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Joshua D. Drake
April 17, 2019
Join the fantastic and growing Postgres community in Cape Town, South Africa for a single day event on October 3rd, 2017! The event is being hosted by fellow Postgres advocates who travel from South Africa each year to attend our National Event in order to increase their knowledge of Postgres and be a part of the community. This year they are joining us and making a commitment to build out our International community and conferences!
- The CFP is open is open from now until August 25th. We will notify speakers by September 1st! Talks are subject to our presentation guidelines.
This single day event takes place at the same venue as PyCon South Africa and is scheduled the day before PyCon to ensure the greatest possible value in attending.
Local events are designed to bring comprehensive educational content and networking opportunities to the "local" Postgres community where the event is being held. They are perfect opportunities to show support for Postgres, find leads, and build relationships with other professionals and companies using and supporting Postgres.
Joshua D. Drake
August 15, 2017
Since at least 2021 there has been a disagreement between Postgres related non-profit organizations. On one side are two affiliate non-profits for Postgresql.org; on the other is a relatively unknown non-profit out of Spain. Lines have been drawn, feet have dug in, and a lot of unproductive discourse has occurred. This has culminated in legal action, bad blood, and some poor decisions.
As one of the Founders of United States PostgreSQL, a former Director of Software in the Public Interest (one of the NPOs behind Postgresql.org), a former committer (web), former major contributor, President of the oldest PostgreSQL company still independent in North America, and the Founder of Postgres Conference (in the U.S.), I thought I would offer a knowledgeable perspective.
I have had long discussions with one of the primary people within the Fundacion PostgreSQL (Alvaro) and his heart is in the best interest of the community, even if Postgresql.org, PGEU and PGCAC do not agree. You can see this demonstrated within Fundacion’s trademark policy. That said, Fundacion PostgreSQL did go about their actions in an incorrect way. There should have been an open discussion and they should have provided PGCAC the opportunity to resolve the trademark issues on their own. It is also true that while I believe PGEU and PGCAC believe they are protecting the community, if they were interested in positive community growth and collaboration, they would not be taking the approach they currently are. The current path has far reaching implications that PGEU and PGCAC do not see.
Further, the PostgreSQL Community Association of Canada and Fundacion PostgreSQL have resorted to terrible language in representing what is actually going on within the disagreement. Using language such as, “An attack on our community” or “PostgreSQL attacks the community” is immature at best and at worst an intentional decision to use good faith and mindshare against what is largely just a disagreement that could be solved with an active mediator and a few phone calls. If this disagreement is about the best interest of the PostgreSQL community, shouldn’t that involve discourse, honesty, transparency, and kind communication?
Some facts:
- The first appearance of a PostgreSQL trademark outside of Canada wasn’t until 2018.
- The trademark PostgreSQL in the European Union was not registered until 2018.
- The trademark in Canada was registered in 2003 (filed in 1999).
- The trademark in Canada does not accurately represent PostgreSQL as the services it was registered under are:
(1) Internet consulting.
(2) Internet presence provider- DNS hosting.
(3) Commercial internet support for database applications development and implementation including the ability to host internet domains (as an internet service provider) and provide a wide range of web site development, programming and information technology services, namely computer software architecture, design and/or development services.
(4) Computer hardware sales and service.
The solution
The solution to the whole problem is simple; a single contract that states:
- That the term PostgreSQL is trademarked by the PostgreSQL Community Association of Canada
- That the Fundacion PostgreSQL relinquishes all property and rights to the mark PostgreSQL held in Spain and assigns them to the PostgreSQL Community Association of Canada
- The PostgreSQL Community Association of Canada forgoes any punitive damages or secondary costs
- That the Fundacion PostgreSQL forgoes any punitive damages or secondary costs
The contract should not contain language in regards to future potential filings that involve but are not exclusive to the word Postgres or PostgreSQL. There are already a number of filings worldwide that use Postgres or PostgreSQL as part of an overall mark inclusively such as Postgres Pro, Postgres Plus, Postgres Always On and Postgres Enterprise Manager, all of which are not owned but PGCAC or PGEU.
Why forgo punitive damages or secondary costs
Because it is the right thing to do. Otherwise this whole affair is going to end up costing one entity or another way too much money for no purpose. There is no clear distinction on who would legally win, and in either situation the main sufferers are the PostgreSQL community. Let’s have the parties show an act of kindness for the betterment of everyone involved.
Joshua D. Drake
September 05, 2023
2ndQuadrant Sponsor Highlight Blog for PostgresConf 2019
As part of the countdown to PostgresConf US 2019, learn more about about featured Platinum Sponsor 2ndQuadrant, including their commitment to partnering with and contributing to the Postgres community.
Tell us about the recent uptick in Oracle to Postgres migrations.
