Like most conference organizers we are learning to adapt to the new world; a world where physical events are no longer viable (at least in 2020). A world where people are genuinely and realistically concerned that an in-person event would increase their chances of receiving or spreading a life threatening virus.

The question is: Are in-person events a thing of the past?

The answer to that question is a difficult one. Our friends at O'reilly and Associates have permanently canceled their in person events. Our friends in Europe recently canceled the well respected PgConf.EU and Ibiza. We had to cancel our 2020 marque event in NYC in March and our upcoming Silicon Valley conference. The local community organizer website Meetup.com has even modified their capabilities to allow for online meetups. 

Humans in general seek out fellow human contact. That contact is usually of reasonably like minded individuals or at least mutual interests. This is why events like Postgres Conference are successful, because irrespective of any personal beliefs we are all there to learn and enjoy fellow Postgres professionals. But are virtual meetups and conferences going to be enough to satisfy that connection or are people going to demand a return to a historical norm?

Challenges

Even before COVID-19, in-person events came with challenges that put significant pressure on volunteers. Between cultural communication differences, having an independent Code of Conduct committee, pricing, economies of scale, partner demands, and now social distancing, conferences are now going to be more complicated than ever. A room that once could comfortably seat 100 can now only properly sit 30. An exhibit hall is likely out of the question and one-on-one mentoring and networking are likely not going to be viable.  How do we work around these limitations? Is it worth it? Are the people in our community even interested anymore or is it time to accept a new norm?

Opportunity

Without question this is a time of reflection, continued development of relationships, and looking into the magic 8-ball; a continual asking of questions to find the right path forward. The pandemic is a tough foe but true leaders are looking forward and trying to find ways to continue to serve. For that to be successful we need your help. We have put together a poll (that can be found here) to gain insight into what opportunities we may be able to pursue in the future. Please take a couple minutes and help shape the future of Open Source events. 

As a closing, we are actively moving forward with Digital Events across the globe and have an unending Call for Presentations open for Webinars. If you have any feedback or brilliant ideas, please send them to us via organizers@postgresconf.org.

Blatant Poll Link 

At Postgres Conference we are always optimizing our People, Postgres, Data experience, and as more events move to Digital,  we have worked hard to perfect that collaborative experience for our community. The hard work of our volunteers has paid off, our content is top notch, and our participant account is consistently high.

With a now-proven track record, we are pleased to announce that we are accepting Community and Commercial presentations via the Postgres Webinar Series Call for Presentations through the end of 2020. If your presentation is accepted we will contact you directly to arrange an appropriate time to deliver your content.

Recent awesome news

KDE, arguably the most complete desktop experience for Linux, is now hosted on a private instance of Gitlab. As is proper, Gitlab only supports Postgres as the backend database.

For those who who love #FarmFresh or #farmtotable, there is a new website that showcases Farms that are delivering. It was developed using React, Rails, and Postgres. 

Upcoming Digital Events

• July 7, 10am PT: Deep Dive into PostgreSQL Indexing

A Deep Dive into PostgreSQL Indexing

• July 15, 10AM PT: Working with JSON Data in PostgreSQL vs. MongoDB

Working with JSON Data in PostgreSQL vs. MongoDB

Previous Digital Events:

