Joshua D. Drake Blog Posts

PostgresConf US 2018, Financial Review



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:
  1. Venue and F&B of 238,000.12
  2. 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

CFP for PostgresConf Silicon Valley closes August 15th

You will want to mark your calendars folks on August 15th the Call for papers for PostgresConf Silicon Valley will close. That is just two weeks away!

So let's point your Firefox, Google Chrome, or Safari app to this link right here and get your presentation submitted.

This is the inaugural Silicon Valley conference and from the current submitted papers it is shaping up to be a fantastic event. We can't wait to see everyone and continue our mission of:




Joshua D. Drake     July 31, 2018

Community Profile: Alex Tatiyants and Pev

We caught up with Alex Tatiyants after finding out about his Pev project. This is an awesome web based visual explain analyzer that is similar to the awesome explain.depesz . 

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.


Pev plan


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.
Joshua D. Drake     August 16, 2017

EnterpriseDB, Postgres and PostgresConf!

Tell us about your commitment and contribution to the Postgres Community

For over 10 years, EnterpriseDB (EDB) has been working with the community and enterprises to drive Postgres forward. EDB is one of the top PostgreSQL community contributors. Two of our team members are part of Postgres Core team, while 4 are committers, and 6 are named contributors. We invest heavily into Postgres performance, scalability, availability, migration, integration and support to make sure that enterprises can take advantage of Postgres' rapid innovation cycle and advanced capabilities.

 

What growth pattern do you expect for yourself as well as Postgres as a whole?

Postgres adoption is exploding and we can see that in our business results. Today, we support 92 of the Fortune 500 and 311 of the Forbes Global 2000. Our customers look to us for a reliable, high-performing, and cost-effective data management platform based on open source PostgreSQL.

 

Our customers are using EDB Postgres for mission critical applications. Their databases range all the way up to 50 TB with some handling over 50K transaction per second in environments that require 99.99%+ availability.

 

Our customers’ confidence in Postgres and EDB is no surprise. Postgres has been the #1 open source relational database in the DB-Engines.com rankings for two years in a row and EnterpriseDB has been chosen for the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Operational Database Management Systems for six years in a row.

 

 

How do you plan to assist Postgres in the future?

EDB continues to invest heavily in Postgres with key projects such as zHeap, Just-in-Time (JIT) compilation, and other efforts focused on performance and scalability.

 

What is the number one benefit you see within Postgres that everyone should be aware of?

EDB Postgres has become the general purpose database of choice for digital transformations, offering JSONB document support, GIS-support, EDB Postgres Oracle® compatibility features, key-value pair data, and increasing capabilities for analytical workloads. It has the fastest innovation cycle, the best deployment models, and the lowest cost of any commercial relational database.

 

What is the best thing about working with the Postgres community?

The best thing about working with the Postgres community is their fast innovation, resulting in extremely reliable code.

 

Tell us why you believe people should attend PostgresConf 2019 in March.

PostgreSQL is one of the oldest and most stable open source projects as a result of the commitment of its members and its independence as a stand-alone community. Over the years, Postgres has achieved parity with proprietary platforms in terms of performance and functionality. It has received a warm welcome from businesses looking to roll back database costs and ease vendor lock-in, and leading companies are adopting it with great success. This is just like it was with Linux 15 years ago. Enterprises understand that they have to adopt Postgres or they will be left behind.

 

Company Description
EnterpriseDB (EDB), the database platform company for digital business, delivers the premier open source-based data platform for new applications, cloud re-platforming, application modernization, and legacy migration. EDB Is the developer of the most complete Postgres-based database platform.

 

Joshua D. Drake     February 12, 2019

Breaking down the walls of exclusivity

When you are considering a conference about Postgres, one should pick the one that is focused on building the community. PostgresConf is all about building the community and we even captured it on video!
 
 
PostgresConf embraces a holistic view of what community is. We want everyone to feel welcome and encouraged to give back to PostgreSQL.org. However, that is not the only opportunity for you to give back to the Postgres community. We all have different talents and some of those don't extend to writing patches or Docbook XML. 

Giving back

When considering who is part of the community and who is contributing to the community, we want to introduce you to a couple of fantastic organizers of our conference: Debra Cerda and Viral Shah. Some in the community will know Debra. She has been in the community for years and is one of the primary organizers of Austin Postgres.
 
Debra Cerda

Debra is our Attendee and Speaker Liaison as well as our Volunteer Coordinator. She is also a key asset in the development and performance of our Career Fair.

 
Viral Shah

Viral is our on-site logistics lead and is part of the volunteer acquisition team. It is Viral that works with the hotel using a fine tooth comb to make sure everything is on target, on budget, and executed with extreme efficiency.

 
Without her amazing attention to detail and dedication to service we wouldn't be able to deliver the level of conference our community has come to expect from PostgresConf.
 

Building relationships

There a lot of reasons to go to a conference. You may be looking for education on a topic, a sales lead, or possibly just to experience a central location of top talent, products, and services. All of these reasons are awesome but we find that the most important reason is to build relationships. The following are two exceptional examples of community projects.
 