Licensing costs of Oracle is a significant factor for businesses looking to migrate towards PostgreSQL. Not only is PostgreSQL a more cost effective solution, but it provides enterprise-level capabilities and customization options. The increasing demand for migration services from Oracle to PostgreSQL can also be attributed to the availability of PostgreSQL in the cloud.
Where do you see the Postgres market going?
PostgreSQL has been gaining traction with every release; interest and usage by large enterprises worldwide is growing exponentially due to the robust capabilities it provides. 2ndQuadrant intends to continue their active contributions in development and supports the overall growth of PostgreSQL.
Do you have any big wins this year?
2Q PGConf 2018 had a successful second year bringing together PostgreSQL developers and users. Both speakers and attendees enjoyed the combination of technical and use case topics as well as the diverse range of networking opportunities.
Sri Rangarajan, Lead Software Engineer at Enova International, commented saying he appreciates 2ndQuadrant’s hard work in “promoting and fostering a savvy, healthy and helpful community to welcome newcomers just like [it] did for [him] 5 years ago!”
For the second year in a row, PostgreSQL has been named DBMS of the Year by DB-Engines. This shows that developers and users alike are acknowledging the robust and versatile capabilities that it has to offer.
What is the number one benefit you see within Postgres that everyone should be aware of?
PostgreSQL's advanced features cater to a broad range of use cases all within the same DBMS. Rather than going for edge case solutions, developers are relying on the absolute reliability of the hyperconverged database to simplify their production deployments.
What is the best thing about working with the Postgres community?
The Postgres community is one of the easiest global communities to work with. There is an open mindset all around and a common goal of growing the Postgres ecosystem as a whole.
Tell us why you believe people should attend PostgresConf 2019 in March.
Conferences are a great way for people in the PostgreSQL community to come together and share knowledge and ideas, which is the true spirit of open source. It is very exciting to see into the future developments of the project from the people who contribute so much to its growth.
It is a great way for members of the community to come together in person to share knowledge in different areas of the technology, describe practical use cases, and give sneak previews into cutting edge technologies for future versions of PostgreSQL.
About 2ndQuadrant:
2ndQuadrant provides PostgreSQL Solutions for the Enterprise - reliably deploying them on the platform of your choice and providing 24/7 Production Support. Our solutions address all aspects of your database ecosystem, ensuring high availability, disaster recovery, backup & failover management, and much more.
Moreover, we provide tools to make your deployment process simple and reliable. With over 100 years of combined code contributions to the PostgreSQL project, our engineers ensure that your PostgreSQL solutions are fully supported in your production environment.
Visit the 2ndQuadrant team in the Exhibit Hall in the Metropolitan Ballroom on Wednesday, March 20, and Thursday, March 21.
Check out the full schedule for PostgresConf US 2019, and buy your tickets soon!
Congratulations
Henrietta Dombrovskaya, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion member for PostgresConf as well as Chicago Postgresql organizer nominated for Technologist of the Year!
Career Opportunity
A large, well known media company is seeking a Senior Level PostgreSQL Engineer and Architect. This is an on-site engagement, however the company is known to be lifestyle friendly with reasonable working hours, good pay, and benefits. Specific talents requested are the ability to mentor. The location is Seattle, WA. If you are interested in this position please contact randy@neuringerco.com with your resume.
Great content
Extension Highlight
We wanted to highlight some of the fantastic work that is being done by the ecosystem with Postgres Extensions. Although the base of Postgres is the amazing and extensible PostgreSQL, a lot of users don’t realize that Postgres has the feature they are looking for, if only they were to look to the ecosystem.
Notable Extensions:
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pgaudit : The goal of pgAudit is to provide PostgreSQL users with the capability to produce audit logs often required to comply with government, financial, or ISO certifications.
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pg_credereum : pg_credereum is a PostgreSQL extension that provides a cryptographically verifiable audit capability for a PostgreSQL database, bringing some properties of blockchain to relational DBMS.
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H3-pg : PostgreSQL bindings for H3, a hierarchical hexagonal geospatial indexing system.
Postgres can do what?
There are a ton of Postgres compatible features out there. Some of them are overlooked core features and some of them require installing a different version of Postgres. Here are a few examples:
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TimescaleDB: Time series data management with Postgres
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YugabyteDB: Globally Distributed database with PostgreSQL compatibility
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Postgres-XL: Horizontally partitioned PostgreSQL
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Agensgraph: Graph capabilities with Postgres
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PG-Strom: GPU accelerated extension for Postgres
Upcoming Education and Networking opportunities:
Joshua D. Drake
August 07, 2019
PostgresConf hopes everyone had a great holiday season and we hope everyone has a fantastic 2019.
With January upon us, we start conference season. This year, PostgresConf 2019 will be in NYC at the Sheraton New York Times Square March 18-22, 2019.