• PostGIS Training series:
• Getting Started with PostGIS and OpenStreetMap by Ryan Lambert
• Advanced Operations and Features by Ryan Lambert
• Exploring OpenStreetMap from PostGIS:  Tools and Queries by Ryan Lambert
• Loading PostGIS with osm2pgsql by Ryan Lambert
• PostGIS Spatial Queries and Performance Tuning by Ryan Lambert
• PostgreSQL 12 and PostGIS 3.0 by Ryan Lambert
• Ops:
• FPGA: an Easier Path to Parallelism for Postgres? by Andrew Ellicott
• How to Deploy a SQL Database on Kubernetes by Chris Casano
• How to Move Data from Oracle to Postgres in Near-Real Time by Joshua Drake
• A Deep Dive into PostgreSQL Indexing by Ibrar Ahmed
• Mostly mistaken and ignored PostgreSQL parameters while optimizing a PostgreSQL database by Avinash Vallarapu
• Deeper Understanding of PostgreSQL Execution Plan: At plan time and run time by Jobin Augustine
• A Deep Dive into PostgreSQL Indexing by Ibrar Ahmed
• Enterprise Authentication and Connection Pooling by Erik Brandsberg
• Case Studies
• YugabyteDB: a distributed PostgreSQL database by Bryn Llewellyn
• Community vs. Enterprise Open Source – Which is Right for Your Business? by Justin Reock
• Postgres vs. MongoDB for real-time machine learning on wind turbine data by Luis Manuel Carril
• Turning PostgreSQL into a Cloud Native Data Service by Julian Fischer
• Scaling PostgreSQL: Never Shard Again and Gain Effortless Scale by Jim Walker
• Bring Compression to Postgres at Zero Cost of Performance by Tong Zhang

The PostgresConf team wanted to provide some information on the performance of PostgresConf US 2018 and events over the past year, as well as potentially answer some pending questions. Ultimately our goals are about people, which is why our motto is, "People, Postgres, Data." With each event we hold, each talk we accept, and how we train our volunteers, we make sure people (the benefit for and to), postgres, and data are considered and included. If there is no benefit or consideration to the growth of people, it is not an option.

• Philadelphia 
• Ohio (in combination with Ohio Linux Fest) 
• South Africa 
• Seattle 
• Austin 
• Jersey City (PostgresConf US 2018) 
• Nepal 

PostgresConf US 2018

Logistics

• Days: 5, 2 for training, 3 for Breakout sessions and summits
• Official Attendance #: 601
• Content: Over 207 sessions submitted
• Sessions: Over 108 sessions provided 

Partner Support (Sponsors): 28

Diversity

Professional Growth

We held a Career and Talent Fair. A dozen companies were present to connect with potential employees.

We also held a surprisingly well attended speed mentoring session for potential employees (Especially helpful for many of the WWC) on resumes and interview practices.

Leadership

This year saw the continued elevation of our primary leadership: Viral Shah, Lloyd Albin, Amanda Nystrom, and Debra Cerda. They continued to increase their presence and responsibility within the conference and dedicated hundreds of hours voluntarily to the growth of people. Our international members have also increased their leadership roles with our on-the-ground teams in South Africa and China.

Summits

We had our standard Regulated Industry Summit but also a Greenplum Summit. As I am sure you are aware Greenplum is an Open Source, Postgres based MPP database. They were by far the most popular booth in the entire conference and their summit was very well attended. The relationship with Pivotal and the success of the Greenplum Summit allowed us to learn new ways to bring together the entire Postgres Ecosystem. We expect to run a minimum of 3 more summits at PostgresConf US 2019.

Contribution

We were able to have several excellent (and long) meetings with leaders of Pivotal, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon on how they can begin contributing more back to Postgresql.org. All of them expressed a deep drive to contribute and a desire to learn more about the core community. Of particular note is Google, who would like to contribute the following back to the community:

https://github.com/google/pg_page_verification

We discussed with them the process and various changes they would need to make (license and code style, etc.). We also educated them on the PostgreSQL.Org rigorous review process.

Microsoft is reviewing how they can contribute but they showed an interest in build farm nodes, professional technical writers to help with docs, and potentially code contribution to our Windows port.

International Collaboration

The Chinese Open Source Promotion Union launched the Chinese Postgres Association. We invited them to PostgresConf US and introduced them to the United States Community. We expect great things from the Chinese community in the future.

Future

As we continue to build up our on-the-ground teams, we will likely hold less events in the U.S. this year. We will instead be focused on a smaller number of events in the U.S. and adding events in China and Europe. We have had an amazing amount of support from the Chinese community and the current goal is 1000 attendees for that conference.

