Debra Cerda Blog Posts

Attention PostgresConf US 2018 registered (and potential) attendees -- our discounted room block at the Westin Jersey City Newport has sold out! We have arranged to add an additional small block, lasting until Monday, March 26th or until it sells out.

HOWEVER, these rooms are selling fast so make your reservation ASAP if interested in staying at the Westin with the special conference rate of $260/night plus applicable taxes for attendees who make their reservations via the dedicated Westin webpage or via telephone (888) 627-7148.

If booking via telephone please mention "PostgresConf US 2018" to receive the group rate. Guest room wifi is included in the room rate.

The Westin Jersey City Newport is the best place to stay and enjoy all conference activities. Attendees will mingle at the Westin bar and hallways throughout the afternoon and long into the evening.

Additional Lodging Options

The DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Suites Jersey City and the Courtyard Jersey City Newport  are two conveniently located hotels just a short walk from the conference. Rooms may be booked via their respective websites.

PostgresConf US Attendee Poll - Action Needed!

Our PostgresConf US 2018 poll is now open -- your input is valued!

Please take two minutes to provide feedback so we can ensure that the conference is a great experience. Registered attendees should have received an email this week with the poll link. Contact us at organizers@postgresconf.org if you did not receive the poll link.

The purpose of this quick poll is to note any dietary restrictions and gauge interest in the Greenplum and RIS Summits, as well as some of our popular sessions so that we can assign room spaces accordingly

Sponsors

During PostgresConf, you will have plenty of opportunity to meet our great sponsors, including:

• Diamond: Amazon Web Services, Pivotal
• Platinum: Compose, OpenSCG, 2ndQuadrant, Microsoft
• Many more!

For more information, please visit our website https://postgresconf.org/conferences/2018.

Need further assistance? Contact us at organizers@postgresconf.org.

We look forward to seeing you in April in Jersey City!

As part of the countdown to Postgres Conference 2024, learn more about the engaging content and our speakers for this year in our Speaker Spotlight Series.

Baji Shaik is a Sr. Lead Consultant at AWS ProServe, GCC AMER, and is a seasoned expert in SQL/NoSQL databases, specializing in database migration and optimization. With a wealth of experience spanning various technologies, he's authored multiple books on PostgreSQL and actively contributes to the AWS blog community.

Baji will present “Beyond Boundaries: Mastering 2-Level Encryption Migration in PostgreSQL”. Read what Baji has to say about Postgres and why to attend his session:

Why should attendees come to your talk at Postgres Conference 2024? What would you like for them to take away from your session?
Learn about encryption in Oracle, its pros and cons. Discover PostgreSQL's encryption methods. Choose and migrate to the right encryption method without compromising security or performance.

What is your favorite aspect of Postgres Conference?
I actively participate in PostgreSQL Conferences to expand my knowledge base and forge valuable connections within the community.

What advice would you have for a Computer Science graduate or entry level developer who is interested in learning and engaging with Postgres and other open source technologies?
My advice would be to start by exploring online resources, joining community forums, and actively participating in relevant conferences and workshops to gain practical experience and network with industry professionals.

How do you see the use of open source technologies evolving over the next five years?
I envision open-source technologies playing an increasingly vital role across various industries, driving innovation, collaboration, and cost-efficiency while fostering a more inclusive and accessible digital ecosystem.

What considerations should be taken for the adoption and use of Postgres and related open source technologies?
Considerations for adopting and using Postgres and related open-source technologies include evaluating compatibility with existing systems, assessing scalability and performance requirements, ensuring adequate support and expertise, and considering factors like security, community support, and long-term sustainability.

Check out the full schedule for PostgresConf US 2024. Learn more about our conference here and buy your tickets soon!

As part of the countdown to PostgresConf Silicon Valley 2023, learn more about the engaging content and our speakers for this year in our Speaker Spotlight Series.

Meet Ry Walker, Founder and CEO of CoreDB, which is currently in private beta. CoreDB "provides provides a fully-managed, secure, scalable Postgres cluster with access to an ecosystem of extensions, expanding the capabilities of a database." Ry is a long-time coder, founder investor and champion of open source. He enjoys nature, science, art, tennis, platform tennis, golf, basketball, fishing and indie game development.

