Postgres Conference organizers come to us through a variety of channels, but they all have their own unique story and pathways. Unlike many of our organizers, Lindsay Hooper’s background is non-technical and focused on the logistics, partnerships, and outcomes of Postgres Conference. Read on to learn more about her and her non-profit organization of choice

 

What is your background?

I majored in art and film at Bucknell University, and I started my career working in art galleries in Manhattan. I quickly moved to events and marketing, and within a few years I started doing events and marketing for tech companies and startups.

 

What do you do in your full-time job?

I have my own events company called LRH Events, and most of my clients are either in the non-profit or tech worlds. Events are a great tool for gaining brand awareness and for creating community, but getting an event off the ground takes some serious marketing chops, and so I do marketing as well.

 

What’s your favorite part of Postgres Conference?

There’s so much to love about Postgres Conference. When it comes to the conference itself, I love the logistics and planning that goes into what the event actually looks like. I love everything from brainstorming what the conference should look and feel like, to coordinating with speakers, streamlining talks, and coming up with schedules.

 

Beyond the actual events, my favorite part is the People, Postgres, Data community that surrounds the organization. I’ve never experienced such a truly people-first group, and I think that that shows in the fact that this isn’t a twice a year conference - it’s a constant connection that’s focused on people, not just Postgres or open source technology.

 

How do you spend your free time?

I am based in NYC, which affords me the opportunity to spend a lot of my free time exploring the city’s restaurants and museums. I highly recommend an afternoon at The Met, followed by dinner down in the East Village at either Raclette or Dirt Candy. 

 

Beyond that, I’ve been involved with a non-profit called Mouse for the last five years, so I also spend a few evenings each week working on fundraising and awareness initiatives. Mouse’s mission is to provide vulnerable youth with the computer science skills needed to enter and succeed in higher education and the high tech workforce. We are committed to fostering greater diversity and humanity in STEM and empowering youth - and all those that educate them - to access and amplify technology as a force for good.

 

How did you begin working with Mouse and what’s your role there?

I started working with Mouse five years ago when they launched the Diversity in Tech Awards, which is their annual awards event that honors folks in the tech ecosystem who foster greater diversity and humanity in STEM and empower youth. They needed event support, and I was able to step in to help.

Since then, I joined Mouse’s associate board, became the VP, and am currently the Associate Board President. 

 

What are the biggest challenges facing STEM education right now?

The greatest challenges facing education as a whole have shifted in the last few months due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In speaking with Mouse students, I’ve learned that a lot of what they’re up against is the variety of platforms that they’re receiving school work on and the lack of collaboration. On the flip side, most teachers are experiencing a learning curve themselves when it comes to remote teaching.

 

During the COVID-19 crisis, Mouse has played a frontline role in meeting the emergency educational needs. Responding to a call from the NYC Department of Education after schools closed, Mouse has:

• Trained more than 4,000 teachers in online teaching methods so they can reach their students.
• Helped more than 100,000 NYC students get access to online learning
• Digitized youth programs like the Emoti-Con Virtual Showcase and Mouse Design League for students to continue their computing projects
• Made our STEM and computer science learning platform, Mouse Create, free for all users during the crisis

 

How can I get involved in Mouse?

If you’re interested in getting involved with Mouse, please feel free to reach out to me directly at Lindsay@postgresconf.org

Alternatively, Mouse is proud to be able to continue our work with students and educators during the COVID-19 crisis. Please give generously today at www.mouse.org/donate so we can continue to make great strides in finding new ways to help our community in these challenging times. 

What is the future of Postgres?

When you observe the ecosystem you can’t help but ask yourself where the community and software is going next. It is without question that the future of data will reside in something Postgres. It may be PostgreSQL, Cockroach, Yugabyte, Aurora, Azure, or workload specific Postgres such as Greenplum. Based on the sheer number of successful software adventures that are based on Postgres, there is no doubt in our minds that it is the future. 

This is why the inclusivity of People, Postgres, Data is vital to the continued success of the community. It is also why we invite all of Postgres to Come As You Are from March 23rd - 27th, 2020 at the Marriott Marquis in Manhattan! 

Isn’t Postgres, PostgreSQL?

Yes, and no. It is true that the term Postgres is sometimes used as a short version of PostgreSQL which allows easier pronunciation of the project and software name. It is also true that PostgreSQL contains a great deal of Postgres code but it is not technically Postgres. In fact, Postgres predates PostgreSQL by quite a few years and had an interim fork called Postgres95 before the PostgreSQL project was founded. That is why we use Postgres as an inclusive term for all software Postgres including many that some would consider forks. Fun fact:  Did you know that Informix is based on Illustra, a commercial Postgres fork from 1997?

Call for Papers

We are actively seeking people to deliver exceptional educational opportunities at Postgres Conference 2020. Postgres Conference is the perfect opportunity for students, hobbyists, and professionals to exhibit their knowledge in solving problems that are People, Postgres, or Data related. Submit your proposal today.

