

The past several days, starting with my return from PGConf.dev, were densely filled with various community activities.

On Sunday, I went to the Chicago Code and Coffee meetup (I planned to do this for a couple of months, but ran into a conflict each time).

It was as loud and loosely organized as it could possibly be with over three hundred nerds in one not-so-large space. The Capital Cafe decided to sponsor the meetup with free drinks, and everyone took advantage of this opportunity. I thought I would not survive in this noise level, but the organizer allowed me to speak immediately after the volunteers, so I was able to advertise my events and myself :). As a result, I have several people joined our new user group, and several RSVPs to Tuesday event.

On Tuesday, I hosted a second meetup of Prairie PUG. Inspired by what I saw at DevOpsDay Chicago, I announced the Developers’ Summit and invited application developers who use Postgres to discuss their pain points and possible solutions. I planned this event for a while, but had to postpone it several times. Finally, i was able to make it a reality.

It went really well (I neglected to take pictures of the group discussions, and only took some during the final presentations, but it was a definite success). The conversations continued after we were done with the “official” part and went back to the cafe for remaining pizza.

Then on Wednesday, I went to yet another meetup! it was the 10th anniversary of AWS meetup. I was planning to start attending this meetup, but for one reason or the other, it never worked. It almost didn’t work this time as well, because there was one more event on the same evening, but I decided I can come for just an hour, and it will be better than nothing!

I came, and talked to the organizers, and also found out that several of the Postgres meetup members attended the AWS meetup as well. I talked with several people, and told them about Prairie Postgres, and distributed my flyers. I saw that two more people joined my meetup next day, so it was not completely useless!

Another event I wanted to attend on the same day was a local CAPS beat meeting. I consider these meetings of police with local residents very important; it was unfortunate that I had so many conflicts this year and could barely attend any of them. This time, I was a little bit late, but was still able to sit through most of the meeting. Out Beat representatives talked about the crime statistics, asked about the incidents we observed on our blocks, explained which apps to use to report crimes, potentially dangerous situations and problems which do not require police involvement. I picked up several flyers for future reference.

I think it was my mistake that I ignored all “other” meetups in the past, and I am glad I started to change it. Overall, I feel like slowly starting to get back to my “normal self.”