Read what he has to say about Postgres and why to attend his keynote session "The Growing Postgres Ecosystem" on Thursday, April 20th:

Why Postgres? Tell us about your involvement with the greater Postgres community.

I've been a user since the beginning, recently started CoreDB which will provide a managed Postgres SaaS.

Why should attendees come to your talk at PostgresConf US 2023?  What would you like for them to take away from your session?

Learn about exciting Postgres extensions and what CoreDB is planning to contribute to the ecosystem

What is your favorite aspect of Postgres Conference?

I'm a first timer :)

What advice would you have for a Computer Science graduate or entry level developer who are interested in learning and engaging with Postgres?

Blog about your journey.

 What's your top suggested readings for 2023?  Books, blogs -- from fiction to non-fiction to technical, anything you enjoy?

The Hobbit :)

What do you believe are the major achievements of open source and Postgres over the last decade?

The rise of open source and open core companies is exciting!

Check out the full schedule for Postgres Conference Silicon Valley 2023, and buy your tickets soon!

As part of the countdown to PostgresConf Silicon Valley 2023, learn more about the engaging content and our speakers for this year in our Speaker Spotlight Series.

Bryn Llewellyn is a Technical Product Manager at Yugabyte, Inc., which offers an open source, cloud native distributed SQL database that looks like PostgreSQL to the developer. Bryn’s speciality is SQL and stored procedures in the context of distributed SQL.

Bryn has worked in the software field for more than forty years. He started working with SQL when he joined Oracle UK in 1990. He relocated to Oracle HQ (Redwood Shores, CA) in 1996 and his last role, before leaving, was as the Product Manager for PL/SQL. He left Oracle in April 2019 to join YugaByte, Inc.

Bryn started off doing image analysis and pattern recognition at Oxford University (programming in FORTRAN) and then worked in Oslo, first at the Norwegian Computing Center and then in a startup. In Norway, Bryn programmed in Simula—recognized as the first object-oriented programming language and as the inspiration for C++.

Bryn will be presenting a mini-tutorial on Friday, April 21st at 9:30am Pacific Time on "How to configure a PostgreSQL cluster for multitenancy." Read what he has to say about Postgres and why to attend his session:

Why Postgres? Tell us about your involvement with the greater Postgres community.

I work for Yugabyte, Inc. (Learn more about Bryn's background). YugabyteDB uses the PostgreSQL query processing code “as is” on top of its own open source Spanner-like distributed storage system. I started at Yugabyte four years ago. And that’s when I first started to learn and to use PostgreSQL. My job is to document YugabyteDB’s SQL and PL/pgSQL functionality. This, by construction, has the same syntax and semantics as does vanilla PostgreSQL. I therefore ask lots of questions on the “pgsql-general” mailing list and, very occasionally, discover bugs in vanilla PostgreSQL.

What new features of PostgreSQL 15 are you most excited about?

Actually it’s a feature that’s new in Version 14: the new syntax for “language sql” functions that lets you define the body without making it a text literal so that it’s parsed at “create” time—allowing proper dependency tracking (and other benefits).

What features do you believe should be developed/improved and released in the next major upgrade?

I would dearly like to see new functionality for "language plpgsql" subprograms that’s comparable to PL/SQL’s “package” construct (in Oracle Database).

Why should attendees come to your talk at PostgresConf US 2023?  What would you like for them to take away from your session?

I describe a practical solution to a genuine problem. And I make all the code easily available for download from the GitHub repo.

What is your favorite aspect of Postgres Conference?

Meeting real PostgreSQL practitioners and talking with them about their real-world use cases.

What advice would you have for a Computer Science graduate or entry level developer who are interested in learning and engaging with Postgres?

Get a job where you use the technology on a daily basis.

 What's your top suggested readings for 2023?  Books, blogs -- from fiction to non-fiction to technical, anything you enjoy?

Our Yugabyte blog!

What do you believe are the major achievements of open source and Postgres over the last decade?

How YugabyteDB has made the familiar PostgreSQL functionality available as an open source, cloud native, massively scalable and fault tolerant, distributed SQL database system. (Of course, I would say this!) 

Anything else to add?

I’m excited to be attending (again), and speaking (again) at the Postgres Conference Silicon Valley.

Check out the full schedule for Postgres Conference Silicon Valley 2023, and buy your tickets soon!

As part of the countdown to PostgresConf US 2018, learn more about the engaging content and our speakers for this year in our Speaker Spotlight Series.