Our first example is ZomboDB. No, they are not a sponsor (yet!) but they have a fantastic Open Source extension to Postgres that integrates Elasticsearch into Postgres. 
 
Our second ecosystem community member is an entity that most have heard of at this point; TimescaleDB. It too is a fantastic showing of what is possible when you combine brilliance with the extensibility of Postgres.
 
What is notable about these two mentions is that they represent what we would call, "Professional Community." Recently ZomboDB wanted to bounce some ideas off of a Postgresql hacker regarding the Index Access Method API. We at PostgresConf were able to facilitate an introduction to Timescale and a couple of amazing minds ended up chewing the fat on their respective projects. It's relationships such as these that enable the community to grow and offer the best opportunities possible.
 
 

Part of the community

Join the Professional user and ecosystem community for Postgres today! You can start by submitting a presentation to the upcoming PostgresConf 2019 being held March 18th - 22nd, 2019 at the Sheraton Times Square.
 
 
 

 
Joshua D. Drake     November 26, 2018

PGConf Local: Seattle 2017 registration open and schedule published

The first ever PGConf US Local: Seattle event is happening in partnership with SEAPUG on August 11th and 12th at the Sheraton Downtown Seattle! On August 11th we have four training options available:
  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 

Tickets are now available!


On August 12th we have 14 break-out sessions between the Development and Operations tracks. A sample of our break-out sessions is available below but please check the full schedule for all of the fantastic content!
We would not be able to produce PGConf Local: Seattle 2017 without the generous support from our sponsors:
    Sponsorship opportunities for the conference are still available. If you use Postgres, support Postgres, or if you are looking to recruit a local Postgres expert, this is a great opportunity. Become a part of our dynamic and growing ecosystem! The prospectus is available at:
    Joshua D. Drake     July 11, 2017

    Community Days: BigApplePy and DockerNYC

    In 2016 we started working with horizontal communities. We wanted to make sure that PgConf US was an inclusive community that advocated not only for the best database in the world but also all the external Open Source technologies that make the best database in the world the best platform in the world. 

    This year we wanted to continue building a stronger community through relationships and our efforts are proving successful. We have joined forces with several horizontal communities to bring original and related content to PgConf US. The first is Big Apple Py. They are working with PgConf US to run a full track of Python content as well as a development workshop. 


    The workshop is particularly interesting as it will focus on a code sprint to develop a mature and user friendly Python based conference software. I wonder if they know we already use a Ruby on Rails solution...

    We also have a great workshop being presented by DockerNYC and Jesse White: Automating production ready databases in Docker
    DockerNYC
    PgConf US 2017 is less than two weeks away and we continue to work with communities to bring you even more new content! Stay tuned as we expect to announce more workshops in the next few days. If you haven't purchased your tickets, today would be a good day.
    Joshua D. Drake     March 15, 2017

    Let's meet some speakers for PostgresConf US 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:

    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.
     
     
     
     
    Joshua D. Drake     April 05, 2018     data speaker spotlight postgres PostgresConf community

    An Invisible Disease

    Invisible Disease Awareness

    “According to the Disabled World website, an estimated 10% of the U.S. population has what could be considered an ‘invisible’ disease, defined as a health condition that causes significant impairment and undermines the overall quality of life but does not outwardly manifest itself in ways that are apparent to others.” [1]



    While normally our focus is Postgres, we wanted to take a moment to bring attention to the People side of People, Postgres, Data. May is mental health and Ehlers-Danlos awareness month. Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (EDS) is a rare condition that affects the collagen throughout the entire body, resulting in dislocations, subluxations, lack of joint stability and support, tendinosis, and debilitating pain. There is no cure and the symptoms are life long.

     

    In 2020, PostgresWarrior (AKA Amanda Nystrom) was diagnosed with Hypermobile EDS and Fibromyalgia. She is an instrumental and invaluable member of the People, Postgres, Data community. She has driven us forward in ways that so many of us never see and yet require to succeed. Many of our community are affected by invisible diseases - let's take a moment to appreciate what they accomplish and fight for in Postgres/Open Source.

    Upcoming webinars | RSVP here

    • May 25, 1pm ET: Creating a Resilient PostgreSQL Cluster with Kubegres

    • June 15, 1pm ET: When it All Goes Wrong - Incident Response in Large Postgres Databases

    • June 23, 1pm ET: Making Postgres Fly on Kubernetes

    • June 29, 1pm ET: Implementing Cluster File Encryption in Postgres

    24x7x365 Postgres & Linux servicesCommand Prompt, Inc.The last of the original Postgres companies

    Sponsored

    Community Chat

    Our Discord Channel has 2000 community members waiting to participate in your Postgres success. Join us today with a community that has rule #1 of: Be Nice.

    Podcasts








    1. https://www.socialworktoday.com/archive/072417p32.shtml
    Joshua D. Drake     May 19, 2021     eds postgresql

    Cancelled: Postgres Conference 2020: March 23rd - 27th

    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