Our current plan of events for the U.S. are

• San Jose (October 2018) 
• Philadelphia 
• PostgresConf US (Manhattan) 

Future International Events

• October 2018. 
• Spring of 2019. 
• Spring of 2019. 

This may change as we are actively recruiting on-the-ground teams to help us grow the community.

Collaboration

Our goal is collaboration and growth with other PostgreSQL community and Ecosystem efforts. We want to allow each potential community member to find a home. A place that they feel positive about contributing to the community as a whole. As we continue to grow as a community, it is vital to recognize that each member has their own needs, desires, and return on investment requirement (professional or personal) that they are seeking.

Tidbits of note

• Pivotal went public during PostgresConf US 2018. 
• We (PostgreSQL and PostgresConf) were picked up by ZDNet during the conference
• Another flattering article about PostgreSQL

On DBEngines PostgreSQL is the 4th most popular database but the significance is that of the other 3, we are the only ones that are growing in popularity. 

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

Brass tacks

• Silicon Valley is selling tickets briskly, get yours today and join us at the largest gathering of Postgres leaders on the West Coast.

• South Africa is set to release their schedule shortly. Watch the site for opportunities in October.

• We have hinted at digital events in the past and they are in the final planning stages. Digital events will encompass best in class content from our community in the format of Webinars, Q&A sessions and Professional electronic training opportunities. Watch for more news on these unique opportunities as we get closer to Fall 2019.

Seasons

It is the middle of summer, and as Glenn Frey would say, “The Heat is on!” Summer is the time when everyone is busy, yet nobody is busy. You have a contract to execute but the signer is on vacation. You have a project to complete but your digital nomad developer took off for the beach. Suddenly even checks may be delayed because of a long weekend up in the mountains. It is also a time to catch up on the things that may have been overlooked. When the person driving your priorities is on vacation it is easier to step back and observe your purpose.

Introduction

At PostgresConf 2019 in Manhattan we organized a Diversity and Inclusion panel with the help of Plato. The panel was well attended, but not as much as we had hoped. This fact outlined that we had more work to do on expanding our leadership position within Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in the Professional Postgres community.

We take this topic very seriously and we would consider PostgresConf and our focus on People, Postgres, Data a success if the only outcome was for all to feel welcome and supported within our community. Thankfully we have organizers and volunteers who are passionate about this very topic.

We would like to introduce the PostgresConf and PgCentral Foundation DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) Work Group:

• Debra Cerda: DEI Organizer

• Henrietta Dombrovskaya: Contributor

• Ryan Lambert: Contributor

• Mara Lemagie: Contributor

• Vikki McCormick: Contributor

• Amanda Nystrom: Co-Chair Sponsor

Over the coming months we will be continuing to communicate our passion, our purpose, our action and our accomplishments in bringing true Diversity, Equity and Inclusion to our community.

“A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus” -- Martin Luther King

PostgresConf Philly which is organized in conjunction with Philly Postgres sold out in July! A packed room, great content and glorious collaboration was available to all for free due to the generous support of the Wharton School for Business!

As we continue to build our professional relationships, connections with academia are going to be vital. Academia is one of the few spaces that Postgres has not been able to make assertive gains in adoption and it crucial to the long term vision of our community that Academia recognize and adopt Postgres as the World’s Database and a viable option for teaching the next generation of data experts.

International communication

As our community grows Internationally with strong ties to Asia, and countries in the Southern Hemisphere it becomes difficult to connect with those cultures using our normal nomenclature. In our last newsletter we used a quote meant to be a compliment and challenge to the Western communities to try new things. The quote was about pigs ears and how they are delicious. The quote was interpreted by some in the Asia community as negative.

While writing this newsletter, we had used a spelling variation for the term “Wowzers” which in American pop culture is meant to be an exclamation of amazement. However in other cultures it maintains a negative connotation causing us to change the term to Kapow. These communication challenges show us that we must be open and without pride in our communication. We must show patience and understanding with cultures that are not like ours and that the communities that are able to achieve this will lead the future of Open Source and Postgres.