Hubert Zhang will co-present with Jack Wu at PostgresConf US 2018 on "Customize and Secure the Runtime and Dependencies of Your Procedural Languages using PL/Container." Hubert is a staff software engineer at Pivotal. He received his Master Degree at Peking University, with a major in artificial intelligence. He is most interested in database systems and distributed computing platform.

Tell us about your involvement with the greater Postgres community. (How long have you been involved? How have you contributed? How else would you want to contribute?)

I've been working on Postgres based MPP database Greenplum and HAWQ since 2014. I contributed on PLContainer in Greenplum, data locality, and Ranger module of HAWQ (a SQL-On-Hadoop system).

What features should be developed/improved and released in the next major upgrade?

Vectorize execution for OLAP queries.

Who should attend your talk at PostgresConf US 2018? What would you like for them to take away from your session?

Data scientists and anyone who want to use Python and R in database to do data analysis and machine learning. You'll learn how to use PLContainer as well as how to build a customized docker image to setup your specialized Python or R environment.

Check out the full schedule for PostgresConf US 2018, and buy your tickets soon!

As part of the countdown to PostgresConf Silicon Valley 2023, learn more about the engaging content and our speakers for this year in our Speaker Spotlight Series.

Meet Dave Stokes, Technology Evangelist for Percona. Dave Stokes is the author of MySQL & JSON - A Practical Programming Guide. He resides in Texas with the mandated pickup truck, hound dog, and guitars.

Read what Dave has to say about Postgres and why to attend his sessions which include "MERGE() - A Quick Introduction" and "PostgreSQL High Availability: The Considerations and the Candidates."

Why Postgres? Tell us about your involvement with the greater Postgres community. (How long have you been involved? How have you contributed? How else would you want to contribute?)

I have been mainly involved in the MySQL Community for a long time but am now exploring PostgreSQL. I have started a series on PostgreSQL for MySQL DBAs that is very popular

What new features of PostgreSQL 15 are you most excited about?

Merge()!

What features do you believe should be developed/improved and released in the next major upgrade?

JSON_TABLE()!! Please, please, pretty please!!

Why should attendees come to your talk at Postgres Conference Silicon Valley 2023? What would you like for them to take away from your session?

From the Merge() talk, I hope they will go away understanding how transaction log processing works. For the HA talk, I do not expect them to walk away as they will be so filled with brain energy that they sort of levitate away!

What is your favorite aspect of Postgres Conference?

The people.

What advice would you have for a Computer Science graduate or entry level developer who are interested in learning and engaging with Postgres and other open source technologies?

Open source !- free. It provides a flexibility to innovate.

What's your top suggested readings for 2023?

Anything by Tim Dorsey.

What do you believe are the major achievements of open source and Postgres over the last decade?

Open-source software has proven that good code comes from more than just semi-benevolent corporations. And PostgreSQL has proven the power of the mailing list!

Check out the full schedule for Postgres Conference Silicon Valley 2023, and buy your tickets soon!

As part of the countdown to Postgres Conference 2024, learn more about the engaging content and our speakers for this year in our Speaker Spotlight Series.

Manish Shah is founder and CEO of Datasparc, and brings expertise in product development, database security, and scalable cloud systems. His thought leadership and patent ownership in sensitive data discovery and protection underscore his ability to influence and innovate in the field.

Manish will present "Zero Trust database access with DBHawk". Read what Manish has to say about Postgres and why to attend his session:

Why should attendees come to your talk at Postgres Conference 2024? What would you like for them to take away from your session?

Join the session exploring critical database security and access challenges. Manish will dissect current issues and provide solutions for achieving precise zero-trust database access.

What is your favorite aspect of Postgres Conference?
Meeting face-to-face Postgres users.

What advice would you have for a Computer Science graduate or entry level developer who are interested in learning and engaging with Postgres and other open source technologies?
Learn SQL and other programming language. Install Postgres and start playing with it.

How do you see the use of open source technologies evolving over the next five years?
Businesses are recognizing the value of open source software, and its adoption in the enterprise is expected to grow.

What considerations should be taken for the adoption and use of Postgres and related open source technologies?
Strong security and reliable support are crucial for wider adoption of Postgres. After all, data is an organization's most valuable asset.

