Category Archives: community

postgres, postgresql, USPA 2 Comments

United States PostgreSQL Association launched!

I’m excited to announce today that some members of the PostgreSQL community and I are launching the United States PostgreSQL Association.

Here’s the text from the press release:

The United States PostgreSQL Association is launched! Our draft mission can be found at http://www.postgresql.us. We will support PostgreSQL in the US through user group development, conferences,
education initiatives and fun.

We will be a sister organization to PostgreSQL EU, the Japanese PostgreSQL User Group, and other international PostgreSQL groups.

The founding members are Joshua Drake, Selena Deckelmann (me) and Michael Brewer.

Nomination and election of four additional board members will occur at the upcoming PostgreSQL Conference West, October 2008. General membership is open to anyone who wants to support the use of PostgreSQL in the US. The organization is being registered as a non-profit headquartered in Portland, OR, and we are applying for 501(c)3 status.

We are still working out details, but please watch http://www.postgresql.us for updates!

Questions, Comments? We’d love to hear from you. Please send us a message at board postgresql.us.

Look forward to more information over the next few days and weeks about our plans. In the meantime, you can have a look at our mission statement and goals.

pdxpug, postgres, postgresql, user groups 6 Comments

extreme database makeover: RT meeting recap

[Update: David Wheeler provided the SQL that came out of this meeting.]

Extreme Database Makeover: The crowd

Last night, PDXPUG and Code-n-Splode got together to refactor the database for RT. David Wheeler, Jeff Davis and Mark Wong led the discussion.

Through the course of the meeting, the group chose to pick out a few key features that would be better served if the database schema was more normalized, and offered a few new constraints we thought would help manage the data. Toward the end of the meeting, Igal suggested having a Perl workshop to refactor the code related to one or more of the database changes. The idea here was to be helpful, rather than just poking holes in the schema.

David started the discussion off with an introduction to RT. RT was created about 10 years ago by Jesse Vincent of Best Practical, and the database schema has been augmented over the years to accommodate new functionality. They support both MySQL and PostgreSQL as backends, and tend to dislike using database-specific technology.

Continue reading →

conference, postgres, postgresql, user groups 4 Comments

LAPUG Launch!

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Saturday night, February 9, at 8pm, Richard Broersma and a crew of 15 launched LAPUG. Noel Proffitt, from the City of Garden Grove, gave a great talk on time-oriented (or temporal) database design.

He presented an example of a set of columns, rules and triggers for tracking both valid and transaction time. Noel also was kind enough to give a plug to the temporal data type that Jeff Davis and I presented last PGDay before OSCON. There was some suggestion that Jeff should submit the code for version 8.4.

We also showed off the new PUGs website, and talked a little about what had brought people to the BoF.

A few students from Cal Poly were there, along with many experienced administrators from around LA. Richard mentioned that his company was willing to host the group’s first meeting, and Noel offered to bring a projector. The group also asked about potential topics, so I am going to start a talks repository on the PUGs site. Ultimately, I’d love to have the authoritative and searchable repository of PostgreSQL talks for all PUGs to use as starting points and references.

Thanks go to Robert Broersma for taking the initiative and announcing the meeting, and Joshua Drake for scheduling the BoF. Also, it was a pleasure to spend the weekend with Joshua, Robert, David Fetter and Josh Berkus in the SCaLE PostgreSQL booth.

I’m looking forward to great meetings from LAPUG in the future!

conference, open source, scale, volunteering, women, womenintech

Stormy Peters: Money, developers and creativity

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Sunday’s keynote at SCaLE was given by Stormy Peters. She talked about open source, business contributions and the social and financial economies driving development.

Three of her research questions were:

  • What is the initial motivation that encourages people to contribute?
  • How do companies pay for open source contributions? (and what’s the effect?)
  • How do companies change projects when they join?

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Her conclusion was that the developer community needs to teach businesses how to do things right for the community. We can’t wait for businesses to figure it out on their own. The call to action was a good one, but it seemed to leave some audience members scratching their heads. One audience member asked, “How do we do that?”

