Citus Data Blog - Articles by Claire Giordano

Bits of wisdom from a year of Talking Postgres

Claire Giordano — 2025-07-22T16:21:00+00:00

A year ago we renamed the Talking Postgres podcast—and just published our 29th episode. Since it’s a monthly thing, that means 13 new conversations in the past year. So this feels like a good moment to pause, reflect, and share a few highlights.

If you’re already a listener, this post might help you find an episode you missed. If you’re new to the podcast, think of this as a sampler: a few favorite quotes, some backstory, and quick-hit summaries of each episode from the past year.

What is the Talking Postgres podcast? It's a long-form conversation—usually an hour, often more—with people in the Postgres world. We talk about what they do with Postgres, why they do it, and how they got started. (I’m a bit obsessed with origin stories.)

The show isn’t about features or how-to’s. It’s not about speeds and feeds. And it’s definitely not trying to sell you anything. It’s about the people behind Postgres—and what we can learn from each other.

In this post you’ll get highlights from the past 13 episodes of Talking Postgres, shared in reverse chronological order. These summaries can’t do the full episodes justice, but maybe they’ll inspire you to listen in.

And if you’re not a podcast person, maybe it's time to give it a try? Podcast listening in the US has grown from 170 million hours a week in 2015 to over 770 million hours per week in 2025. (Source: Share of Ear survey from Edison Research, via Podnews.net).

Figure 1: As of July 2025 we’ve had 41 amazing guests on the monthly Talking Postgres podcast (originally named Path To Citus Con, prior to the rename in 2024). The photos above are not in any particular order! Left-to-right, starting in the top row: Simon Willison, Floor Drees, Andres Freund, Melanie Plageman, Derk van Veen, Claire Giordano (that’s me), Paul Ramsey, Samay Sharma, Affan Dar, Regina Obe, Álvaro Herrera, Chelsea Dole, Heikki Linnakangas, Marco Slot, Lukas Fittl, Rob Treat, Jelte Fennema-Nio, Pino de Candia, Dimitri Fontaine, Grant Fritchey, Thomas Munro, Abdullah Ustuner, Vik Fearing, Teresa Giacomini, Tom Lane, Arda Aytekin, Ryan Booz, Chris Ellis, Daniel Gustafsson, Andrew Atkinson, David Rowley, Burak Yucesoy, Boriss Mejías, Michael Christofides, Aaron Wislang, Robert Haas, Dawn Wages, Bruce Momjian, Peter Farkas, Peter Cooper, and Shireesh Thota.

A listener’s take: Talking Postgres as “oral history”

Last October, I got a text from Thomas Munro—one of the Postgres committers, and someone I deeply respect. He said:

“btw, random comment: i think talking postgres is very cool, going very well, and i love what you are doing”

Naturally, I wanted to know more. So I asked. Thomas's reply:

“it's just a great podcast, you have a relaxed way to get people talking, and people are at ease with you. it’s a perfect format, and it feels quite natural. i don’t know, i just like it. the name is also working well. i was happy to see robert [haas] mentioning it the other day. it's a really nice part of the ecosystem and brings a positive human dimension to it. it's also a kind of documentary, a kind of oral history for the postgresql community.”

As Bruce Momjian likes to say, it costs nothing to show gratitude. The note from Thomas made my day that day—and I’m sharing it here in case it nudges someone else to give the podcast a listen.

From dreaming of driving a bus to leading database engineering at Microsoft

Listen to Episode 29

Shireesh Thota joined me to unpack his journey from early BASIC programming to leading all of database engineering at Microsoft Azure. (Fun fact: his childhood dream was to be a bus driver.)

I’ll admit, I thought it might be intimidating to interview my boss’s boss. But it wasn’t. Shireesh was down-to-earth, thoughtful, and full of stories—especially about the shift from IC to manager. One of his early lessons? You can’t manage people in the same way you write code.

Highlights of "How I got started leading database teams with Shireesh Thota"

The shift from developer to manager (if only people came with documentation)
Why it’s important for Microsoft to contribute to the PostgreSQL open source project
Whether Shireesh has a favorite database (hint: I want it to be Postgres)
Are there any plans to open source the new VS Code extension for Postgres?

What drives someone to publish 600+ issues of a Postgres newsletter?

Listen to Episode 28

I’d been wanting to get Peter Cooper on the podcast for a while. Peter is the creator of Postgres Weekly—my favorite developer newsletter—and the person behind a whole collection of dev newsletters that reach nearly half a million people each week.

But how to get Peter to a yes? I was still pondering that when Michael Christofides (founder of pgMustard, past guest on Talking Postgres, and co-host of Postgres FM) had the same idea: “You should invite Peter Cooper.”

As luck would have it, Peter—who lives in the UK—was visiting the San Francisco Bay Area. We met for coffee (no coffee was actually consumed), I pitched the idea, and he said yes.

Highlights of "12 years of Postgres Weekly with Peter Cooper"

How Peter built a newsletter empire that reaches nearly half a million developers each week
Trends in Postgres he’s seen from the editor’s seat
How the BBC's “big tent” shapes Peter’s editorial (& opinionated) voice
Where he finds the good stuff (all the useful Postgres links)

How does a trek to K2 base camp spark the idea for a database startup?

Listen to Episode 27

In this episode, Peter Farkas shared the origin story of FerretDB, an open source MongoDB alternative that first became an idea at 16,000 feet at the Himalayan K2 base camp. (Spoiler: “Ferret” wasn’t the original name.) We also talked about why Postgres was the obvious choice for FerretDB—and how Peter’s background in customer support has shaped his world view.

Highlights of "How I got started with FerretDB & why we chose Postgres with Peter Farkas"

What “true open source” means to Peter and FerretDB
How FerretDB now runs on the new, open-sourced DocumentDB extension
How Hungarian Trappist cheese 🧀 deserves a footnote in database history

What does it take to lead a global open source project like Postgres?

Listen to Episode 26

Bruce Momjian and I were both at PGConf India in Bangalore when he said yes to joining the podcast. Bruce has been part of Postgres since 1996, and he’s spent decades giving talks, writing, and teaching others about the database. So we had too many good topics to choose from.