If you have a story about lessons learned with Postgres, a cool feature that you've found a creative way of using, or just some practical knowledge you'd like to share with your fellow Postgres users, submit a talk. Remember, there are many people who are new to Postgres, so introduction levels talks are welcome. The CFP ends this Friday so get your talks submitted soon at:
With January upon us, we start conference season. This year, PostgresConf 2019 will be in NYC at the Sheraton New York Times Square March 18-22, 2019.
If you have a story about lessons learned with Postgres, a cool feature that you've found a creative way of using, or just some practical knowledge you'd like to share with your fellow Postgres users, submit a talk. Remember, there are many people who are new to Postgres, so introduction levels talks are welcome. The CFP ends this Friday so get your talks submitted soon at:
https://postgresconf.org/conferences/2019#callforpapers
Also, the Early Bird window for PostgresConf 2019 will be ending next Friday, January 18. This tickets are pretty substantially discounted if you purchase them early. On top of the Early Bird discount, for being a member of the NYC Postgres User Group, there is a promo code for an additional 15% off. Just use the code 2019_PUG_NYC when buying your tickets.
Also, the Early Bird window for PostgresConf 2019 will be ending next Friday, January 18. This tickets are pretty substantially discounted if you purchase them early. On top of the Early Bird discount, for being a member of the NYC Postgres User Group, there is a promo code for an additional 15% off. Just use the code 2019_PUG_NYC when buying your tickets.
Lastly, if you are already in the NYC area we look forward to seeing the community at the Winter Party on the 10th!
We hope to see you at PostgresConf 2019 and remember:
Joshua D. Drake
January 09, 2019
Tell us a little bit (one or two paragraphs) about your project or how you use Postgres:
I created Pev (Postgres EXPLAIN Visualizer) to scratch my own itch. EXPLAIN generates a wealth of information, but isn’t easy to make sense of. I wanted to create a tool that helps me quickly diagnose problems with queries. Apparently, other people found it useful as well.
Why did you chose Postgres for your project?
Postgres is a fantastic database: performant, mature, feature rich, and of course open source. And in addition to being a first rate relational database, it has very strong document store features as well.
Have you attended a PgConf US event or do you plan to?
I haven't had a chance to attend PgConf.
Are you interested in contributing to the community further and if so, in what fashion?
I don’t have any concrete plans at the moment.
Any closing comments?
Thank you for your interest.
Are you interested in contributing to the community further and if so, in what fashion?
I don’t have any concrete plans at the moment.
Any closing comments?
Thank you for your interest.
Joshua D. Drake
August 16, 2017
People, Postgres, Data,
Due to the health risks and travel restrictions created by the Coronavirus we unfortunately have to cancel Postgres Conference 2020 which was to be held at the Marriott Marquis on March 23rd, 2020 thru March 27th, 2020.
We want to thank all of our attendees, partners and volunteers for all the hard work we all put in to try and pull this event off. Sadly, the stars were not aligned this year. We now focus our efforts on Postgres Conference Silicon Valley 2020 and our Digital Events.
Thank you all for your patience and support,
Postgres Conference Chairs
Joshua D. Drake
March 12, 2020
The following table contains a summary profit and loss statement for PostgresConf US 2018.
In review of these numbers two things will probably jump out at you:
- Venue and F&B of 238,000.12
- Net Revenue of 202,201.62
Yes, we spent almost 250,000.00 dollars on the venue and food and beverage. In fact, the Food and Beverage alone was over 135,000.00 dollars.
We were fortunate to have very strong ticket sales as well as partner support through Sponsorships. This support will allow us to not only meet our financial requirements for PostgresConf Silicon Valley 2018 but will help us make our financial requirements for our European, Chinese, and US conferences in 2019. We are also hoping to set aside more money for our popular diversity and professional development initiatives.
The Chairs would like to thank all our organizers, volunteers, partners and attendees for helping us continue advocacy of People, Postgres, Data!
Joshua D. Drake
May 25, 2018
PostgresConf US 2018 is in 9 days. Here is the obligatory "Buy your tickets" reminder! If you look around (a Google search of Gold sponsor Google Cloud is a good place to start) you will find a lot of discount codes.
In 2017 we launched a community wide effort to better recognize contributors for not only the conference but the wider Postgres Community. We continued this effort in 2018 and are pleased to have many speaker profiles available, with more being published every day:
- Les McMonagle
- Malcolm McLean
- Elizabeth Zalman
- Hubert Zhang of Pivotal
- Baron Schwartz
- Jignesh Shah
- Tim Gorman
- Tom Limoncelli
As one of the Chairs of PostgresConf, I am honored by the resounding support from sponsors, speakers, and volunteers to help create a fantastic event for all attendees. It has been a pleasure working toward the common goal of creating a global, non-profit, Postgres Conference series.