A few interesting figures she mentioned:

  • 1/3 of all developers believe that software should be free
  • Average number of open source projects a developer works on: 5
  • 40% of open source developers are paid to contribute
  • 10-20% are paid but their bosses don’t know it – that probably was a joke 😉

One quote that stuck with me was: “Typically people have been divided between left and right brain [professions].” I don’t agree. I think you only have to look briefly at the history of science to see that creativity (“right brain”) and reason (“left brain”) have often gone together.

The developer community just like many others – regular people who want to be useful, and inspired by their work. Creativity may not be asked for in a person’s work. But people invent, dream and create regardless of whether their profession requires it.

conference, open source, postgres, postgresql 2 Comments

At SCALE Feb 8-10

Just a quick note that I’ll be at SCALE February 8-10. I’ll be attending the Women in Open Source track (with maybe a quick side-trip to DOHCS: Mobile decision support in Tanzania), and then helping with the both Saturday and Sunday. You can direct message me on Twitter (selenamarie) if you’re interested in meeting up!

I’m also looking forward to the PostgreSQL BoF on Saturday night (8pm, Laguardia room), and maybe having some sunny weather!

conference, gender, open source, postgres, postgresql, women, womenintech 1 Comment

Women in Open Source: a focus group in March

Thanks to one of Audrey’s RSS feeds, I read Women in Computer Science – An Endangered Species of a New Kind? this afternoon. About the same time, I received email from a professor at UMD who is helping organize PostgreSQL Conference East. She would like to hold a Women in Open Source Focus Group session during the conference, and we’re looking for participants.

Continue reading →

volunteering , , , ,

Calagator, Ignite Portland, new PUGS site, geek2geek, SCALE — whew!

I’ve been filling my time with some community and open source work.

First, I’m working with Audrey and some other fabulous community members on Calagator, open-source calendar aggregation with teeth! Our next codesprint is coming up on February 2. Everyone is welcome!

Ignite Portland is coming up on February 5, aka Super Tuesday. We’re up to 400 RSVPs. I’m hoping for a rowdy, fun crowd.

The new PUGS site is coming along. I just got some patches to plug a wiki in there, and I got a pre-release of the PostgreSQL theme used by the Italian PostgreSQL site. Looking forward to digging in this evening.

Michael Schwern’s geek2geek has been a taking off. I wrote a guest post about the Pickup Artist. We’re riffing on the idea of social engineering, and the Pickup Artist focuses on manipulation and physical cues.

Finally, I’m leaving for SCALE on February 8th. Lots too do before then!

conference, postgres, postgresql 2 Comments

PostgreSQL User Group Liaison – that’s me!

Last week, I accepted the role of User Group Liaison for PostgreSQL in North America. Thanks, Joshua Drake, for nominating me. And thanks to everyone who commented on the thread. I was smiling for a couple days from the nice things that were said.

My first task is to upgrade the now elderly PUGS server – the site for our User Group blogs. Look for an updated site on Monday!

I will be attending SCALE on February 8-10. I’ll definitely be seeing talks from the Women in Open Source track, hanging out at the PostgreSQL Booth, and attending the LA PostgreSQL Users Group BoF session at 8pm, Saturday February 9 in the Laguardia room. See you there!

Update: I made the PostgreSQL Weekly News!

conference, pdxpug, pgconference, portland, postgres, postgresql

winter break is over!

Sadly, my winter vacation is over. I needed a couple weeks to recharge after a crazy year of wrapping up old stuff (finally done with the ERP project) and starting lots new things (Legion of Tech, PostgreSQL Conferences, my first cyclocross race!).

If you’re interested in more about me, you can check out my profile at Portland On Fire, a new project from Raven Zachary about Portland residents. Raven is planning to profile a new person every day this year. I’m January 6.

Also, don’t forget about PostgreSQL Conference East. Registration will open this week! The call for papers will be open until February 3, 2008. I’ve got my work cut out for me arranging all the details from here, but I’m looking forward to working with some great community members out in College Park, MD.

I’m giving a talk on January 17th, titled “10 new things you can use in PostgreSQL version 8.3”. Last week, I felt like PDXPUG was running itself — we’ve got the next six months of talks lined up already. I’ll be publishing our calendar over on the PDXPUG blog tomorrow.