We landed on one that felt especially relevant: what it means to lead in open source. Bruce shared stories, lessons, and a perspective that only comes from being in the trenches for nearly 30 years.

Highlights of "Open Source Leadership with Bruce Momjian"

Why servant leadership is such a good fit for open source
How being open to feedback can lead to a much higher quality result
Tips on becoming a good conference speaker
How it doesn’t cost you anything to show appreciation to people
Bruce’s early days on the project, co-founding the PostgreSQL Global Development Group

Why so many Python developers have an affinity for Postgres

Listen to Episode 25

When I first met Dawn Wages, we somehow got onto the topic of her book-in-progress, Domain-Driven Django. One chapter title jumped out at me: “Just Use Postgres.” Of course, I had questions.

At the time, Dawn was President of the Python Software Foundation—and I was curious to hear how a Django developer thinks about Postgres. Why do so many Python and Django devs seem to have such affection for it? This one’s part origin story, part practical wisdom, and part homage to Postgres.

Highlights of "Why Python developers just use Postgres with Dawn Wages"

Why does a book for Django developers deserve a chapter on Postgres?
Why “free as in puppies” beats “free as in cake”
How making really smart friends helps you in work (and in life)
Is Python the second-best language for everything?
Fun fact: Did you know PostgreSQL.org is built with Django?

Why mentor? Because nobody works on an open-source project forever—eventually people move on

Listen to Episode 24

Quote from Robert Haas:

“I think we're all hoping that there will be more people coming along after us who want to pick up the torch and continue to make PostgreSQL amazing. But I think also we'd like to not just sustain the community but to really see it grow. We'd like PostgreSQL to have more developers in the future than it does today and to have a greater pace of development than it does today. And I think that mentoring is a way that we can try to help that happen.”

Highlights of "Why mentor Postgres developers with Robert Haas"

Why did Robert kickstart the new PostgreSQL Hackers mentoring program?
How Robert channeled “what would Tom Lane do?” during patch reviews
How being willing to admit you don't know how to do something properly (yet) is an important part of getting better at it

How walking into a Postgres session at a Linux conference changed everything

Listen to Episode 23

Quote from Daniel Gustafsson:

“And I was sitting there, being completely blown away, realizing that this database has everything that I need and want. It has PL/Perl. I can write everything as a stored procedure. It was the programming environment that I was looking for, but I didn't know existed. And so from that day and time, I have not used any other database.”

Highlights of "How I got started as a developer & in Postgres with Daniel Gustafsson"

The story of one of Daniel’s earliest memories: a Datasaab M10 computer—or as Daniel described it: “a giant steel box in the family study”
Exact date, time, & location a chance LinuxForum encounter with Bruce Momjian changed the course of Daniel's career
Daniel's take on the magic of conferences in the Postgres community—including Nordic PGDay, PGconfdev, & POSETTE
Advice for Daniel’s younger self: “don’t be afraid to ask for help”

What’s it like to lead Postgres engineering at a cloud giant like Microsoft?

Listen to Episode 22

This episode with Affan Dar, who heads up engineering for Postgres at Microsoft, was a fun one. Many of the guests on Talking Postgres come from the open source community, but this time we switched it up, and spoke with the Azure engineering leader who’s steering all of the Postgres work at Microsoft (including the open source contributors team.)

Highlights of "Leading engineering for Postgres on Azure with Affan Dar"

What it's like to lead the engineering team behind Azure Database for PostgreSQL
The strategy behind Microsoft's investments into Postgres
Is Postgres extensibility a double-edged sword?
Affan’s experiences switching between individual contributor & management roles (& back)

Have you ever achieved something remarkable because someone planted an idea in your mind?

Listen to Episode 21

Andrew Atkinson is a software developer who got deeper into Postgres as he and his team tackled scale and reliability challenges. But what makes Andrew’s story stand out is what he did next: he wrote a book to share what he learned—specifically for Rails developers.

But the idea for the book didn’t come out of nowhere. It was planted by someone else. And that spark turned into a popular new book about PostgreSQL.

Highlights of "Helping Rails developers learn Postgres with Andrew Atkinson"

Tackling scalability challenges in Rails
The story behind Andrew’s book, High Performance PostgreSQL for Rails
The idea behind "writing is thinking"
The connection between Andrew's Postgres book and swimming to Antarctica

It was not Tom Lane’s plan to become a computer person

Listen to Episode 20

Tom Lane is a legend in the PostgreSQL contributor community and it was an honor to have him on the podcast. His origin story? Not what you’d expect. He originally wanted to be a pinball machine designer—and only later found his way into databases. Thank goodness he eventually went down the rabbit hole and discovered how interesting Postgres is. Because once he did, he never looked back.

Highlights of "How I got started as a developer & in Postgres with Tom Lane"

Getting nudged by a professor to apply to be a research assistant
Going down a bug-fixing rabbithole, starting with bugs in a port to HP-UX
The importance of adopting a mindset that embraces feedback
One of the things about working in open source: your failures are inherently extremely public

If you could work on anything, would you quit your job to pursue it?

Listen to Episode 19

Melanie Plageman did exactly that. She left her job to go deep on Postgres—writing an extension, watching every Andy Pavlo video ever, and eventually becoming a Postgres committer. So many of us learn from Melanie and this episode is full of her hard-won insights. Also this, one of my favorite quotes from the podcast:

“When you're getting feedback, it's not necessarily about whether or not you're good at engineering—or your patch is a good patch. It's about whether or not it's the right thing for Postgres. Not taking things personally—and thinking about it more from the perspective of ‘how can I make my work a better fit for Postgres’ makes it hurt a little bit less.”

–Melanie Plageman

Highlights of "Becoming a Postgres committer with Melanie Plageman"

How Melanie quit her job and proceeded to learn everything she could about Postgres
Writing a Postgres extension as a way to learn about Postgres (and land a job!)
The value of mentorship, karma, and paying it forward
What’s it like to get so deep in code you lose the ability to relate to people?
The enormous weight of the Postgres committer responsibility

How driving a forklift at a cheese factory led to a career in databases

Listen to Episode 18

David Rowley’s origin story is full of surprises. He started out driving a forklift in a cheese factory—and ended up becoming a go-to expert on Postgres performance.

