Joshua D. Drake Blog Posts

PGConf US Local: Ohio schedule published

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PGConf US, in partnership with Ohio Linux Fest, is pleased to announce the schedule PGConf Local: Ohio is now available.

The inaugural PGConf US Local: Ohio Conference (PGConf Ohio) will be held September 29th - 30th at the Hyatt Regency Columbus Ohio (350 North High Street Columbus, Ohio, USA, 43215).

This two day, single track conference is a perfect opportunity for users, developers, business analysts, and enthusiasts from Ohio to amplify Postgres and participate in the Postgres community.


Conference Schedule:


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Mastering Postgres Administration: Bruce Momjian

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Conference speakers receive complimentary entry to the breakout sessions on September 30th as well as attendance to Ohio Linux Fest as well. The half-day training options on September 29th are separately priced sessions. As a nonprofit event series, funding is currently not available for speaker travel and lodging accommodations.


Sponsorship Opportunities
The PGConf US Local series is supported by its generous sponsors: Diamond Sponsor Amazon Web Services and Platinum Sponsors Compose, 2ndQuadrant, and OpenSCG. Please contact us if you are interested in joining our wonderful sponsors for Ohio or National!

About PGConf US:
PGConf US is a nonprofit conference series with a focus on growing the community through increased awareness and education of Postgres. PGConf US is known for its highly attended national conference held in Jersey City, New Jersey, and has expanded to a local series for 2017.

The PGConf Local series partners with regional Postgres and open source groups to bring dynamic and engaging Postgres related content and professional training experiences to local communities. Host cities of 2017 include Philadelphia, Ohio, Seattle, Austin, and Cape Town, South Africa, with more locations to follow.

Contact: organizers@pgconf.us
Joshua D. Drake     August 30, 2017

Postgres Tech Bulletin: August 7th, 2019

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:

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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:

 

  • TimescaleDB: Time series data management with Postgres

  • YugabyteDB: Globally Distributed database with PostgreSQL compatibility

  • Postgres-XL: Horizontally partitioned PostgreSQL

  • Agensgraph: Graph capabilities with Postgres

  • PG-Strom: GPU accelerated extension for Postgres 

 

Upcoming Education and Networking opportunities:

 

Joshua D. Drake     August 07, 2019

PGConf US and PhillyPUG Announce PgConf US Local: Philly



Join the PostgreSQL community in Philadelphia on July 13th and 14th 2017 for two days of fantastic PostgreSQL content. July 13th will contain trainings and July 14th will be breakout sessions. The call for papers and sponsors is also open! When submitting papers to PGConf US events, please review the presentation guidelines.

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PGConf US Local events are designed to bring comprehensive educational content and networking opportunities to the "local" PostgreSQL community where the event is being held. They are perfect opportunities to show support for PostgreSQL, find leads and build relationships with other professionals and companies using and support PostgreSQL.











d at Huntsman Hall at The Wharton School

Joshua D. Drake     May 08, 2017

People, Postgres, Data


People, Postgres, Data is not just an advocacy term. It is the mission of PostgresConf.Org. It is our rule of thumb, our mantra, and our purpose. When we determine which presentations to approve, which workshops to support, which individuals to receive scholarships, which events to organize, and any task big or small, it must follow: People, Postgres, Data. It is our belief that this mantra allows us to maintain our growth and continue to advocate for the Postgres community and ecosystem in a positive and productive way.

When you attend PostgresConf the first thing you will notice is the diversity of the supported ecosystem; whether you want to discuss the finer points of contribution with the major PostgreSQL.Org sponsors such as 2ndQuadrant or EnterpriseDB, or you want to embrace the Postgres ecosystem with the Greenplum Summit or TimeScaleDB.

The following is a small sampling of content that will be presented April 16 - 20 at the Westin Jersey City Newport:

Learn to Administer Postgres with this comprehensive training opportunity:

Understand the risks of securing your data during this Regulated Industry Summit presentation:

Struggle with time management? We have professional development training such as:

Educate yourself on how to contribute back to the PostgreSQL community:

We are a community driven and volunteer organized ecosystem conference. We want to help the community become stronger, increase education about Postgres, and offer career opportunities and knowledge about the entire ecosystem. Please join us in April!

Joshua D. Drake     February 27, 2018

Scale, already built

Scale, already built

 

We had a call with an ecosystem partner recently about a user that has over 20TB residing in our most beloved database. The response from the partner? “They are going to fall over.” It was an interesting response and also shows a lack of understanding of the absolute power and flexibility of Postgres implementations. This production installation (in the manufacturing industry) does not fall over and it sails over the waves like the 20’ swells don’t exist. The World’s Database is already scale built!

Shoutouts

Postgres Conference Beijing CFP

CFP Closes June 3rd! Submit your presentation now!

