By popular demand! Magus Hagander is working on a little script so that we can fill in names for everyone. You can also go to the flickr photo and indicate who you are now.
PostgreSQL Conference Group Photo
Women Who Code – where are they?
[ I was working on a blog post about the Women In Open Source roundtable I ran, and then Brenda Wallace tweeted: “it seems reasonably easy 2 get women involved in opensource documentation, ui design, and even management. Why is it hard 2 get women coding?” Here’s my longer response, mostly with ideas I got from the roundtable. ]
I ran a panel discussion about Women in Open Source at the PostgreSQL Conference East (last weekend). I talked about all the conference events that I’d seen in the last 1-2 years specific to women, and a pair of researchers talked about communication patterns among women on the KDE women’s list. Then we had a 2 hour discussion with the 10 people in attendance.
Three issues that stuck with me from the discussion were:
twittering on 2008-04-01
- Back in pdx. #
- @samkeen wow. USB pregnancy test kit? http://snurl.com/235rl #
- @radiogretchen and @karolcooks i have a present for you two from obama! #
- @samkeen but only $29.99! #
- @radiogretchen i made a little flip book of photos. we must arrange a dropoff! #
- i met the coolest science teacher on the plane back to pdx yesterday. http://www.mrmikescience.com anyone know of a K-8 science opening? #
- @andeezy he’s moving to Oregon from Florida-wants to ride his bike more. i don’t think he’ll have a problem, but doesn’t hurt to ask around #
- postgresql community needs to be more disruptive! woo, thanks, theo. http://snurl.com/2366t #
- synapses firing on overdrive. i <3 postgresql conferences. #
- @sharong thank you!! #
- @thesethings tons of PC laptops. i think the ubuntu laptops won wrt proper interfacing to the projectors 🙂 #
- my response to Theo’s "disruptive postgresql community" comment – http://snurl.com/236ul #
- @br3nda i think we need more mentors and community that specifically recruits women. #
- @jchris using linux as your host? #
- @br3nda and we need to provide incentives that work for the mentors — should be men and women mentoring because all the women i know are… #
- @br3nda …WAY over-subscribed. #
PostgreSQL Conference – Keynote commentary
Theo Schlossnagle wrote a great blog post about Joshua Drake’s keynote. I wanted to respond to some of his comments here.
I totally agree with Theo that we need to be disruptive! One criticism I have had in the past of the PostgreSQL community is that it has been too centralized, and not willing to experiment with social networking, wikis and other non-hierarchical tools that will get more *end* *users* actively contributing.
I think all of that is changing with the creation of the PostgreSQL-EU and USPgA groups, and the fast uptake in PostgreSQL User Groups in the last few months.
Also, I also respectfully disagree with some comments that were made in other sessions about “us not wanting” the type of users that choose MySQL. *I* want those users to come to my user group meetings. There’s tons we can learn from each other.
We will make PostgreSQL better if we hear and respond directly to criticism from users of the most popular open source database. I’m not saying that Tom Lane and Bruce Momjian need to do that. PUGs should be doing this, filtering out the good/important stuff and communicating information back to -hackers and -core. That’s a great service the user groups can provide to postgresql.org.
Finally, I am so excited about a Baltimore/Washington PUG!! I had several people approach me about a group. I think even the MySQL guy will be interested. 🙂
twittering on 2008-03-31
- back at hotel after a long, long day. getting up tomorrow to go to the air & space museum w/ bruce, magnus and nikolai #
- thank yous for postgresql conference east: http://snurl.com/231rt #
- Air & space museum! #
- @ Dulles. plane is delayed. #
- Caught a little of Women Who Tech talk before getting on the plane. #womenwhotech #
- ne1 know the trick to get the low bandwidth gmail interface? Pls DM. #
- Thx everyone! Resorted to lynx. #
- i should say using lynx over a compressed SSH connection. way flakey AP here. #
PostgreSQL Conference is over! A few thank-yous…
Tomorrow I’ll post my thoughts on the second day of the conference, but for now I’d like to thank a few people who helped tremendously:
twittering on 2008-03-30
- tired, but the conference is awesome. #
- headed to postgresql conferernce! #
- getting ready for postgresql conference roundtable.. #
- getting ready for postgresql conference roundtable.. #
- @gorthx wish that you were here! #
- back from a great lunch discussion. more about how we can get in-place upgrades implemented #
- for postgresql #
- listening to a defense of denormalization from Gil Moskowitz #
- xtuple uses stored procedures in postgresql to return useful error messages, and then Qt to translate messages on the fly #
- (translate into different languages) – within 2 days of open sourcing the client, they had europeans asking about translations #
- people haven’t been as much interested in the code – more interested in *using* the app and putting in work to translate #
- applying constraints to the database is helping them to find longstanding bugs in their application. #
- @danblaker congrats!!! pics? 🙂 #
PostgreSQL Conference Day 1
I just got home from the EnterpriseDB party at Jasper’s. What a fantastic day at the conference!
I attended most of Brent Friedman’s Java and PostgreSQL talk. I do a little Java hacking for a legacy app, so the sysadmin-ish details about installation and upgrading were useful as I look forward to upgrading.
I really, really enjoyed Andrew Sullivan’s talk on Rapid Development as Denial of Service Attack. Not only is Andrew witty and sharp, he just nailed the people problems that are inherent in modern software design. I really liked his presentation style as well – tons of useful analogies. Some key bits:
twittering on 2008-03-28
twittering on 2008-03-27
- headed home to pack! #
- AmySedarisBrownies/p176: 4egg/beat fluffy,1c sugar, 1c flour,1t bkng pwdr,.5t salt,(1pkg choc chip,.66c butter)melt tog,2t vanilla. 350F/25m #
- optional: pecans. #
- @muckp delicious! #
- @br3nda hope you feel better soon. #
- at JFK. free jetblue wifi! #
- In D. C. #
- picked up the paper edition of the Onion from UMD campus. laughed for a good 10 minutes while waiting for a cab. #