This episode is a fan favorite (and it even inspired Daniel Gustafsson to come on the show a few months later.) One of the most useful takeaways? David’s advice on how to make your work stand out: do the research, read the archives, and show that you’ve done your homework.

Highlights of "How I got started as a developer & in Postgres with David Rowley"

David’s unusual origin story: from driving a forklift in a cheese factory to writing software
Reading the manual for Postgres 9.1 in a remote part of Australia (because there weren’t a great deal of other things to do in the evenings)
How speeding up Postgres gives a similar sort of buzz to tuning motorbike performance
Appreciating the very high standards in the Postgres contributor community

Have you ever eavesdropped on other people’s conversations?

Listen to Episode 17

Pino de Candia co-hosted the first year of this podcast with me—back when it was still called Path To Citus Con, before we renamed the show. In this episode, he came back for a meta-conversation about what we’ve learned from podcasting about Postgres, and what it’s like to record these conversations live.

We also took a walk down memory lane, revisiting some of our favorite bits from the first 16 episodes—and the guests who shared their Postgres stories with us.

Highlights of "Podcasting about Postgres with Pino de Candia"

Is listening to a podcast the next best thing to being in the hallway track at a conference?
Why it’s worth making the investment to understand Postgres not just at a technical level but also to get to know the community and the project’s history
What it’s like to record the podcasts live on Discord, with a parallel live text chat
Shout-outs to other useful Postgres podcasts, including Postgres FM and Scaling Postgres

Help more people discover Talking Postgres

You can find all the episodes—plus high quality transcripts—on TalkingPostgres.com, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you’ve enjoyed the podcast, there are a few easy ways to help more Postgres folks discover it:

Leave a review or rating (5 stars is always appreciated)
Tell a friend or teammate
Subscribe so you don’t miss future episodes

Word of mouth is still one of the best ways to spread the word.

We record the podcast LIVE on Discord (you’re invited)

If you didn’t know, we record Talking Postgres live on the Microsoft Open Source Discord, with a parallel live text chat. It usually happens at 10am PT on the first or second Wednesday of the month.

Want to listen in live? You can:

Follow the Talking Postgres live recording calendar
Or join the Microsoft Open Source Discord and mark yourself as “interested” in upcoming events. That way, you’ll get notified via Discord right before we go live.

Thank you to the people who make this podcast possible

I’m humbled by every guest who’s joined the show—starting with the very first episode about Working in public on open source with Simon Willison and Marco Slot. Every guest has brought something different: stories, insights, and their unique journeys with Postgres.

Huge thanks to Aaron Wislang of Microsoft, who’s been co-producing the podcast since day one. And to the cohort of Postgres friends who keep encouraging me to do this: Daniel Gustafsson, Melanie Plageman, Thomas Munro, and Boriss Mejías. Also a big shout-out to Pino de Candia, my co-host for the first year. And to my boss Charles Feddersen for supporting this podcast and all of my Postgres open source contributor work.

Figure 2: Screenshot of the TalkingPostgres.com "Subscribe" tab, showing all the many platforms where you can listen (and subscribe) to the Talking Postgres podcast—as well as the RSS feed URL.

This article was originally published on citusdata.com.

Ultimate Guide to POSETTE: An Event for Postgres, 2025 edition

Claire Giordano — 2025-06-04T15:26:00+00:00

POSETTE: An Event for Postgres 2025 is back for its 4^th year—free, virtual, and packed with deep expertise. No travel needed, just your laptop, internet, and curiosity.

This year’s 45 speakers are smart, capable Postgres practitioners—core contributors, performance experts, application developers, Azure engineers, extension maintainers—and their talks are as interesting as they are useful.

The four livestreams (42 talks total) run from June 10-12, 2025. Every talk will be posted to YouTube afterward (un-gated, of course). But if you can join live, I hope you do! On the virtual hallway track on Discord, you’ll be able to chat with POSETTE speakers—as well as other attendees. And yes, there will be swag.

This “ultimate guide” blog post is your shortcut to navigating POSETTE 2025. In this post you’ll get:

A “by the numbers” summary
2 Amazing Keynotes
18 Postgres core talks
12 Postgres ecosystem talks
10 Azure Database for PostgreSQL talks
Where to find the POSETTE Schedule
How to watch & how to participate on Discord
What’s new in POSETTE 2025?
A big thank you to our 45 amazing speakers
Join us for POSETTE 2025 & mark your calendars

“By the numbers” summary for POSETTE 2025

Here’s a quick snapshot of what you need to know about POSETTE:

About POSETTE: An Event for Postgres 2025
3 days	June 10-12, 2025
4 livestreams	In Americas & EMEA time zones (but of course you can watch from anywhere)
42 talks	All free, all virtual
2 keynotes	From Bruce Momjian & Charles Feddersen
45 speakers	PG contributors, users, application developers, community members, & Azure engineers
17.4% CFP acceptance rate	40 talks selected from 230 submissions
26% Azure-focused talks	11 talks out of 42 feature Azure Database for PostgreSQL
74% general Postgres talks	31 talks are not cloud-specific at all
16 languages	Published videos will have captions available in 16 languages, including English, Czech, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Turkish, Ukrainian, Chinese Simplified, and Chinese Traditional

And to give you a feel for the hi-level categories and detailed “tags”, to help you navigate all 42 of the talks, maybe this diagram will help.

Figure 1: Ultimate Guide for POSETTE 2025, with hi-level categories and detailed tags for all 42 talks.

2 Amazing Keynotes

If you’re interested in what Microsoft is building for Postgres these days, then Charles Feddersen’s keynote is a must-watch. And in spite of all the hype about AI, you’re guaranteed to enjoy Bruce Momjian’s keynote about databases in the AI trenches.

