Tag: postgres

Prague Postgres Dev Days

When I planned my trip to Prague, I thought I would be able to take extra days off for an “unpaid conference,” but in 2026, the PTO tracking changed, and as a result, I no longer received “unpaid conference time.” I am still going to contest it, because I still took my work computer with me, and I still did quite a bit of work while there.

But as for Monday, it was a legit working day. I didn’t go to co-working because I had to leave for the airport before 3 PM, and I still wanted to have some time with Boris. I worked from 7:30 AM to 2:30 PM, with only a break for a 30-min walk, and then we headed to the airport, where I kept doing things from the lounge, and still did one work meeting from the hotel, and still dialed in to work a couple of times on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Aside from that, the whole trip to Prague was uneventful in a good way and very productive. The hotel where I stayed (Vienna House Diplomat) was much better than the one I stayed at last year, in all aspects. The room was better, and the gym was on-site and very well equipped. The reception told me that there was an extra charge of 10 euros per visit, but it was totally worth it. The gym had everything, was way more spacious than the one at my Helsinki coworking space, and opened at 6 AM (actually, even a little bit earlier than that!)

This time, I knew what the venue looked like, so I didn’t spend time wandering around the University campus. There were no technical issues with my workshop; the class was full, people listened, reacted, and thanked me many times.

Also, this time, I didn’t have to leave on the same day, so I could stay for the speaker’s dinner and for two-thirds of the talks on Wednesday. I met with everyone I planned to meet, had some unplanned meetings, and all conversations were very productive. I hope that I secured a couple of new sponsors for PG DATA 2026.

My friend Gulcin promised a birthday cake for my belated birthday celebration, and brought a box of delicious pastries! Everyone who was there tried at least a little bit 🙂

People still can’t believe that I turned 63. Gulcin asked me what the secret of my youthfulness is, and as usual, I responded that the secret is that I always do what I want to do, and never do the things I don’t want to do :). She and another person who was there even posted about it on LinkedIn, which was funny.

I brought cookies for those people who didn’t want to rely on the mercy of the Postal Service

Also, the Lighting talks organizer convinced me to submit a lighting talk, so I gave a five-minute into to my new project, and used this opportunity to advertise PG DATA.

Overall, despite many problems I currently have at work and with many of my non-work activities, my mood is significantly better than before the conference.

Speakers and volunteers photo

I am finishing this post on my flight to London, and for some reason, my Google Photos is not available. I will add more photos from the hotel when I am on another provider 🙂

The First Meetup Of 2026

On Tuesday, we had the first meetup of 2026, and it was such a great start to the new year! I was so happy to see many familiar faces, as well as first-timers. We had great attendance (one of those rare situations when I didn’t order enough pizza :)), and Ryan Booz, one of the speakers who never fails me, gave a great talk on configuring Postgres for effective logging and query-optimization analysis.
I liked the fact that we had thirty participants that early in the year, when people just start to get back to their regular activity level. More importantly, we now have a group of active members who not only keep coming to the meetups but also actively listen, participate in discussions, and stay long after the presentation ends, discussing what they just heard, sharing experiences, suggesting future topics, and talking about how we can make Postgres more appealing to application developers! I always have to remind the last group of people staying late that, as much as I love them all, I need to close the house, but those are my happiest moments!

On days like that, I have this strong feeling of community building happening right here, and all my work is not in vain.

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” →

We Just Turned One!

Yesterday was exactly one year since Dian, Anna, and I incorporated Prairie Postgres NFP. Never in my wildest dreams could I imagine myself being a founder of a not-for-profit, and even less could I imagine how it would change my life and shift my priorities.

We celebrated in the best possible way – the Illinois Prairie Postgres meetup attendance skyrocketed (I think we had more than forty attendees). We had long, deep, and engaging conversations, and we had cake!

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!

Portland, Oregon

I am about to leave Portland without having seen much, but I’ve had an exceptionally productive workday. Several months ago, J (my peer from Scotland) and I submitted a talk proposal to the FOSSY conference in Portland. The proposal was not accepted, and I moved on with my life.

Then, about three weeks ago, I received a message from J: Could you come to Portland so that we could work on our project? The project meant our talk on the same topic, which was accepted to another conference, which I will be unable to attend. J will be presenting for both of us, but I wanted to participate in the PowerPoint preparation. In addition, our proposal for a community event at PG Conf EU was accepted, and we needed to create an event plan. I didn’t know he was coming, because I knew our talk had not been accepted. He told me that his other talk was, so he was coming. I regret not knowing about it earlier, as I had just recently made plans to visit my friend Lena in Ann Arbor, so I said “no.” But two weeks ago, Lena informed me about her home situation, and we agreed that it would be better for me not to visit now. I immediately thought that in that case, I could go to Portland. I made this trip very minimalistic because I couldn’t waste workdays, and I had things to do at home (and I wouldn’t have any free weekends until October).

If you want to see a crazy person who spends their own time and money to fly for one day to the other side of the country just to work with somebody on a project – that’s me! Fortunately, the conference hotel was very reasonably priced, and I also found that I had $300 credit with American Airlines from last summer when we had to cancel our flight to DC, which was more than half the price of that ticket.

On Friday, I departed from ORD at noon, arrived in Portland at 2:30 PM local time, and still had time to attend the last two sessions at the conference and listen to J’s talk. We agreed on our working sessions’ schedule, and spent most of Saturday working, with interruptions for meals and coffee, and then I left for the airport, where I am now sitting, waiting for my red-eye flight.

Time and money well spent!


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!

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!

Prague Postgres User Group And Some Walking Around

Time in Prague was 80% professional, and just a little bit of walking around. The meetup was fun because I had an opportunity to present my Security talk (which is rarely accepted), and Boris gave his temporal aggregates talk, which he would never give otherwise. Meetup pictures:

City pictures:

The neogogthic fountain
The 13th centure church
The motorized butterflies

What I Have To Do With India?!

I know, I know – they featured multiple Postgres Women from Europe and the USA, and they were interviewing me for the past two weeks, but it still feels funny!

I genuinely love the graphics, though!

If anybody is interested in the full article, it is here. Enjoy 🙂