Say hello to Path To Citus Con, a podcast for developers who love Postgres

Written by Carol Smith
July 14, 2023

Introducing Path To Citus Con, a podcast for developers who love Postgres. Why? Because sometimes, something you build gets bigger than you thought it would. The monthly podcast Path To Citus Con as originally meant to be a “pre-event” to build excitement and give a hands-on experience for people who would be attending Citus Con: An Event for Postgres. The audience would get a chance to talk to speakers for the conference and hear a deep dive conversation.

It’s now its own monthly podcast with guests from around the world. Guests have been deep in the world of databases and the Citus database extension to Postgres, and also people in the Postgres community and technology more generally. It’s the human side of open source, PostgreSQL, and the many PG extensions (including Citus.)

In this blog post, you’ll learn about what Path To Citus Con is, how you can participate, listen, and read each episode, and about episodes like “Working in public on open source,” “Why giving talks at Postgres conferences matters,” and more (details below.)

What is Path To Citus Con?

The podcast is recorded live on the Microsoft Open Source Discord, so people in the audience can interact and ask questions of the guests and the hosts and they can learn from each other, too! The recorded episodes are then made available as podcasts on all your favorite podcast platforms, so people can listen at their leisure, while they walk the dog or clean the house.

The hosts are Claire Giordano and Pino de Candia. Claire Giordano is head of the Postgres and Citus open source community initiatives at Microsoft. And Pino de Candia has been a software dev manager at Microsoft since 2020 and currently works on the Citus open source project. Pino previously worked on the managed service side of things for Azure Cosmos DB for PostgreSQL, which includes Citus on Azure support for distributed PostgreSQL.

Previous episodes, all made for developers who love Postgres

  1. Working in public on open source with Marco Slot and Simon Willison (Ep01)
  2. How to get Postgres ready for the next 100 million users with Abdullah Ustuner, Burak Yucesoy, Melanie Plageman, and Samay Sharma (Ep02)
  3. Why giving talks at Postgres conferences matters with Álvaro Herrera and Boriss Mejías (Ep03)
  4. How I got started as a dev and in Postgres with Melanie Plageman and Thomas Munro (Ep04)
  5. My favorite ways to learn more about PostgreSQL with Grant Fritchey and Ryan Booz (Ep05)

Future episodes of the show are looking good, too.

Episodes are typically on the first Wednesday of the month at 10am Pacific. The next show is on August 9 at 10am PDT (turns out in August it will be on the 2nd Wednesday...) and will feature guests Chelsea Dole and Floor Drees in You’re probably already using Postgres: What you need to know. If you want to join the live show on Discord for the August episode with Floor and Chelsea, just go ahead and mark your calendar for the August episode now.

Path To Citus Con is both a live show and a podcast

You’ll likely enjoy attending some of the podcast recording live on Discord. The live show is going to give you the experience of getting to chat and interact with the guests, the hosts, and the audience. It’s a rich chat that’s interactive and can give a lot of that great social experience a lot of folks love about being in an open source community.

Or if you prefer, listening to the podcast later is an option, too. It will give you the opportunity to listen to the conversation in depth and discover new connections.

screenshot of Path to Citus Con episodes list
Figure 1: All episodes of Path To Citus Con are available with show notes, links that were mentioned during the episode, and transcripts of the episode for you to read. You can listen to the full episode on its episode page and read along with the transcript or click on any of the associated links mentioned during the show. Episodes of Path To Citus Con are rich with more to learn and explore as part of the conversation between the hosts and the guests.

Yes, there are transcripts

All the podcast episodes of Path To Citus Con also have full show transcripts. You can read the entire conversation the guests and hosts had during each episode. Transcripts can be saved for later reading, and can also give you the full experience of the show, even if you’re not listening to the audio.

You can find transcripts for each show on its episode page. Transcripts are on the “Transcript” tab of each episode page, like on the page for Working in public on open source.

Path To Citus Con is on all major podcast platforms

Listen Anywhere. Available on many podcast platforms
Figure 2: Path To Citus Con is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Overcast, Pocket Casts, and Amazon Music as well as many other podcast platforms.

You can find Path To Citus Con, the podcast for developers who love Postgres, now on:

You can also a take a look at the:

Happy listening!

Carol Smith

Written by Carol Smith

Open Source Program Manager at Microsoft. Open Source Community Manager for Citus. Previously @github and @google. Conference speaker at FOSDEM, LISA, OS Bridge, and LibrePlanet. Avid reader, armchair movie critic, and part-time cook.

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