KEYNOTE: What Microsoft is Building for Postgres in 2025, by Charles Feddersen in Livestream 1 and Livestream 4 (Azure, Postgres 18, Async IO, AI, RAG, VS Code, community, livestream1, livestream4)
KEYNOTE: Databases in the AI Trenches, by Bruce Momjian in Livestream 2 and Livestream 3 (AI, semantic search, vector search, RAG, livestream2, livestream3)

18 Postgres Core talks

Performance

Best Practices for Tuning Slow Postgres Queries, by Lukas Fittl (EXPLAIN, optimizing queries, performance, startup, livestream1)
Fun With UUIDs, by Chris Ellis (UUIDs, indexes, performance, livestream3)
Hacking Postgres Executor For Performance, by Amit Langote (PG internals, executor, performance, livestream4)
Leveraging table partitioning for query performance and data archiving, by Derk van Veen (partitioning, performance, livestream4)
Performance Archaeology - 20 years of improvements, by Tomas Vondra (performance, benchmarks, livestream1)
What’s new in the Postgres 18 query planner / optimizer, by David Rowley (PG internals, planner, livestream2)

Postgres internals

Designing a monitoring feature in PostgreSQL, by Rahila Syed (monitoring, PG internals, livestream4)
PostgreSQL and Linux Kernel interactions, by Krishnakumar "KK" Ravi (Async IO, PG internals, Linux, troubleshooting, livestream3)

Replication

Logical replication theory and concepts, by Ashutosh Bapat (replication, wal, livestream2)
Myths and Truths about Synchronous Replication in PostgreSQL, by Alexander Kukushkin (HA, replication, livestream3)
Securing Postgres with streaming replication, by Jan Karremans (replication, disaster recovery, WAL, livestream4)

Community

Setting max_connection: Building PostgreSQL user groups that bring people together, by Ellyne Phneah (community, startup, user groups, livestream4)

Fun

Debugging Data Corruption in PostgreSQL: A Systematic Approach, by Palak Chaturvedi & Nitin Jadhav (debugging, Linux, livestream2)
Implementing Strict Serializability with pg_xact, by Jimmy Zelinskie (strict serializability, pg_xact, livestream3)
Incremental Backup in PostgreSQL, by Robert Haas (backup, incremental backup, livestream1)
Managing Postgres at scale: Challenges, Tools & Techniques, by Karen Jex (backups, HA, monitoring, partitioning, scalability, sharding, livestream3)
Neon: How we made PostgreSQL serverless, by Heikki Linnakangas (serverless, Neon, startup, livestream2)
Postgres Storytelling: Cunning Schema Design with Creative Data Modeling, by Boriss Mejías & Sarah Conway (data modeling, livestream1)

12 Postgres Ecosystem talks

Analytics

Building a PostgreSQL data warehouse, by Marco Slot (extensions, analytics, data warehouse, livestream4)
pg_duckdb: Ducking awesome analytics in Postgres, by Jelte Fennema-Nio (extensions, analytics, DuckDB, startup, livestream2)

App dev

Building modern Python web apps with PostgreSQL, by Pamela Fox (app dev, Python, livestream1)
Exploring .NET and PostgreSQL on Linux as your OSS app dev stack, by Silvano Coriani (app dev, .NET, Linux, livestream2)

Extensions

Can We Use Rust to Develop Extensions for PostgreSQL?, by Shinya Kato (extensions, pgrx, Rust, livestream2)
Designing for Document Databases in PostgreSQL, by Vinod Sridharan (extensions, DocumentDB, livestream1)
Elasticsearch-Quality Full-Text Search in Postgres via Tantivy, by Philippe Noël (Full text search, extensions, pg_search, startup, livestream1)
From MongoDB to Postgres: Building an Open Source Standard for Document Databases, by Peter Farkas (FerretDB, extensions, DocumentDB, MongoDB, startup, livestream4)
Hitchhiker's Guide to Row-Level Security in Citus, by Adam Wølk (security, Citus, livestream4)
Resource Control Admission - I have a date with my PSI, by Cédric Villemain (extensions, pg_psi, monitoring, Linux, PG Internals, livestream4)

Patroni

What is Patroni, really?, by Polina Bungina (HA, Patroni, livestream2)

VS Code

Introducing Microsoft’s VS Code Extension for PostgreSQL, by Matt McFarland (VS Code, IDE, livestream1)

10 Azure Database for PostgreSQL talks

AI-related talks

Building Enterprise RAG with Azure Database for PostgreSQL and pgvector, by Michael John Pena (AI, Azure, RAG, livestream4)
Building Intelligent Applications with Graph-Based RAG on PostgreSQL, by Abe Omorogbe (AI, AzureDBPostgres, RAG, livestream3)

Customer talks

Fortifying Azure Database for PostgreSQL: Stop Intrusions in Their Tracks, by Johannes Schuetzner (Azure, authentication, customer, Mercedes, networking, security, livestream2)
Scaling Postgres to the next level at OpenAI, by Bohan Zhang (AI, Azure, customer, OpenAI, livestream1)

Flexible Server talks

Azure Database for PostgreSQL: 15 Essential Standards for Compliance and Security, by Taiob Ali (Azure, authentication, backup, compliance, security, livestream3)
Boosting Azure PostgreSQL Performance with Azure Advisor, by Gayathri Paderla (Azure, Azure Advisor, performance, livestream1)
Dear Azure Database for PostgreSQL, can you automate my index?, by Nacho Alonso Portillo (Azure, indexes, livestream2)
Overcoming Performance Hurdles in Postgres Partitioned Tables, by Sarat Balijepalli (Azure, partitioning, performance, livestream3)
What’s New with Azure Postgres Flexible Server in 2025 🆕, by Varun Dhawan (Azure, what's new, flexible server, livestream3)

Oracle to Postgres talks

Migrating from Oracle to Azure Database for PostgreSQL, Seamlessly, by Neeta Goel & Sandeep Rajeev (Azure, Oracle to Postgres, migration, livestream3)

Where to find the POSETTE Schedule

You may be thinking, “I know how to use a website, Claire.” Fair. But hear me out: the POSETTE 2025 Schedule page has 4 tabs—one for each livestream—and it always opens to Livestream 1 by default.

So if you’re looking for talks in Livestreams 2, 3, or 4:

Head to the POSETTE Schedule page
Click the tab for the livestream you want
Voila—talks for that stream

Figure 2: Screenshot of the POSETTE 2025 Schedule with separate tabs for the 4 livestreams

How to watch & how to participate on Discord

Here’s how to tune in—and how to participate in the conference.

How to watch the livestreams

All 4 livestreams will be watchable on the PosetteConf 2025 home page
Pro tip: If you’ve left the page open since the last stream, refresh your browser to see the next livestream.

