image credit to bugbunnybambam

A few weeks ago, I decided to resign from the United States PostgreSQL Association board. Shortly after, I left for a long vacation where I thought about what I wanted to do next – both professionally and in a volunteer capacity.

Looking back, I started volunteering for PostgreSQL two years ago. I’ve led PDXPUG, staffed many conference booths, given nearly a dozen talks and run conferences. Of the work I’ve done, I’ve been most surprised by the creation of the PUGS website and all the user groups that followed.

This may sound silly – but I was so incredibly proud to see user groups in Oklahoma, Toronto, Los Angeles and the D.C.-area (BWPUG) hold meetings, share their experiences and publish fantastic presentation slideshows. All while I was out of the country!

That’s a true sign of success to me: groups of people leading themselves and sharing their knowledge with each other. It’s open community, with minimal bureaucracy, and (I hope) maximum fun.

With that in mind, I’ve decided to make this next year’s volunteer work focused on a simple idea:

Enable people to connect and learn directly from each other.

So what you can expect from me over the next year is more of the same, but now with that end goal in mind: more PostgreSQL user groups (for as long as the postgresql.org folks would like me to stay), more ways to connect people directly to each other, more authentic community building through un-conferences, and more contributions – through code, testing and presenting of that work.

To give you an idea — here’s what I’m up to over the next couple of months:

• Linux Plumber’s Conference, September 17-19 – with Gabrielle Roth, we’ll be presenting information about databases (PostgreSQL specifically) and filesystem performance using data gathered from the recently installed PostgreSQL performance lab.
• PostgreSQL Conference West, October 10-12 – I’m not organizing this year, but I’m organizing a session on hacking PostgreSQL, led by some PostgreSQL hackers!
• WhereCampPDX, October 17-19 – I’m helping organize this un-conference for geography-specific tech – practicioners, professionals, enthusiasts, artists! We’ve got some great ideas and hope to publish details in the next week about the awesome folks involved, the venue and the parties!

Hope to see you at these events!

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I haven’t talked about my work much in this blog, and probably will continue not to do that much here – but I also wanted to share that I’ve taken a position with End Point Corporation, a fantastic company that works on open source software, and provides support for PostgreSQL. I’ll be focusing on PostgreSQL, and doing a little Perl development here and there.