“Every human is like all other humans, some other humans, and no other human” — Clyde Kluckhon

This two day, three track conference is a perfect opportunity for users, developers, business analysts, and enthusiasts from Silicon Valley and San Francisco to amplify Postgres and participate in the Postgres community.

• Monday, October 15th: Trainings and Data track
• Tuesday, October 16th: Keynotes, Dev and Ops tracks

PostgresConf is a global nonprofit conference series with a focus on growing community through increased awareness and education of Postgres and related technologies. PostgresConf is known for its highly attended national conference held in Jersey City, New Jersey with the mission of:

1. Mastering PostgreSQL Administration by Bruce Momjian
2. Migrating from Oracle to PostgreSQL by Jim Mlodgenski
3. Postgres Performance and Maintenance by Joshua (JD) Drake
4. Database Automation by Robert Bernier 

• PostgreSQL v10 an Amplified version of Postgres!
• Using Kubernetes/Docker/Helm to Deploy On-Demand PostgreSQL Streaming Replicas
• Postgres Window Magic
• BDR Around the globe

• Diamond: Amazon Web Services
• Platinum: Compose, OpenSCG, 2ndQuadrant
• Partner: Quest
• Supporter: Command Prompt
• Media: @amplifypostgres

PostgresConf Beijing 2019

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Last week was PostgresConf Beijing 2019. This event was an exercise in people understanding what it truly takes to run a conference. It was a standalone event unlike PostgresOpen China in 2018 which always takes a lot more work. We had generous sponsor support with the likes of Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, IBM, Pivotal, Inspur, HighGo, Credativ, and Command Prompt.

The overarching theme of the conference was of course People, Postgres, Data and we had many (translated) conversations about how Postgres can be the center of your Data Universe and how the ecosystem thrives with not only PostgreSQL but also technology such as TimescaleDB and Yugabyte. All of which are Open Source and enable People to use Postgres to manage their Data. In 2020, the plan is to have PostgresConf China in October or November. The timing will allow for a more moderate climate as well as have more time to generate international content.

English As A Second Language

As we continue to work with English-as-a-second-language communities we continue to find opportunities for them to grow and contribute. Of course the most common (and possibly difficult) opportunity is that in order to contribute code to PostgreSQL.Org, you must speak English. This is not an unreasonable requirement as English is the language of Computer Science.

A common piece of feedback we received was not that English was the consideration but the “level” of English proficiency was high. Unfortunately, verbosity is not always productive and it is certainly counterproductive when the vocabulary doesn’t take into account the non-native speaker. It would be a boost to productivity if we as a community tried to be succinct and as uncomplicated as reasonable in our communication. To put this another way and from a far more qualified source than us:

“Don't use a five-dollar word when a fifty-cent word will do.”

-- Mark Twain

Contribution Opportunities

While encouraging the Chinese community to contribute we continued to look for the low barrier of entry tasks. The obvious opportunity is translation of various project documentation. That is not the only prospect as PostgreSQL has fantastic extensibility and suggestions of developing new extensions. Contributing directly to PostgreSQL code has a high barrier of entry between English as a second language and overall overhead in building comprehensive knowledge of the core code. Extensions in contrast generally require needing to understand narrow areas of code to build a feature that is user-need specific. We are still exploring these opportunities but one option would be to invite extension authors to work with regional communities for translation or feature work.

Software You Weren’t Aware Of

Oleg from PostgresPro and PGConf.Russia was present and we were able to have some great conversations about the work they are doing, most of which can be found on Github. Although there is a lot of great software in that repository, the one that grabbed my eye as immediately useful was Zson. Zson is an extension that allows native compression of JSON/JSONB documents, greatly reducing disk space usage and increasing query speed of documents.

