The only way to be on time with American Airlines is to take the first morning flight on Sunday! I am saying it for the second time within the past two months! Also, that was the only way to get to the airport from my house in 35 minutes!
Hotel Alt in Montreal:
The conference didn’t even start yet, and I already had so many interesting conversations, and learned about so many additional events which will happen during this week! I regret that I didn’t check all of them out earlier and didn’t sign up for some of the activities. My excuse is that the last couple of months were all bloody fights, and making sure the conference would be a great event, regardless of these fights. I hope that next year will be better, though! At least now I know what to expect and will look for the opportunities.
I hope I will have more time to reflect on the actual days of action, but for now, I just want to say that there were no major issues, things went well, and all my efforts were well paid off.
I had to be at the venue at 7 AM, which meant I had to wake up my houseguests by five, and we had to be out of the house by 6 AM (so that I won’t subject them to running to the train station with my speed :)).
I had fewer people on the training day than signed up, but that’s because I was limited in how much I could advertise, and because it was new. Those who attended loved it and said it was a useful thing before the conference.
Also, it was great that we had to test everything before the main conference day (although some new technical issues came up later). My co-workers helped with stuffing the bags, otherwise we won’t make it 🙂
No pictures from the training itself, since I was running around all the time.
Anns came to help me; she was sick the week before, and ended up having an ear infection and bronchitis, which she found out when she finally went to a Minute Clinic in the evening. I do appreciate her sacrifices, and I can’t even say she shouldn’t have done it, because her help was more than essential.
After the training, I managed to fit in a very short meetup with Jay Miller:
I worked very hard to ensure that this event was held in collaboration with our Black Employees resource group, and that’s part of my commitment to supporting DEI, no matter what the rest of the world does.
And the day was not over yet – we had a speakers and volunteers dinner, which was set up in a great way, and I am very thankful for the catering company for making it just the way I wanted and on a budget!
PG Day Chicago 2025 was a success despite the efforts of multiple people and many unfortunate circumstances. It will take me some time to realize it is over!
It is now official: a not-for-profit that I founded with two other brave women is now a recognized Postgres NPO and is proudly present on the postgresql.org website.
That means we will have fewer battles to fight and more time to focus on real work to benefit the community.
There is a conference week ahead, and two million things are still not done, but I see the light 🙂
On Monday evening, I flew to Prague to deliver training at the Prague PostgreSQL Developer Day. I used my full-size (10 hours long) PostgreSQL Query Optimization Training, cut out about 1/3 of it, and updated it with the examples from the book’s second edition. The preparation took way longer than I expected when I submitted this training proposal, but I am happy with the result.
It was a super-short visit to Prague; I barely was outside. I upgraded both my flights to business class because I have nine European upgrades, and I can only use them on Finnair flights. There were only two business class passengers besides me on the way there, and I was the only one on the way back 🙂
Salmon lasagna – I don’t know what Italians would think about it, but I liked it!I chose the Grand Hotel International due to it’s proximity to the venue, but to be completely honest, it didn’t impress me, although I understand it’s historical significance.At the entrance of the Department if Information Technologies where the event tool placeAnd if you are wondering – yes, there were only two female participants out of twenty-fiveTogether with one of the event organizers, Gulcin Jelinek
Hettie's Reflections 