How to join the virtual hallway track

Head to the #posetteconf channel on Discord (on the Microsoft Open Source Discord)
That’s where speakers and attendees hang out during the livestreams—it’s where you can ask questions, share reactions, and just say hi.

What’s new in POSETTE 2025

If you attended POSETTE last year (or back when it was called Citus Con), you might be wondering, what’s different this year?

In many ways, the POSETTE playbook is the same: useful and delightful Postgres talks in a virtual, accessible format. But here’s what’s new:

New website: And, a new domain too: PosetteConf.com
Only 2 keynotes: instead of 4 keynotes last year. We’re honored that Bruce Momjian & Charles Feddersen accepted the invitation to be keynote speakers. Each keynote will be repeated twice.
58% speakers new to POSETTE: 26 out of 45 speakers (58%) are brand new to POSETTE
New livestream hosts: 3 of the 7 livestream hosts are brand new to hosting POSETTE livestreams: welcome to Adam Wølk, Derk van Veen, & Thomas Munro
Same name: The POSETTE: An Event for Postgres name is here to stay—and we still love the name

Big thank you to our 45 amazing speakers

Every great event starts with great talks—and great talks start with great speakers. Want to learn more about the people behind these talks?

Visit the POSETTE 2025 Speaker page
Click a speaker’s bio to see their interview (if available)
If a speaker has been a guest on the Talking Postgres podcast in the past, then you’ll find a link to their episode there, too

Figure 3: Bio pics for all 45 speakers in POSETTE: An Event for Postgres 25, along with our gratitude.

Join us for POSETTE 2025! Mark your calendars

I hope you join us for POSETTE 2025. Consider yourself officially invited. As part of the talk selection team, I’m definitely biased—but I truly believe these speakers and talk are worth your time.

I’ll be hosting Livestream 1 and Livestream 2 and you’ll find me in the #posetteconf Discord chat. I hope to see you there.

And please—tell your Postgres friends, so they don’t miss out!

🗓️ Add the livestreams to your calendar

Livestream 1: Tue June 10^th 8am-2pm PDT (UTC-7)
Livestream 2: Wed June 11^th 8am-2pm CEST (UTC+2)
Livestream 3: Wed June 11^th 8am-2pm PDT (UTC-7)
Livestream 4: Thu June 12^th 8am-2pm CEST (UTC+2)

Watch last year’s talks in advance: And if you want to get ready, check out the POSETTE 2024 playlist on YouTube. Lots of gems in there.

Acknowledgements & Gratitude

I’ve already thanked the amazing speakers above. In addition, thanks go to Daniel Gustafsson, Teresa Giacomini, and My Nguyen for reviewing parts of this post before publication. And of course, big thank you to the POSETTE 2025 organizing team and POSETTE talk selection team—without you, there would be no POSETTE!

Figure 4: Visual invitation to join the virtual hallway track for POSETTE 2025 on the Microsoft Open Source Discord. So you can chat with the speakers & others in the Postgres community.

This article was originally published on citusdata.com.

CFP talk proposal ideas for POSETTE: An Event for Postgres 2025

Claire Giordano — 2025-02-04T21:02:01+00:00

Some of you have been asking for advice about what to submit to the CFP for POSETTE: An Event for Postgres 2025. So this post aims to give you ideas that might help you submit a talk proposal (or 2, or 3) before the upcoming CFP deadline.

If you’re not yet familiar with this conference, POSETTE: An Event for Postgres 2025 is a free & virtual developer event now in its 4th year, organized by the Postgres team at Microsoft.

I love the virtual aspect of POSETTE because the conference talks are so accessible—for both speakers and attendees. If you’re a speaker, you don’t need travel budget $$—and you don’t have to leave home. Also, the talk you’ve poured all that energy into is not limited to the people in the room, and has the potential to reach so many more people. If you’re an attendee, well, all you need is an internet connection.

The CFP for POSETTE: An Event for Postgres will be open until Sunday Feb 9th at 11:59pm PST. So as of the publication date of this blog post, you still have time to submit a CFP proposal (or 2, or 3, or 4)—and to remind your Postgres teammates and friends of the speaking opportunity.

If you have a Postgres experience, success story, failure, best practice, “how-to”, collection of tips, lesson about something that's new, or deep dive to share—not just about the core of Postgres, but about anything in the Postgres ecosystem, including extensions, and tooling, and monitoring—maybe you should consider submitting a talk proposal to the CFP for POSETTE.

If you’re not sure about whether to give a conference talk, there are a boatload of reasons why you should. And there’s also a podcast episode with Álvaro Herrera, Boriss Mejías, and Pino de Candia that makes the case for why giving conference talks matters. For inspiration, you can also take a look at the playlist of POSETTE 2024 talks.

And if you’re looking for even more CFP ideas, you’ve come to the right place! Read on…

Ideas for talks you might propose in the POSETTE CFP

On the CFP page there is a list of possible talk titles (screenshot below) you might submit—these are good ideas, although the list is by no means exhaustive, and we welcome talk proposals that are not on this list.

Figure 1: POSETTE CFP talk topics taken from the CFP page on PosetteConf.com

On Telegram the other day, when answering the question “Do you have any ideas of what I should submit?”, I found myself suggesting different TYPES of talks. Not specific ideas and talk titles, but rather I framed the different categories. So I decided to share these different “types” and “classes” of talks with all of you, in the hopes this might give you a good talk proposal idea.

First you need to pick your audience: Before you think about what type of talk to give, remember that the POSETTE team is focused on serving the needs of both the USER community—as well as the Postgres contributor & hacker communities.

That means first you need to decide on your audience. Are you giving a talk for PostgreSQL users, or Azure Database for PostgreSQL customers, or the PostgreSQL contributor community? All are good choices.

Then you need to decide: what do you want to accomplish with your talk?

Do you want to skill up the Postgres hacker community?: If you want to help skill-up the developer/contributor community, maybe pick a part of Postgres that new contributors often ask a lot of questions about, get stuck on, need help with, etc—and give a “tour” of its mechanics, starting with the basics.
Do you want to help grow the Postgres community?: If you want to help grow the Postgres community of contributors and developers, you could propose a talk that would motivate tomorrow's developers/contributors to get involved in the project. Imagine you were going to a university to give a talk about "why work on Postgres"… what would you say? And how would you entice people to work on Postgres?

