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Chemnitz Linux Days 2013

"Chemnitz Linux Days" is one of the main Open Source and Linux conferences in Germany, for the 15th consecutive year now. And personally it's one of my favourite conferences.

Based on experience from the past two years I decided not to have a booth, but nevertheless submitted two talks. One was accepted: "Replication with PostgreSQL" (slides and script here). On the laptop keyboard&mouse: Andreas Kretschmer. On the microphone: me. It was the first talk in the morning, but the room was full with visitors. We got nice feedback about the talk as well and had to continue discussions outside of the room, when the next talk started.

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PGCon 2011 - Second day

Second - and last day - of PGCon 2011 is over. It was a very good conference, I got new ideas and learned a lot.

My conference day started with Jeff Davis' talk about "Range Types". This is imho a very useful new feature.

Had to skip the second slot because of some work and several phone conferences.

Afternoon started with Tom Lane's "Hacking the Query Planner - Part II". This was the continuation of yesterday's talk.

Greg Smith presented some insights of performance tuning under heavy load in his "The Write Stuff" talk. Very interesting. I finally have to buy his book.

The last was given by Dan Ports and Kevin Grittner about the new "Serializable Snapshot Isolation in Postgres". At first sight it sounds strange, but after a second thought it makes sense. It also includes some very advanced research stuff ;-)

PGCon ended with the "Closing sessions". Dan auctioned off some cool items, like several books, shirts, one of our plush elephants and posters. This collected 1705 Canadian Dollar and will be spent to a charity organization. Congratulations!

In the evening we went for a little party, sponsored by PGExperts. I also brought myself a cup of ice cream. This is a good day ;-)

You need two elephants for replication

FOSDEM 2008 in Brussels is a smashing success. As you remember we have a shared devroom together with the BSD projects. So far it seems we are one of the few devrooms who have a full schedule for both days - some other projects (who particulary got a bigger devroom) only had talks for one day or worse.

Anyway, we had many visitors in our devroom, for some talks the audience even had to use standing places. The talks are scheduled on a rotating basis so most of the time we have one PostgreSQL talk followed by a BSD talk. Some talks even overlap thematically a bit, BSD folks is using PostgreSQL in some tests or projects and vice versa. With the rotating scheme we have many visitors from both groups who not just attend one specific talk but instead stay for one or two extra talks.

We also have a booth which is attracting a lot visitors too. Many people come around, ask questions or tell us how they are using PostgreSQL. Oh, we also have some interesting stuff to give away or to sell. Gabriele brought flyers and pens from italy, Gevik sponsored a carton with anti-stress balls with PG logo on it, Magnus brought live-cds, supplied by Robert and Koen made suitable labels. David had nice new pins in his luggage and one should not forget the blue plush elefants - this time we also have a pair of bigger parent elephants. Always remember, you need two elephants for replication ;-)

Later today we try to auctioneer one of the big elephants, there was some interest in the last days. Actually we don't have any small elephants anymore, most of them (23 out of 25) are already bought by visitors yesterday. Instead of the last talk, which usually does not get many attention by visitors (most people are already heading home at this time), we want to hold our election for the EU group board of directors.

We keep you informed.

Daddy elephant, mommy elephant and a herd of childs

For FOSDEM, i ordered a new set of blue plush elephants. The parcel arrived today and this time i not only got the usual 18cm stuffed toys, i also got 2 which are 60cm height. Anyone interested? ;-)

I now have 2 x 60cm plush and a herd of around 40 x the 18 cm. Hope, that's enough for everyone.
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Elephants and turtles

Someone on IRC asked for pictures with elephants and turtles, so i took the chance:



The elephant is plush and you can get one from me, if you want. Just ask me on IRC or drop me a mail. The turtles just made a short jaunt from the aquarium for this photo shoot ;-)


mental note to myself: i need more light for better pictures.