Instructor lead Digital Training

We have the following training opportunities in November and December:

• November 12th: PostgreSQL Performance and Maintenance
• November 14th: Finding and Fixing Slow Queries in PostgreSQL
• November 21st: PostgreSQL and Kubernetes
• December 10th: PostgreSQL Replication deployment and best practices
• December 12th: PGPool-II: Performance and best practices

Register here.

Webinars

We have the following webinars in November:

• Nov 13: Designing a Change Data Capture and Two Data Center Architecture for a Distributed SQL Database
• Nov 14: Yugabyte DB 2.0 Jepsen Test Results and Distributed Transactions Algorithms in Google Spanner, YugabyteDB and CockroachDB
• Nov 20: Zero Down-Time Oracle to Cloud-Native PostgreSQL Migrations

Find more information here.

Interesting projects

• http://postgrest.org/en/v6.0/ PostgREST is a standalone web server that turns your PostgreSQL database directly into a RESTful API. The structural constraints and permissions in the database determine the API endpoints and operations.
• https://www.haproxy.org/ HAProxy is a free, very fast and reliable solution offering high availability, load balancing, and proxying for TCP and HTTP-based applications. It is particularly suited for very high traffic web sites and powers quite a number of the world's most visited ones. Over the years it has become the de-facto standard opensource load balancer, is now shipped with most mainstream Linux distributions, and is often deployed by default in cloud platforms. Related content.

 

What’s your view?

Over 25 years ago I got into an argument with my boss. He was frustrated with all the tasks that needed to be completed and feeling overwhelmed. I said, “Hey, why not go to a park and take in the scenery? You could work there too.” Those were the days before the Internet was required to complete your day to day. He was incredulous, “I don’t pay 1200.00 a month for an office to go work at a park.” It is funny how a single conversation can stick with you throughout life. Now that person is in the Cannabis industry and takes a completely different view on life.

 

Today I write this newsletter from Henry’s Lake, Idaho just about 30 minutes from Yellowstone National Park and the newsletter image is a photo I took this morning as I was about to make coffee. During these trying times with the pandemic and economic uncertainty it is vital that all of our community take a moment to reflect on what their view is. How is it that you are living your life? Are you putting people first? Are you helping each other as you move through the day? Are you in need of help? These are all questions we should ask ourselves and others every day.

 

With People, Postgres, Data we make an earnest effort to put people first, professionally and personally. This is why when we have physical events, we have tracks that are not traditional PostgreSQL faire including our Career Fair and Professional Development and Leadership tracks.It is also why we try to keep our digital events free. The better people we are, the better professionals we can be and the better the professional we are, the more we are able to help people. It is also why we started a new community chat server with Discord. Though the server is there to help you with Postgres, it also exists to embrace community with channels such as #watercooler, #food, #games and #professional-advice. It is a holistic approach that allows people to be people, not bytes.

 

• Community Help and Chat

RSVP for upcoming free digital Events

• September 29, 10AM PST: Introduction to PostgreSQL ColumnStore Indexes

• September 30, 10AM PT: Live Demo: Creating A Single Point Of Access To Multiple Postgres Servers Using Starburst Presto

• October 6, 9am PT: Data processing more than billion rows per second

• October 7, 10am PT: Database Isolation Levels, Data Issues and Global Transaction Consistency

• October 14, 10AM PT: Live Demo: Unlock Data In Postgres Servers To Query It With Other Data Sources LIke Hive, Kafka, Other DBMSs, And More.

• October 20, 10AM PT: PGX: Build Postgres Extensions with Rust

• October 21, 10am PT: Using PostgreSQL, PostGIS, and pgRouting for street sweeping

• October 27, 10AM PT: Logical Replication lessons learned for the Data Warehouse

• October 28, 10AM PT: How to build local communities: a meetup perspective

• November 10, 10AM PT: CYPEX: Revolutionizing PostgreSQL Application Development

• November 12th, 10am PT: Blockchain as a Database

PostgresConf ran its first Silicon Valley conference on October 15th and 16th in conjunction with Silicon Valley Postgres. The two day conference was considered a “local” or development conference where our focus was introducing the PostgresConf experience to new attendees and partners with world class content. We believe we succeeded in that.

We brought new friends to the community with the addition of Yugabyte, Scalegrid, and AgensGraph. We also had old friends return with Pivotal, AWS, Microsoft, 2ndQuadrant, Timescale, Compose, and Nutanix.

This is the first conference we have organized where the attendance went up during the conference. All community conferences know the stress of waiting for people to register. We all register at the last possible moment but for attendance to increase as the conference is running was new for us. It added a new level of legitimacy to our purpose of:

Thank you to the attendees, supporters, and organizers for helping pull off yet another amazing event!

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

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

Contact: siliconvalley@postgresconf.org