Postgres Conference Silicon Valley

Early bird tickets now available! Get your tickets today as we expect this year to sell out!

Postgresql.org, Postgresql v12 Beta 1 released: Test now!

Developer Week New york

  • A fantastic conference that believes in the same ideals as Postgres Conference and People, Postgres, Data. It takes place June 17th - 20th.

The “People” part of People, Postgres, Data

The International Postgres Conference Series known as PostgresConf has the mission of “People, Postgres, Data.” It is based on the belief that taking care of and providing opportunities for people is our core goal.

 

In the coming months Co-Chair Amanda Nystrom will be spearheading a professional development series focused on the People part of the “People, Postgres, Data” mission. It will include articles, workshops, and, if all works out, a track at the event in 2020 at Times Square, New York City. We are excited to be expanding our serving of People through this opportunity.  

Ecosystem Content

Requesting Feedback

We are looking for good dates to host PostgresConf Philly in July/August 2019 and we are actively reviewing new markets for other Postgres Conference events including Texas, Vancouver B.C., and Seattle. If you have feedback on opportunities in these areas including dates, venues, or a desire to join the amazing People, Postgres, Data team, let us know at organizers@postgresconf.org.

 

Join our community

Upcoming Events



People, Postgres, Data and The World’s Database

 

The World’s Database celebrates all of Postgres, including whichever version, fork, or hybrid used to build yourself, your business, or your hobby. We have Open and Closed Source technologies. We have amazing extensions (TimescaleDB), unique implementations (Yugabyte), and respected forks to solve specific problems such as Greenplum, Azure, and Aurora. We have meetups where professionals can gather to collaborate and network in all major U.S. markets. Most importantly we are an inclusive community celebrating everything surrounding the maturity, extensibility, and growth of the Postgres ecosystem.

 

Joshua D. Drake     May 30, 2019

3 presentations, 1 PGConf: NYC Mini!

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

 
 
The event is part of the PGConf Mini series and is free to attend. The PGConf Mini series works directly with user groups and external communities to organize events for the local community. The events are held as a larger meetup style event with networking opportunities and up to 4 presentations. The current agenda for the latest PGConf Mini: NYC is:
 
Agenda: 
 
• 6:30 - 7:00: Jonathan Katz, (TBD), Postgresql Contributor and PGConf Chair Emeritus

Efficiently and Safely Propagate Data Changes Without Triggers!

 

Prior to PostgreSQL 9.4, the primary way to distribute data-driven changes across multiple tables was to use triggers. While triggers guarantee that these changes will be propagated, they can have a significant impact application performance, both technically and with development time (see: "debugging"). PostgreSQL 9.4 introduced logical decoding, which provides a way to stream all changes in a database to a consumer. Using a logical decoder, you can read all changes that are made in a table into your programming language of choice to perform many tasks: cache invalidation, data propagation, submitting changes to remote services, and more. Many PostgreSQL drivers, such as psycopg2 and JDBC support the logical replication protocol, which lets you easily stream your database changes to be manipulated using your favorite programming language. This talk will demonstrate how you can setup logical decoding for your application, look at architecture strategies for working with a logical decoder, and look at a case-study that shows how using logical decoding led to a big performance boost over a similar trigger-based system.
 
• 7:00 - 7:30:  Kevin Jernigan, Senior Product Manager, Amazon
Technical Architecture of Postgres Aurora 
 
Amazon Aurora is a cloud-optimized relational database that combines the speed and availability of high-end commercial databases with the simplicity and cost-effectiveness of open source databases. The recently announced PostgreSQL-compatibility, together with the original MySQL compatibility, are perfect for new application development and for migrations from overpriced, restrictive commercial databases. In this session, we’ll do a deep dive into the new architectural model and distributed systems techniques behind Amazon Aurora, discuss best practices and configurations, look at migration options and share customer experience from the field. 
 
• 7:30 - 8:20: Joshua (JD) Drake POSTPONED due to flight cancellation)
The Power of Postgres Replication, Postgres Expert - Lead Consultant Command Prompt, Inc and Co-Chair PGConf!
 
With PostgreSQL v10 a new replication engine has come to town. Let's explore Postgres Logical Replication, how to use it, optimize it and let it best fit in with your organization. We will also discuss its interactions with external tools as well as Binary Replication and features such as Hot Standby. 
 
 
 
 
Joshua D. Drake     November 20, 2017

Postgres News: 09-04-19

Summer is officially over (although the calendar says otherwise), the kids are back in school, the last three-day camping weekend of the season has passed, and we are staring right at PostgresConf Silicon Valley starting September 18th! Registrations for this fantastic event have already exceeded 2018 numbers and our training day is showing great success. 

Conferences

Digital Events

  • YugabyteDB Distributed SQL Webinars
    • A series of free webinars discussing technical opportunities with Distributed SQL. YugabyteDB is an Open Source, Postgres compatible Distributed SQL database.

