Archive for 2017

Welcome to a new and bigger year for Postgres in 2018! As our events have grown and evolved, so has our branding. We started as a small pgDay event, grown to a larger pgConf and now we are happy to announce that we matured into a full week long event called PostgresConf. PostgresConf US 2018 is focused on People, Postgres and Data. People are the driving force behind the Postgres Ecosystem from the hackers writing the code, to the advocates telling the world about Postgres and to the administrators and developers using Postgres day to day. They will all be represented at PostgresConf.   Tickets We have excellent news for you all: registration is open for PostgresConf US 2018 and discounted Early Bird tickets are just $399 -- $200 off the regular $599 -- and available through January 31, 2018, at https://postgresconf.org/conferences/2018 Please note that the early bird registration admits one person to the main conference sessions on Wednesday April 18 - Friday April 20, 2018, the Regulated Industry Summit, the Greenplum Summit, the Community Summit, and all evening activities from Wednesday - Friday. This registration does NOT include any training sessions on Monday April 16 or Tuesday April 17. Tickets for the training sessions are available separately, at $199 for half-day training and $499 for a full day training. Day passes will be available for single day admission Wednesday through Friday, for $299 -- why not register early and get all 3 days for just $100 more?! About our Conference The Postgres Ecosystem is more than just the exceptional PostgreSQL database. It encompasses tools, solution, and services that enterprises demand for their mission-critical applications. PostgresConf brings the whole ecosystem under a single roof so enterprises can learn about all of the possible ways Postgres can be used in their environments.   This year, we are back in Jersey City from April 16th to April 20th at The Westin Jersey City Newport.  We also listened to our past attendees and expanded our training classes to 2 days so on April 16th and 17th, we are pleased to offer training sessions taught by professional trainers to bring additional depth to your learning experience. That will be followed by 3 days of great talks on April 18th - 20th. Additionally, we will host our 4th annual Regulated Industry Summit as well as the inaugural Greenplum Summit. CFP Want to present?  Our CFP is open!  Please visit https://postgresconf.org/conferences/2018 for Call for Papers information.   Where to Stay For those planning to attend, don’t forget to book your room early for the best rates. The Westin Jersey City Newport is the best place to stay and enjoy all conference activities. Attendees will surely mingle at the Westin bar and hallways throughout the afternoon and long into the evening. We have reserved a block of rooms at the special conference rate of $260/night plus applicable taxes for attendees who make their reservations via this dedicated Westin booking page. The hotel block will fill up quickly. The special rates will be available until March 26 or until the group block is sold out.    Sponsors Sponsorship opportunities for the conference are still available. If your business PostgreSQL based products or services or if you are looking to recruit a PostgreSQL expert at our job fair, this is the place to be. Don’t miss your chance to be part of this dynamic and growing ecosystem. Download the sponsorship prospectus at: https://postgresconf.org/conferences/2018/sponsorships Our current premium sponsors are: Diamond: Amazon Web Services, Pivotal Platinum: Compose, OpenSCG, 2ndQuadrant, Microsoft Gold: Cybertec, JetBrains, Citus Data, EnterpriseDB For more information, please visit https://postgresconf.org/conferences/2018 We look forward to seeing you in April!

How do you use Postgres?

I work Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and within Fred Hutch, I work for the largest group called SCHARP, Statistical Center for HIV/AIDS Research and Prevention. We use Postgres to monitor the AIDS drug trials real time to see if the trials are working or not. This means we collect the data from doctors and labs around the world, and analyzing the data. We also have servers where we receive data from other research institutes and share our randomized data, de-personalized, with other research institutes.

What community contributions have you provided?

In 2010 I started SeaPUG, Seattle Postgres Users Group, at the request of Josh Drake. I have at least have the presentations there every year. I have also discovered several PostgreSQL: bugs which have been fixed. Some of them affected every version of PostgreSQL. Bug numbers: 7553, 8173, 8257, 8291. I also found 8545, which has not been fixed but Core has acknowledge needs to be fixed but they are not sure where it should be fixed, pg_dump or pg_dumpall. I started the PostgreSQL track at LinuxFest Northwest in 2014 after my GIS presentation in 2013 was standing room only. This year I got a booth at the SeaGL, Seattle GNU Linux, conference with the idea of having a booth there next year along with also doing a PostgreSQL presentation next year at the conference.

You recently took a renewed interest in speaking at Postgres Conferences, why?

I have been giving presentations locally now for the last 7 years and so I am now ready to move on to the next step, doing presentations at the Local and National conferences around the United States.

What is the #1 barrier you see to Postgres adoption?

