Tag Archives: postgresql

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At PgCon in Ottawa, Day 1

Oops, this got published early. I’ll be updating this shortly.. probably over lunch.

Magnus posted some photos already!

Summary of last night:

We had a great time last night at the pub for registration, and then over to the Yahoo! party. We had fun talking databases, beer, and the difficulty in trying to understand Australian accents. I learned from Tom (not Tom Lane) that Adelaide, Australia has a fantastic wine-growing region. Alvarro once again recommended that Jeff commit his time interval data type. I think Jeff was convinced to do this for 8.4. Now I have to update the documentation!

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PgCon in Ottawa – following people on twitter

I’m in Ottawa at PgCon and listening to Bruce Momjian give the keynote.

We have a few people who’ve joined Twitter in the last couple months and are posting their thoughts through the conference. Try following @crad, @fuzzychef, @franciscojunior and @selenamarie (me) for our up-to-the-minute updates!

I’ll be giving a lightning talk this afternoon around 5:30pm about user groups and PostgreSQL.

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Bar Camp Portland: what a weekend!

I’m inspired.

I’m still buzzing from BarCampPortland. I loved every minute of it, and managed to learn a ton from all the amazing people in Portland. I met a ton of new people, and started several more projects 🙂

Over the course of two days, I ran two sessions. The first was about PostgreSQL:

We had a fantastic discussion, totally filled the room up with people curious about what PostgreSQL can do. We had several requests for MySQL -> PostgreSQL “rosetta stone” documentation.

The second session was How to raise or eat chickens sustainably:

We had an incredible conversation – ranging from getting and raising chickens for the first time, to digging up your lawn and planting food, to gentrification, to obsessive local eating.

I also attended these others: DSLR, Bikes and Geeks Collide, Project Management, My Other Thing, Women in Tech, and a session at WordCamp.

I think it’s finally time to go to sleep. Check out a ton of pictures. Thanks so much everyone who attended, led sessions and volunteered this weekend!

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My Other Things

Audrey listed out her projects the other day, and I decided to follow suit:

  • PDXPUG – Portland PostgreSQL Users Group. I just spent the weekend with @markwkm and @gorthx at LinuxFest NW, a fantastic Linux conference. We met tons of people, made some new friends, and got a list of 15 people who want to be part of a new PostgreSQL User Group in Seattle! Also, there was a Tesla Coil. PDXPUG will host PGDay on July 20th, just before OSCON. It will be a day of talks, followed by a great party!
  • User Group Liaison, PostgreSQL Global Development Group – I’m running pugs.postgresql.org. Our community is adding about 2 new user groups a month throughout the world. I’ve given 6 talks in the last month, and will be giving two talks about people and user groups at OSCON.
  • PgUS – The United States PostgreSQL Association. I am Director, Treasurer and chief Guerrilla Marketing Campaigner (self-assigned title).
  • Legion of Tech – Board member, and part of the Finance committee.
  • BarCamp Portland – Fundraising coordinator, and trying to set up a long-term repository for conference notes, audio and video. We’ve got hosting of a super fast server from the Open Source Lab. Now I just need to finish configuring the website!
  • Gardening. I really like gardening. I had great compost this spring from compostable food, chicken manure, lawn debris and dirt/grass we’d dug up from our front yard. We removed the last of the grass from the front yard, and I’m hoping to get some tomatoes up there soon.
  • Chickens. I keep two chickens in my backyard and they are each laying 1 egg/day.
  • ptop. I help hack on ptop, a postgresql monitoring tool written in C.
  • PerlMongers. I regularly attend the Portland Perl Mongers and recently gave a talk on PL/lolcode – a lolcode implementation for the stored procedure engine inside of PostgreSQL.
  • Code-n-splode. I helped found code-n-splode, a coding group dedicated to getting more women involved in programming.

What about you?

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ptop – the talk

ptop slide1

Check out the slides from my ptop talk. I was very happy with the end result of the presentation. I had a few people talk to me about the project afterward, including the author of innotop, a perl-based monitoring tool for MySQL. I’m sure we can steal some ideas from that project!

I haven’t gotten much done with ptop since I’ve been back. I’ll have some time after LUG Radio Live!

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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. 🙂

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PostgreSQL Conference East Flickr group

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I created a Flickr group for the conference and added a few pictures today.

The weather in Maryland is just like Portland this week! Kind of drizzly and overcast. The sun peeked out for a few minutes at sunset, and I had a nice walk around the University of Maryland at College Park campus today.

I met several people in the UMIACS department, including my new hero, Mike, who created over 100 individual wireless network accounts for conference attendees. The rooms look great, and the foyer where we’ll be having breakfast is very pretty. UMD’s campus is just amazing and huge. If you’ve got an extra hour to spare, take a walk around!