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Was the first time that I actually had the chance to attend CHAR(11). For various reasons (speak: my wife had tickets for a musical) I could not attend last year.

After arriving in Cambridge and a decent dinner on Sunday, I went early to the venue on Monday (*wow*). Registration: check, breakfast: check, EMC booth: check, tea: check - maybe not in this particular order. Let's start the day.

Most of the talks were very interesting and it's good to see, how others attempt to solve the same problems we have in Greenplum. Because of many questions, Simon organized a podium discussion with Yeb Havinga, Willem Dijkstra (both MGRID), Koichi Suzuki (Postgres-XC) and Rob Klopp (Greenplum) just before lunch. It's also interesting that people would like to see some of the technology in PostgreSQL - we have to talk with our product management, if we can make this happen.

Monday ended in a very good dinner in a near college, it looked a bit like the big hall in Harry Potter - just the candles were missing ;-) Tuesday ended in a barbeque outside the venue. Both gave the chance for the usual conversations which I enjoyed a lot.

Hopefully I can attend again next year.

CHAR(11), the conference about Clustering, High Availability and Replication takes place in Cambridge, UK. As usual, it is also one of these conferences where you can meet a fair share of the PostgreSQL folks.

Had to rent a car, because I have another appointment right after the conference. Boy, I tell you: driving on the left side of the street is ok. At least that's what I usually do on German motorways. But having the wheel of the right side of the car is just insane. Anyway, I made my way to Cambridge - without any accidents.

Met Dave, Harald, Jan and Magnus at the venue and a beer later we went out for dinner. Dave and Magnus made a reservation in the Browns restaurant only some minutes away. Some more people joined us over the evening. The food was nice, and Dave actually tried to order better drinks than I did. Well, he tried ;-)

Looks like we will see another interesting database conference.