What pain points would you challenge them with?

What benefits would you share from your own Postgres experience that might inspire these developers to think seriously about Postgres as a career path?

You could also shine a light on the different ways people can (and do!) contribute to the Postgres community: from mentoring to translations to organizing conferences to podcasts to speaking at conferences to publishing PostgreSQL Person of the Week.
Do you want to share your expertise with Postgres users?: If you want your talk to benefit users, maybe pick an area that you are already expert in (or want an excuse to dig into and learn about?) and create a Beginners Guide for it? Or Advanced Tips for it? Or Surprising Benefits of? Or Things People Might Not Know?

Especially if there is a part of Postgres you feel like people sometimes mis-use, or don't take enough advantage of....
Do you want to share your customer experiences with Azure Database for PostgreSQL, or Postgres more generally?: Maybe you have a wild success story you think others will benefit from. Or you want to share a problem you had and how you used Postgres to solve it? People love customer stories.
Do you want to shine a light on the broader Postgres ecosystem?: If you want to target users with your talk, don’t limit yourself the Postgres core. There is a rich ecosystem that surrounds Postgres and people need to understand the ecosystem, too. So maybe there are tools or Postgres extensions or forks or startups that you can give a useful talk about?
Do you want to help experts in other database technologies learn about Postgres?: If you have expertise in other databases as well as Postgres, maybe you can help people who who are skilled in running workloads on other databases and are looking to skill up on Postgres—by helping them understand what’s similar, and what’s different. As if you’re giving them a dictionary to translate from their familiar database to Postgres, and vice versa.
There are so many more possibilities: Often I look at the schedule from previous years to look for inspiration (and to make sure that my talk proposal is not a duplicate of a talk that’s already been given.) And I think about pain points, things people get confused about, or questions that come up a lot. Another thing to keep in mind: how can you help your story to "stick"? Can you make it entertaining? How do you share your story in a way that keeps people watching (versus looking at their phone instead?)

Key things to know about POSETTE: An Event for Postgres 2025

CFP deadline: The CFP for POSETTE will close on Sunday, Feb 9th 2025 @ 11:59pm Pacific Time (PST)
No travel required: free & virtual developer event
Length of talks: 25 minutes/session
Language: All talks will be in English
Talks will be pre-recorded: All talks will be pre-recorded by the POSETTE team during the weeks of Apr 28th and May 5th (with accepted speakers presenting remotely)
When is the event?: Jun 10-12, 2025
Format of the virtual event: All pre-recorded talks will be livestreamed in one of 4 unique livestreams on Jun 10-12, 2025—all with parallel live text chats on Discord. Two of the livestreams will be in Americas-friendly times of day (8:00am-2:00pm PDT) and two of the livestreams will be in EMEA-friendly times of day (8:00am-2:00pm CEST). All talks will be published online after the event is over.
More info about the CFP: All the details, including key dates and how to submit on Sessionize, are spelled out on the CFP page for POSETTE 2025
Code-of-conduct: You can find the Code of Conduct for POSETTE online. Please help us to provide a respectful, friendly, and professional experience for everybody involved in this virtual conference.

Figure 2: the CFP is open for POSETTE: An Event for Postgres 2025 until Sunday Feb 9th at 11:59pm PST. What Postgres story do you want to share?

This article was originally published on citusdata.com.

Say hello to the Talking Postgres podcast

Claire Giordano — 2024-07-09T15:15:01+00:00

The TL;DR of this blog post is simple: the “Path To Citus Con” podcast for developers who love Postgres has been renamed—and the new name is Talking Postgres.

And if you’re just hearing about the Talking Postgres podcast for the first time, it is a monthly podcast for developers who love Postgres, with amazing guests from the Postgres world who talk about the human side of Postgres, databases, and open source.

Listening to the Talking Postgres podcast is the next best thing to being in the hallway at a Postgres conference, eavesdropping on other people’s conversations and learning from the experiences of experts. As Floor Drees says, it’s as if you’re sharing a coffee with them.

Past podcast guests include (in order of appearance) some amazing Postgres, database, and open source people such as: Simon Willison, Marco Slot, Abdullah Ustuner, Burak Yucesoy, Melanie Plageman, Samay Sharma, Álvaro Herrera, Boriss Mejías, Thomas Munro, Grant Fritchey, Ryan Booz, Chelsea Dole, Floor Drees, Paul Ramsey, Regina Obe, Andres Freund, Heikki Linnakangas, Dimitri Fontaine, Vik Fearing, Lukas Fittl, Rob Treat, Jelte Fennema-Nio, Derk van Veen, Arda Aytekin, Chris Ellis, Michael Christofides, Aaron Wislang, and Teresa Giacomini. The podcast is produced by the Postgres team at Microsoft—and I have the privilege of being your host.

So whether you’re an existing listener or new to this podcast, we hope you enjoy the Talking Postgres podcast—and help to spread the word about the new name.

Figure 1: The new “Talking Postgres with Claire Giordano” podcast name (formerly called Path To Citus Con) is depicted here with the same elephant mascot we’ve always used.

