Back in July I submitted talks to the annual PostgreSQL Conference Japan 2025 (PostgreSQL カンファレンス 2025). This year is the 20th year of the conference, I was told. That is even longer running than our “own” PostgreSQL Conference Europe. To my surprise, one of my submitted talks was accepted. Which made me plan a trip to Japan and South Korea, to combine the conference with meeting customers, and with the sales teams in both countries, and talk about WarehousePG.
Venue
The conference took place in a venue called AP Nihonbashi (Tokyo) (AP日本橋（東京都）), only a few minutes walking from Tokyo Station in Chiyoda. One large room for keynotes, which can be separated into three smaller rooms. Plus another room for a fourth track. And a separate room for sponsor stands.
Keynotes
Two keynotes were presented. Both keynotes were simultaneously translated into Japanese by a translator.
The Rise of PostgreSQL as the Everything Database
This keynote by Snowflake was presented by Claire Peracchio, Brett Goulder and Sho Tanaka. It demonstrates how pg_lake can integrate reading and writing from/to Iceberg tables into PostgreSQL.
The Community and Its Impact
The AWS keynote was presented by Joe Conway, who talked how the PostgreSQL community evolved over time, and how everyone can contribute to the project. Not (only) by writing code.
Slides for my own talk
I uploaded the slides for my talk “What I Learned Interviewing the PostgreSQL Community” on my blog. In this version of the talk I spent a special focus on the community in Japan.
Reception
In the evening there was a reception with food and beverages. Very delicious!
There was also a raffle, but I have to admit that I did not understand how it worked. Everyone could get small items, from t-shirts to chips to noodles and other items.
The sponsors gave a short speech.
Differences to other conferences
For someone more familiar with PostgreSQL conferences in Europe and the US, this conference was a bit different. Not in a bad way, just different.
No names on the badges. Every participant gets a badge, but the badge only differentiates between staff, speakers, press and participants. No names. Although everyone brought business cards anyway.
First half is keynotes. The time slots before lunch were allocated for the opening and the platinum keynotes. Then everyone gets lunch, and the afternoon is regular talks.
Lunch for attendees is not provides. For speakers there was an extra room, and a lunch box. This spreads the attendees out across several places in the neighborhood, to get lunch.
Handouts. The conference proviees a handout, on paper, to all attendees. This includes slides, if provided by the speaker.
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