Check out the full schedule for PostgresConf US 2024. Learn more about our conference here and buy your tickets soon!

As part of the countdown to Postgres Conference 2024, learn more about the engaging content and our speakers for this year in our Speaker Spotlight Series.

Tatiana Krupenya is CEO of DBeaver Corp, an information technology company with many years of experience developing database management tools. DBeaver has created a full-featured data solution that easily adapts to users' needs, from open-source tools to all-in-one enterprise software. PostgreSQL is one of the most popular databases among DBeaver users.

Tatiana will present "Looking for the differences in your data". Read what Tatiana has to say about Postgres and why to attend their session:

Why should attendees come to your talk at Postgres Conference 2024? What would you like for them to take away from your session?
If you have ever tried to compare the data between tables, you know that it's not so obvious. It's not difficult if your table has a few tens of rows. You can easily do this visually. But what if you have thousands or millions of rows? Let's review the possible ways to compare this amount of data together.
What is your favorite aspect of Postgres Conference?
The best at any Postgres Conference is the Postgres Community. An opportunity to talk to people who are inspired by technology and ready to share their own experiences is invaluable. The conference is a place where you can feel what is the open-source culture.
How do you see the use of open source technologies evolving over the next five years?
There are no limits to open source. I am happy to see that big corporations invest more and more resources in open source. I believe that open source is not charity but a quality sign. Open source is always on the edge of technologies; it's flexible, and it's open to new. It's hard to predict how exactly these technologies will evolve over the next five years, but there are no doubts that open source will have an important place there.

Check out the full schedule for PostgresConf US 2024. Learn more about our conference here and buy your ticket! Walk-up registration is available onsite.

As part of the countdown to PostgresConf Silicon Valley 2023, learn more about the engaging content and our speakers for this year in our Speaker Spotlight Series.

Meet Tatiana Krupenya, CEO of DBeaver. DBeaver provides a GUI interface that "connects to all data sources and stores, enables special extensions for big data databases, and includes supplemental features like a data viewer, an editor, mock data generator, metadata browsing and visual query builders, enabling users to dynamically access all of their databases while working within one environment."

Tatiana will present "Let robots help with queries" at this year's conference. Read more about Tatiana below:

Why Postgres? Tell us about your involvement with the greater Postgres community. 

DBeaver is one of the most popular UI tools for Postgres administration and data management. We support not only PostgreSQL itself but all popular forks and Postgres-based data sources, like Greenplum, Yugabyte, Redshift and others.

Why should attendees come to your talk at Postgres Conference Silicon Valley 2023? What would you like for them to take away from your session?

We have gotten used to thinking that working with databases is for database administrators and developers. However, thanks to modern technologies, people from other professional areas can also do this. It's data engineers, data architects, financial analysts, machine learning specialists, and others. The only thing that we need is to provide them with a safe and convenient infrastructure. In my talk, I would like to show how OpenAI can help with that.

What is your favorite aspect of Postgres Conference?

The best thing is the atmosphere. You can meet interesting people, learn about cutting-edge technologies, find new partners, and all of these in a friendly and positive environment.

Check out the full schedule for Postgres Conference Silicon Valley 2023. Walk-up registration is still available. Learn more here!

As part of the countdown to Postgres Conference 2024, learn more about the engaging content and our speakers for this year in our Speaker Spotlight Series.

Tracy Jenkins is a Database Solutions Architect with Amazon Web Services. She enjoys working with databases and helping customers architect performant, highly available, and scalable solutions while making recommendations on reliability, cost, and security.

Tracy Jenkins will present PostgreSQL Architecture Considerations for Application Developers. Read what Tracy has to say about Postgres and why to attend their session:

Why should attendees come to your talk at Postgres Conference 2024? What would you like for them to take away from your session?

It's a session to present and discuss beginning your journey into PostgreSQL and discussing some of the database-specific terms.

What is your favorite aspect of Postgres Conference?
The community getting together to network and help others working with the engine.

What advice would you have for a Computer Science graduate or entry-level developer who is interested in learning and engaging with Postgres and other open source technologies?
If you have any questions, ask.

How do you see the use of open source technologies evolving over the next five years?
I see its use increasing more and more because for PostgreSQL to be an open source engine, it's very powerful and the world is noticing.

Check out the full schedule for PostgresConf US 2024. Learn more about our conference here and buy your tickets soon!