Some key things to know about the Talking Postgres podcast

Why did we rename the podcast?: Guests & friends repeatedly—and I mean repeatedly—nudged us to rename the podcast to a name that makes it more clear what the podcast is about. And at the end of the day it’s about Postgres things! So while the podcast was born in March 2023 as a pre-event to last year’s Citus Con—hence the original name, “Path To Citus Con”—Talking Postgres has grown into its own monthly podcast that has everything to do with Postgres and little to do with Citus Con (now called POSETTE.)
Where can you catch up on past podcast episodes?: All 16 of the past episodes of Path To Citus Con can now be found on the talkingpostgres.com site—as well as on the Talking Postgres playlist on YouTube, and wherever you get your podcasts.
If you’re already subscribed to the podcast, are you still subscribed?: We renamed the previous podcast, so if you were already subscribed, you should still be subscribed. Same thing for the RSS feed, it should just work! If you have any problems, please let us know via the #talkingpostgres channel in the Microsoft Open Source Discord.
Can you still attend the LIVE recording of the podcast on Discord each month?: Yes! Inspired by the Oxide and Friends podcast that is hosted by Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal—two of my former teammates from the kernel group at Sun Microsystems—we also record Talking Postgres (formerly Path To Citus Con) each month on Discord—with a parallel live text chat that is quite fun to be part of.
When are the future LIVE podcast recordings: If you’ve never participated in this type of live podcast recording, you might want to give it a try. It’s easy to subscribe to the Talking Postgres calendar of future LIVE podcast recordings: we usually record on Wed mornings Pacific Time (PT) on the 1^st or 2^nd Wednesday of the month.
Episode 17 of Talking Postgres will be recorded LIVE this Wed July 10, 2024: This July, our guest is Pino de Candia—the former co-host of the podcast—and the topic will be a bit “meta” this time! We’ll explore “Podcasting about Postgres” and we’ll look back at some of our greatest hits, talk about some of the other wonderful Postgres podcasts we listen to, and of course we’ll spend a few minutes reflecting on the podcast rename (why why why!) This Ep17 calendar invite should give you all the instructions you need to join us live on Discord this Wed Jul 10th at 10:00am PDT.
And David Rowley is scheduled to be the guest on the August episode: Since David Rowley—a Postgres committer—is based in New Zealand, Ep18 in August with David Rowley will be recorded at an unusual time for us, on a Tuesday, specifically at 4:00pm PDT on Tue Aug 6th. The topic will be “How I got started as a developer & in Postgres” and we hope you can join us on the parallel live text chat! David is brilliant—and I’m definitely going to have to do my homework on Postgres performance topics to prep for the conversation, since that is one of David’s specialties.

Let us know what you think of the podcast, be sure to use hashtag #TalkingPostgres

The new hashtag for the new podcast name is #TalkingPostgres and as soon as we see some interesting tweets, toots, and threads about the podcast using the new name, perhaps we’ll add some of them to the talkingpostgres.com website.

For now, here is a screenshot highlighting guests and topics for some of the most recent podcast episodes. You can of course subscribe to Talking Postgres and listen from anywhere, wherever you get your podcasts from. Enjoy!

Figure 2: Screenshot of the Talking Postgres web page at talkingpostgres.com, showing the most recent 5 episodes.

This article was originally published on citusdata.com.

Ultimate Guide to POSETTE: An Event for Postgres, 2024 edition

Claire Giordano — 2024-06-05T06:06:00+00:00

Now in its 3rd year, POSETTE: An Event for Postgres 2024 is not only bigger than previous years but some of my Postgres friends who are speakers tell me the event is even better than past years. Sweet.

Formerly called Citus Con (yes, we did a rename), POSETTE is a free and virtual developer event happening Jun 11-13 that is chock-full of Postgres content—with 4 livestreams, 42 talks, and 44 speakers.

And while POSETTE is organized by the Postgres team here at Microsoft, there is a lot of PG community involvement. For example, 31 of the 44 speakers (~70%) are from outside Microsoft! We have also tried to be quite transparent about the talk selection process used for POSETTE 2024, if you’re curious.

On the schedule, the add to calendar links (in upper right of each livestream's tab) are quite useful for blocking your calendar—and the calendar appointments include a link to where you can watch the livestreams on the POSETTE site.

So what exactly is on the schedule for POSETTE: An Event for Postgres 2024? A lot! When you look at the schedule page, be sure to check out all 4 tabs, so you don’t miss all the unique talks in Livestreams 2, 3, and 4.

Figure 1: Screenshot of the Schedule page for POSETTE: An Event for Postgres 2024, with arrows pointing to the different tabs for each livestream.

There’s something “accessible” about virtual events

As much as many of us 🧡 in-person Postgres events—I just returned from PGConf.dev 2024 in Vancouver which was so much fun¹—I am also a big fan of the accessibility of the virtual format.

Why? Because not everybody can travel to in-person conferences: Not everyone has the budget (or the time, or the schedule flexibility). So it’s rewarding to collaborate with all these knowledgeable speakers to produce video talks you can watch from the comfort of your very own desk. With espresso (or tea) in hand.

Speaking of accessibility, let's talk captions. All the talk videos published on YouTube will have captions available in 14 languages. The POSETTE team QA’s and fixes the English captions first and then generates the translated captions based on the improved baseline version.

Captions available in 14 languages: Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional, Czech, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Turkish

So much gratitude for all these POSETTE speakers

The raison d’être for most conferences is to learn from each other—and in particular, to learn from the speakers. So before diving into this Ultimate Guide we want to say thank you to all of the amazing the speakers who have brought so much knowledge and enthusiasm to POSETTE this year.

Figure 2: Headshots from the amazing Postgres experts who are speakers in this year’s event.

TIP about Speaker Interviews: Some of the speakers submitted speaker interviews. So if you want to know more about these Postgres experts, just click on the links to their talks below and you’ll be taken to their speaker page, which includes the talk abstract, a link to the livestream schedule, links to any past POSETTE talks—plus the speaker interview, if they submitted one!

Gratitude for our Livestream hosts too

There is a fun lineup of Postgres people from inside and outside Microsoft to co-host the 4 livestreams, including Boriss Mejías, Claire Giordano (that’s me) Floor Drees, Jelte Fennema-Nio, Krishnakumar (KK) Ravi, Melanie Plageman, and Pino de Candia.

Big +1 to all these folks for volunteering their time and their commentary to hosting the livestreams.

How to watch the POSETTE livestreams?

Each of the 4 livestreams has its own Add to calendar link which should be easy to find on that Livestream’s tab on the POSETTE Schedule.

And when you use the Add to calendar links to block your calendar, the calendar invites include instructions on:

WHERE to watch the livestreams: POSETTE event homepage
- TIP: be sure to reload the POSETTE homepage on the day of the event, so you’re not viewing some cached older version of the page or a replay of a previous livestream.
WHERE to check out the schedule = POSETTE schedule page

How to participate in the official back-channel for POSETTE?

WHERE to join the virtual hallway track = #posetteconf channel on the Microsoft Open Source Discord.

You can join the channel now, no need to wait, that way you’ll be all setup before the conference.

What’s the benefit to you of joining the virtual hallway track, also known as the “official back-channel”? Most of the speakers have signed up to be available on the virtual hallway track whilst their talks are being livestreamed. So it’s your opportunity to ask speakers questions—and to be part of the conversation, and make some Postgres friends.