People not knowing about PostgreSQL, most people know about MYSQL, MSSQL and Oracle, but do not know about PostgreSQL. This is changing, some, with the Cloud providers now offering PostgreSQL, but I go to these conferences, LinuxFest Northwest and SeaGL, and people all the time are asking me, "What is Postgres and why should I use it over MYSQL, MSSQL or Oracle", because they have never heard of PostgreSQL.

What is something you feel the wider Postgres community could be better at?

We need to promote PostgreSQL so that new people starting personal projects and starting at companies, will think about PostgreSQL before other databases. This starts with getting the younger generation interested in PostgreSQL and that also means that we need to get the college professors willing to talk about PostgreSQL in their curriculums instead of ignoring PostgreSQL for all the other competing databases. Some of this means that at all the other conferences, we need to have a PostgreSQL presence, aka booth and presentations. We should also come up with a certification method for PostgreSQL DBA's, User's, Engineer's, etc so that prospective employers will have an idea of the prospective employees skill set.

We are having yet another PGConf Mini in NYC. The event is scheduled for December 14th, 2017 and Work Bench is hosting:

Efficiently and Safely Propagate Data Changes Without Triggers!

 

It is with great pleasure that we announce the preliminary program for PGConf Local: Austin!

• I must care about the content.
• I must deliver what I say I will deliver.
• I must be honest with the audience about my level of experience in the subject.
• I must be honest about my opinions on the subject.
• I must be a genuine version of me, minus the swearing.”

Disclaimer: I am writing this opinion as a frequent presenter, not as the Co-Chair of the most electrifying Postgres Conference in the world.

 

It is with great pleasure that we announce the final program for PGConf Local: Seattle. The schedule is still being hammered out but we have finalized the content that will be presented. Please join us in celebrating Postgres in Seattle!

We just announced the dates and the CFP for PGConf 2018, our 7th Postgres Conference in the New York City area. We are back at the Westin in Jersey City April 16th-20th again this year just across the river from Manhattan and an easy PATH ride to all things New York. As we learn from year to year, we evolve based on our attendees and sponsors feedback. This biggest change we are doing this year is expanding the program to be a full 5 days. Our attendees have asked for even more training so we are now starting on Monday with several full-day training classes. We will then roll into half-day tutorials on Tuesday and the full conference schedule starting on Wednesday.

Other changes you will see this year is the 4th Annual Regulated Industry Summit will now be part of the main program. A number of people who wanted to attend the RIS also wanted to attend the tutorials so we removed that conflict while opening up the RIS to a wider audience. Along with RIS, we are hosting two additional summits. Thanks to one of our Diamond Sponsors, Pivotal, we will have the inaugural Greenplum Summit to bring together the best in Big Data, Massively Parallel Processing (MPP), Machine Learning, Graph, AI and Spatial Analytics centered around the Open Source, Postgres derived Greenplum database. Finally, we are having the Open Source Summit for our fellow local Open Source communities with data related technologies such as Python, R and Ruby.

All of this wouldn't be possible without our sponsors:

Platinum:        Compose, OpenSCG, 2ndQuadrant, Microsoft
Gold:              JetBrains, Cybertec, Citus, EnterpriseDB
Silver:            Command Prompt

Save the date and submit a talk at:
https://pgconf.org/conferences/2018

The International Postgres conference  series continues to grow! PGConf APAC 2018 is the latest PGConf.Org addition.

1. Migration projects
2. Performance troubleshooting and tuning
3. noSQL and geo-spatial features of Postgres
4. Unique use-case and customer stories
5. Useful new features in PostgreSQL 10

To be Announced

2017-10-10: Proposals acceptance begins

2017-12-04: Proposals acceptance ends

2017-12-13: Authors of accepted proposals contacted

We just finished the first PGConf South Africa and it was a fantastic success. When we first started thinking about the event, we were considering 30 people attending as a good turnout and there were nearly 60 people in attendance. To put that in perspective, the first PGDay New York event in 2012 had 55 people attend. I can honestly say that South Africa and even the whole continent of Africa was craving a PostgreSQL event.

There were some great technical talks on topics like  PL/pgSQL stored procedures, PL/Python stored procedures, replication, and security, but what was truly fascinating was the use cases. PostgreSQL is the key data store behind the MeerKAT telescope handling a massive amount of sensor data, is key to helping South African farmers to know where to plant their crop and is utilized extensively through the medical industry in South Africa. The coolest thing learning how PostgreSQL was used for quality control from a 3D printer. In this one, it was not how PostgreSQL was used, it was that the 3D printer was actually a high powered laser that would melt through titanium powder.

Thank you to the sponsors, Quant Solutions and OfferZen to help to make the event possible. And a special thank you to Kobus Wolvaardt who organized the event.

Oh my goodness, Data Days!

CFP Dates:

• Open until: 10/15/2017
• Notification:  10/18/2017
• CFP Link