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Pat Wright is running this month’s #PGSQLPhriday, and the topic is “What is the PostgreSQL Community to you?”

The answer for me is very versatile, and covers quite a lot. Took me a moment to gather the facets, and likely I’m still missing some parts.
 

SCALE 18x is taking place during the next week, in Pasadena, CA. I will present a 3 hours workshop about PostgreSQL data types on Friday morning.

In order to attend, you need a SCALE registration. No special knowledge is required for the workshop. If you want to follow the exercises, you need a PostgreSQL database installed on your computer.

See you there!

The PostgreSQL Project is present with a booth at FOSDEM ever since 2007. Since 2008 we organize a Devroom, since 2013 we have our own PGDay on the Friday before FOSDEM. This year marks the 8th FOSDEM PGDay.

This blog post presents useful information about the PGDay, the booth and Devroom at FOSDEM.

The PostgreSQL Project was assigned a devroom at FOSDEM again this year. We got a room with approx. 200 seats, and as usual every last seat was taken for many of the talks. This requires that we manage the room very effectively and carefully, both to avoid that people walk in and out at all times and disturb the speaker, but also in order to keep the exits free at all times.

For a speaker it is quite disturbing if the door in the back opens, someone walks in, down all the way to the front, tries to find a seat, walk around to the other side, maybe leaves again, or just stays somewhere and blocks the exit. The worst case is when there is a free seat somewhere in the middle of a row, and everybody has to get up to let the new attendee in.

The FOSDEM team requires that we keep the exits free, in case the room needs to be evacuated. If people are staying on the steps along the wall, it is not possible to clear the room effectively and quickly.

For more than 10 years, the PostgreSQL Project is present at FOSDEM. We also organize a separate PostgreSQL Day on Friday.

This blog post presents useful information about both the PGDay and the booth and devroom at FOSDEM.

FOSDEM 2017 is over, and hopefully everyone is back home. Time for a short review.

Once again, PostgreSQL ran a pre-conference to FOSDEM, called PGDay. One day just filled with awesome PostgreSQL talks, and meeting community members.

Many speakers uploaded or linked their talks to the PostgreSQL Wiki. If the slides for a talk are missing, please contact the speaker and ask them to upload or link the slides. (For the record, my slides are here)

The FOSDEM video team already uploaded the recordings, and the PostgreSQL Volunteers reviewed every single video. Find them here. Devrim also did short recordings of most of the talks, and posted them on Twitter.

The Hacker Public Radio did interviews with many projects, including PostgreSQL. Find the interview here.

The PostgreSQL Project had a Devroom on Sunday. The schedule is part of the regular PGDay/FOSDEM schedule. And of course we managed to fill the room to the last seat, standing room only. If only people would obey the "Room is full" sign on the door ;-)

We also had a booth (pic 2, pic 3) in the main building, where you can talk with community members about anything around PostgreSQL. Also we had some nice merchandise. Matching the bad weather, the umbrellas went very well. We promise to have more next year.

Last but not least, Slonik visited FOSDEM. Here is just a short selection of pictures.

Hope to see you all next year!

P.S.: The next PostgreSQL Europe Conference will be in Warsaw, in October. Details can be found here.

I had the opportunity to talk about the many datatypes in PostgreSQL, in the PostgreSQL Devroom at FOSDEM 2017. It's quite interesting how many people only use the basic data types and don't know the broad range of types which PostgreSQL is offering.

My slides are available here: *click*

Like the past 10 or so years, the PostgreSQL Project is present at FOSDEM 2017. We also organize a separate PostgreSQL Day on Friday.

This blog post presents vital information about both the PGDay and the booth and devroom at FOSDEM.

I had the honor to present at PgConf.Russia 2016. It's probably the biggest PostgreSQL conference in Europe (News report), even bigger than pgconf.eu. It shows that PostgreSQL, and Open Source in general, has a big and growing market share. Was the first time that I travelled to Russia, and as with almost every new country, it is incredible. Also it is nice to be not in charge for a conference, and to enjoy the time attending talks, discuss with others or get stuff done.

My talk is about "how we made Greenplum Open Source", you can find the slides on my website *click*. It's not very technical, instead I talk about all the difficulties we had, the progress we made and the experience we gained from the time Pivotal announced that Greenplum will be Open Source, until it finally happened.

Also I used the chance to attend a few other talks, and learn something new. Most remarkable was the talk from Greg Stark about all the sort improvements made in PostgreSQL back from version 7.x to the very latest 9.5. It shows that there is always room for improvements, and sometimes it's a huge gain.

The conference organizers provided a nice room for the speakers, and they even had a cappuccino maker there! Not just a machine, but someone who takes your order and makes you a cappuccino or another soft drink. That's very nice!

On Saturday, after the conference, we visited the "Memorial Museum of Cosmonautics". There is a huge monument outside, called "Conquerors of Space". The museum is in the building under the monument, and it shows artefacts from the beginning of space exploration (Sputnik 1) all the way to Mir and ISS.

FOSDEM PGDay is a one day conference that will be held ahead of FOSDEM in Brussels, Belgium, on Jan 29th, 2016. This will be a one-day focused PostgreSQL event, with a single track of talks. Registration is required to attend, the registration will open soon. Since we have a limited number of seats available for this event, we urge everybody to register as soon as possible once open.

PostgreSQL Europe will also have our regular devroom at FOSDEM on Sunday the 31st, which will be held at the main FOSDEM venue at ULB. This day will, of course, continue to be free of charge and open to all FOSDEM entrants. No registration is required to attend this day.

For full details about the conference, venue and hotel, see http://fosdem2016.pgconf.eu/.

The call for papers is now open for both these events. We are looking for talks to fill both these days with content for both insiders and new users. Please see http://fosdem2016.pgconf.eu/callforpapers/ for details and submission information.

The deadline for submissions is December 7th, 2015, but we may as usual pre-approve some talks, so get your submissions in soon!

We will provide a special rate with the Brussels Marriott Hotel. For details, see http://fosdem2016.pgconf.eu/venue/.

What happens, if you ask the Chinese PostgreSQL community for a Meetup-like event, one or two speakers? You end up getting a full day conference ;-)

On September 12, Saturday, a full day PostgreSQL conference will take place at the Pivotal office in Beijing. If you want to attend, please sign up here.

The full address is: 17/F, South Block, Tower C, Raycom Info Tech Park, NO.2, Kexueyuan South Road, Beijing 100190, China.

PGConf.de 2015 is the sequel of the highly successful German-speaking PostgreSQL Conferences 2011 and 2013. Due to space limitations in the old location, we are moving to Hamburg. The conference takes place on Friday, November 27th. We also add a day with trainings on the 26th.

http://2015.pgconf.de/

Registration for the conference will be possible well in advance. Tickets must be purchased online. For sponsors, we have put together a package that includes among other things, a number of discounted ticket. More in the Call for Sponsors in a separate announcement.

As Josh Berkus blogged before, Pivotal is hosting the inaugural South Bay PostgreSQL Meetup in the Palo Alto office.

We were able to secure two very good speaker:

• Mason Sharp, from TransLattice: Scale-out PostgreSQL with PostgreSQL-XL
• Peter van Hardenberg, from Heroku: Postgres 9.4, new opportunities for users, admins and hackers

Please sign up at the Meetup website, if you plan to attend.

Date: Monday, February 16th, 2015

Time: 6:30pm

Location: 3495 Deer Creek Road Palo Alto, CA 94304 United States