Please Replace IRC and Slack

Further conversations were had on how we can build a modern collaboration community that is internationally inviting, supports all languages, and is built on Open Source technologies. Initially it seems that Mattermost is a good contender but after further research it seems that we should also consider Matrix.org. The idea has barriers as the Chinese are partial to WeChat and the Professional U.S. community has left IRC for Slack, whereas other communities such as Brazil and Russia have settled on Telegram. We have a community member based working group determining next steps.

You may say that I'm a dreamer

But I'm not the only one

I hope someday you'll join us

And the world will be as one

-- John Lennon

Looking Forward

As People, Postgres, Data and PostgresConf continues to move forward we are looking forward to building on existing initiatives and events. We have PostgresConf Philly next week, PostgresConf Silicon Valley in September, and our next International event in October with PostgresConf South Africa. We are also continuing to work on our Inclusivity, Equit,y and Diversity initiative and launching Digital Events! This doesn’t include the growing number of meetups joining the idea of People, Postgres, Data including NYC Postgres, Silicon Valley Postgres, Philly Postgres, Seattle Postgres, and Montreal Postgres!

Quote of the week

“Those pig ears are really good.” -- Michael Meskes, Credativ and Postgresql.org committer.

The Chairs (myself, Jim Mlodgenski, and Amanda Nystrom) have recently decided to bring some visibility to charities that are close to our hearts. They are listed below:

• Joshua Drake: Navajo Water Project. The Navajo nation is approximately the size of West Virginia and has a population of over 150,000 people (300k in the tribe). Anywhere from 15% - 40% of the residents do not have access to running water. The Navajo Water Project aims to bring clean water to each person and family through support from those that donate. 
• Jim Mlodgenski: St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. The hospital is one of the premier research hospitals for cancer and other life threatening illnesses for some of our most vulnerable people. Approximately one in 285 children in the U.S. will be diagnosed with cancer before their 20th birthday. Through donations, St. Jude’s provides treatment to those with cancer, and is actively dedicating resources to the research and cure for cancer. 
• Amanda Nystrom: ASPCA. The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCS) was the first humane society to be established in North America, with the goal of providing kind and respectful treatment to animals under the law. Unlike humans, cases of animal abuse aren’t compiled but studies have shown a correlation between domestic violence and animal abuse. The ASPCA prevents animal homelessness and actively rescues animals from dangerous and/or cruel situations.

Upcoming Webinars

With the Coronavirus causing the conference market to dry up for 2020, we at Postgres Conference have pivoted to ensure that we continue to provide quality Postgres content to the world of People, Postgres, Data. We have been performing multiple webinars per month. Here is the current schedule and you can register (free) here:

• May 21, 11am PT: A Deep Dive into PostgreSQL Indexing
• June 2, 10AM PT: How to Move Data from Oracle to Postgres in Near-Real Time
• June 9, 11am PT: Community vs. Enterprise Open Source – Which is Right for Your Business?
• June 10, 11am PT: Bring Compression to Postgres at Zero Cost of Performance
• June 16, 11AM PT: Mostly mistaken and ignored PostgreSQL parameters while optimizing a PostgreSQL database
• June 30, 11am PT: Deeper Understanding of PostgreSQL Execution Plan: At plan time and run time
• July 15, 10AM PT: Working with JSON Data in PostgreSQL vs. MongoDB
• June 17, 11am PT: Postgres vs. MongoDB for real-time machine learning on wind turbine data

Articles from the community

• Why work for hire could be limiting your company and yourself
• Build PostgreSQL extensions on Windows
• Operationalizing your PostgreSQL database health checks using SQL Notebooks
• Building fast refresh capability in Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL
• Multi-tenant data isolation with PostgreSQL Row Level Security

Coronavirus Resources:

• Open-Access Data and Computational Resources to Address COVID-19

Tell us a little bit (one or two paragraphs) about your project or how you use Postgres: 

Why did you chose Postgres for your project?