News

Learn

 

Partner Conferences

Register Today for API World 2019 and Save $200!

The API World team has offered us 25 free OPEN Passes and discounted PRO Passes to API World 2019 so our members can attend the event.

 

API World (October 8–10, San Jose Convention Center) is the world’s largest API & Microservices conference and expo with 3,500+ attendees, 60+ exhibitors, and 10+ tracks covering API Lifecycle Management, API Innovations, Microservices, Containers, Kubernetes, and more. 140+ speakers include leaders from Intuit, US Bank, IBM, Okta, Capital One, Box, Kong, GitHub, Comcast, Microsoft, Postman, Twillio, SendGrid, Oracle, Ford, UPS, Uber, Google, eBay and 100+ more. 


GitLab Commit, our premier community event, brings together the GitLab community to connect, learn, and inspire. We want to make sure the NY tech community is well-represented at Commit so we are offering a HUGE discount to members of local tech community groups. You can use code 'COMMITCOMMUNITY102' to save 50%. 

 

Joshua D. Drake     September 04, 2019

PostgresConf 2019: Back on the island and call for papers

We are pleased to announce that PostgresConf 2019 will be held at the Sheraton Times Square March 18th - 22nd, 2019. 
 
 
Following on the success of PostgresConf 2018, 2019 will include five days with added training and partner summits.
 

March 18th and 19th will have immersive training. Instructors are encouraged to submit half and full day material for consideration. The preferred topics are centered around Postgres but anything People, Postgres, or Data related will be considered.

Monday, March 18th through Friday, March 22nd will host several partner summits, including popular and upcoming topics within the Postgres community and the annually hosted Regulated Industry Summit. Break out sessions will be held from Wednesday - Friday.

In addition to the partner summits, PostgresConf 2019 will offer multiple program tracks with Postgres related topics including (but not limited to): 

  • Postgres Internals
  • Postgres Administration
  • Operations and Development
  • Data
  • Cloud
  • Database Security and Compliance
  • Use Cases
  • Regulated Industries
    • Telecommunications
    • Healthcare and life sciences
    • Railroad, airline and pipeline transportation
    • Oil and gas
    • Electric power and transmission
    • Financial services and trading 
Important Dates:
  • Call for Papers Open: 09/12/2018 
  • Call for Papers Close: 01/11/2019 
  • Confirmation/Acceptance: 01/18/2019
Can't wait until March? Join us at our West Coast event, PostgresConf Silicon Valley, October 15th and 16th, 2018 at the Hilton San Jose.
 
About PostgresConf:


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 with the mission of:

 
 
Joshua D. Drake     September 25, 2018

Presenter Professionalism at Postgres Conferences

Andreas Scherbaum recently tweeted, “Speakers: it is NOT OK to even consider drinking alcohol during a talk! No matter how complicated your talk topic is.” The tweet has caused an interesting debate on Twitter and Facebook. It also caused me to run a poll via @amplifypostgres on the matter.

At the time of this writing almost 70% of the votes on the poll either don’t care or don’t think it is unprofessional for a presenter to drink alcohol while presenting.

One of the counter arguments to presenters consuming alcohol during presentations is that when you are presenting you are representing the conference. The conference wants you to be professional and create an environment that represents that during your talk. Fair enough, but why is it unprofessional?

This sequence of events has me wondering: what is professionalism in reference to presenting at Postgres Conferences? It is certainly not appropriate to be intoxicated while presenting at a professional conference, but that isn’t the question. The question is: why is it inappropriate for an adult to make a legal choice to take a nip or sip beer (or wine) during a presentation? Why is that more unprofessional than not wearing a tie or button up shirt, or wearing shorts or a kilt?

Professionalism is subjective.
“In my opinion, my obligations to the audience are:
  • 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.”
I fail at “minus the swearing” but the rest are spot on and should be our focus.

If you do not want presenters to consume alcohol during their presentations, then add it to your Code of Conduct. If it’s not in your Code of Conduct, then let adults take responsibility for themselves and present the best content possible for our community, in whatever way necessary.

Rock on and @amplifypostgres!

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


Joshua D. Drake     October 27, 2017

PGConf US welcomes 2ndQuadrant as a Platinum sponsor

After National 2017, the PGConf US team decided to take a long hard road to bring the best in educational content and advocacy to the entire Postgres ecosystem. Today, we welcome 2ndQuadrant as a Platinum sponsor and thank them for helping us with our year over year projects.


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It is sponsors like 2ndQuadrant that are allowing us to achieve our goal of having not only our National event but Philly, Seattle, and Austin all within 2017. We also have other education and advocacy initiatives that continue to develop include webinars, community profiles, and e-training. Stay tuned for more information on those!

Other PGConf US news:


Joshua D. Drake     June 29, 2017