Tag: postgres

And About The Conference

And of course, there was a conference! And I am blogging about it a week later! PGConf.EU 2024 took place in Athens, and that was my primary reason for traveling. It’s the world’s largest Postgres conference, but this year, it was the largest ever Postgres conference – almost 800 participants!

This time, I didn’t have any accepted talks, but as I told everybody who was wondering – nothing can prevent me from talking! And I talked a lot! Of course, I was also listening to the presentations – there was only one session in three days when I didn’t attend any talks (Boris and I went to see the archeological site of the Temple of Zuess during this time), and it was only because of the last-minute speaker substitution.

I met with a lot of people: my old friends and colleagues, people who heard about me or read my blogs and were happy to meet me IRL, and people whom I helped in different ways. Unfortunately, there were also many stressful moments. I tried to meet with a couple of people to solve some long-running issues, and that didn’t happen, and I keep chasing them from the first day of the conference till the last day.

No pictures of me, but plenty of pictures of my good friends:

9I made sure to attend almost all talks of female speakers!

Something everyone should know!
Роберт Хааз — человек, уважающий свою аудиторию, и очень много делающий для поддержки начинающих
As always, I went to Robet Haas talk!

Summary: lots of positive emotions and good ideas, but too many people!

PG Day Lowlands

Friday, September 13 – the Pg Day Lowlands team was brave enough to have their first event scheduled on that day :). And it went really well! I liked a lot of things about it, and I definitely want to use some of them for PG Day Chicago, including the rule that Boriss Mejias mentioned about always leaving a space for a fith person to join a group of four. I also loved the idae of Sponsor Passports, which encoraged the participants to visit all sponsor tables.

I started this post three days ago, but never had time to finish because the moment I returned to work, I had no time for anything else. But now, I have pictures taken by a professional photographer, so instead of posting whatever pictures I took, I can post really high-quality ones. So now, there just a couple of mine left :).

Here are some of them (of cause, I am shamelessly posting the pictures of myself:))

Speakers gifts
Sponsors
It was a different photographer than two years ago, and Boris was not even in the front row, but still 🙂
Sponsor passports ready for drawing

PG Day UK

I believe that was the first conference I was late to! Maybe just for 15 minutes, but still – I always arrive early.

My talk went really well, and I am glad I rehearsed it multiple times. It’s not something “revolutionary” in terms of concepts, but I am glad I presented a new and very useful tool for performance analysis.

I think the biggest problem with the conference was a relatively low attendance, which, I think was a combination of being a relatively new event and not enough advertizing. Thereby, the audience was “polarized” – there were many people who “knew everything” and many total novices, and a very little number of people “from the middle.”

Also, the social event after was non-existent: everybody could stop at the pub and use one free drink ticket, but it was so loud and so crowded that the only place you could speak was outside 🙂

At SCale Conference in Pasadena

At SCaLE!

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:)

Optimization Book Second Edition!

The Optimization Book Second Edition Is Here!

Gender Bias

There is one more episode that happened at PG Conf EU that I wanted to talk about. Several weeks before the conference, I received a dinner invite from the Swiss Postgres User Group for the third evening of the conference. Having my previous experience with that group, my original intention was to decline, but then I decided to give their organizer a third chance (he is a very nice person!) I accepted, and we went. 

The group was bigger than their largest table could accommodate, so the restaurant added a smaller table, and somehow, Boris and I decided that we would have a better conversation if we chose the seats at this smaller table, especially because the organizer sat there as well.

Well, we were wrong. It was the same story as in the summer of 2022, after which I decided to “never-ever.” Six people at the table; Boris and I are the only two who do not speak German, and the conversation keeps going in German with the occasional “attempts” to talk to us on the usual topic: “So you are Russian, and you drink vodka.” BTW, it started when a Romanian at our table asked for still water, and the waiter brought a pitcher “which looked like vodka,” according to other people at the table. After the second round, I asked to drop this conversation; however, it continued. Another attempt to include us in the conversation was, “So you are from Chicago. And you traveled that far?..

I silently lamented the wasted time and thought about leaving when, all of a sudden, the conversation changed. These two, who were speaking German all the time and asking me about vodka, suddenly started to talk about Postgres, asking me questions, taking notes, and saying that their DBAs should buy my book. 

On our way back to the hotel, Boris said he couldn’t understand why they suddenly started behaving “normally.” But I knew. It started after I saw them checking the conference schedule on their phones and asked them whether they decided where to go the next day. Apparently, until that moment, they thought that I was a plus one of Boris. And after I asked them which talks they liked and answered a professional question, they finally realized that talking to me may be helpful!

The moral of the story:

  1. That’s why we need “Barbie talks” at community conferences.
  2. “Never-ever”

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

The Conference Is In Progress, And I Don’t Have Time For Anything Else!

At the Speaker’s Dinner- there are way more women in Postgres these days!