Figure 3: Join the virtual hallway track before, during, and after the Livestreams to be part of the POSETTE conversation. Most of the speakers have signed up to be on the #posetteconf channel whilst their talk is being livestreamed so it's a good chance to ask questions and go deeper.

Will the recordings be available after the event?

Yes! All the POSETTE talks will be published online on YouTube after the event is over, so you can watch all 42 talks at your convenience, on your own schedule—even at 2X speed. With captions available in at least 14 languages.

Still, we hope you join us during the actual livestreams to be part of the live text chat.

Now let’s explore the different categories of talks you’ll see at POSETTE: An Event for Postgres 2024.

Figure 4: Overview of the different categories of talks in POSETTE: An Event for Postgres 2024, a free and virtual developer event full of Postgres talks—from the nerdy to the sublime.

4 amazing Keynotes, one for each livestream

Each of the 4 POSETTE livestreams has its own invited keynote. The keynote speakers were hand-selected and invited to come tell their story at POSETTE. We're so happy they said yes—and that they will be sharing their open source, developer, cloud, and community experiences with us.

Livestream 1 Keynote by Charles Feddersen: All The Postgres Things at Microsoft, POSETTE edition
Livestream 2 Keynote by Regina Obe: The Open Source Geospatial Community, PostGIS, & Postgres
Livestream 3 Keynote by Sarah Novotny: Why I love open source development & what I learned from K8s
Livestream 4 Keynote by Thomas Munro: A Walking Tour of PostgreSQL

7 AI-related talks

With everything happening with pgvector and Postgres, it’s not a surprise that there was a plethora of AI talk submissions at this year’s POSETTE. In the end, we landed on 7 AI-related talks.

In alphabetical order by talk title:

6 things you can do with azure_ai & PostgreSQL on Azure, by Denzil Ribeiro (livestream 3, AI, azure_ai, AzureDBPostgres, Flexible Server, pgvector)
Advancing Drug Search with PostgreSQL and Azure AI, by Taras Kloba (livestream 4, ai, azure_ai, AzureDBPostgres, customer)
From Postgres full text search to Retrieval Augmented Generative search, by Adam Wølk (livestream 2, ai, AzureDBPostgres, rag)
pgvector for Python developers, by Pamela Fox (livestream 3, ai, ecosystem, pgvector, python, orm, psycopg, demo)
Postgres-powered AI: Running an End-to-End AI Platform with Postgres on Azure, by Jaehyun Sim of Ikigai Labs (livestream 1, ai, AzureDBPostgres, customer)
Semantic search with Django, PostgreSQL, & pgvector, by Paolo Melchiorre of 20tab (livestream 4, AI, django, ecosystem, pgvector, python)
Vector data in Postgres - how's it different from “normal” data?, by Heikki Linnakangas of Neon (livestream 2, AI, data types, HNSW, postgres, pgvector)

15 Postgres core talks

Lots of Postgres goodness here. In alphabetical order by talk title:

Beyond Joins and Indexes, by Bruce Momjian of EDB (livestream 3, prolific presenter, query optimizer, tips)
Even JSONB In Postgres Needs Schemas, by Chris Ellis of Nexteam (livestream 2, customer, json, schemas)
Everything you need to know about Postgres Row Level Security, by Paul Copplestone of Supabase (livestream 1, security, startup)
Hazards of logical decoding in PostgreSQL, by Polina Bungina of Zalando SE (livestream 4, cdc, logical decoding)
How/Why to Sweep Async Tasks Under a Postgres Table, by Taylor Troesh (livestream 3, queues, Postgres as a platform)
Partitioning your Postgres tables for 20X better performance, by Derk van Veen of Adyen (livestream 4, customer, joins, partitioning, performance, tips)
Postgres Storytelling: What’s going on with Synchronous Replication?, by Boriss Mejías of EDB (livestream 2, Postgres storytelling, replication, WAL)
PostgreSQL Partitioning: Slicing and Dicing for Performance and Easier Maintenance, by Ryan Booz of Redgate (livestream 2, maintenance, partitioning, performance)
PostgreSQL performance tips you have never seen before V2.0, by Hans-Jürgen Schönig of CYBERTEC (livestream 4, performance, tips)
PostgreSQL physical replication - internals, latest development and opportunities, by Krishnakumar (KK) Ravi and Melih Mutlu (livestream 3, replication, WAL)
Revitalizing Outdated Data Models with PostgreSQL Views, by Newvick Lee of Careteam Technologies (livestream 3, data modeling, postgresql views)
Scaling the Wall of Text: Logging Best Practices in PostgreSQL, by Richard Yen of EDB (livestream 1, logging, performance, security, tips)
Tuning Parameters in Postgres vs. Tuning Your Queries, by Henrietta Dombrovskaya of DRW (livestream 1, performance, query tuning)
Where do the performance cliffs come from?, by Tomas Vondra of EDB (livestream 4, performance, performance cliffs, query optimizer)
You Don't Need a Database Backup Policy, by Karen Jex of Crunchy Data (livestream 4, backups, disaster recovery, DR)

8 Postgres ecosystem talks

“Ecosystem” is the “E” in the middle of POSETTE. In alphabetical order by talk title:

Accelerating PL/pgSQL Code Conversion When Migrating to Postgres, by Deepak Mahto (livestream 2, pl/pgsql, migrations, Oracle to Postgres)
Comparing Postgres connection pooler support for prepared statements, by Jelte Fennema-Nio (livestream 1, connection poolers, pgbouncer, odyssey, pgcat, supavisor)
Data-intensive PostgreSQL: Three ways to scale, by Marco Slot of Crunchy Data (livestream 2, analytics, citus, extensions, it depends, performance, pg_partman, SaaS, scalability)
The Open Source Geospatial Community, PostGIS, & Postgres, by Regina Obe of Paragon Corporation and PostGIS PSC (livestream 2, community, geospatial, KEYNOTE, postgis)
Lessons Learned from benchmarking and profiling distributed PostgreSQL, by Lotte Felius, a PhD Student in the Database Architectures group at CWI (livestream 2, benchmarking, citus, extensions, performance, ycsb)
SaaS on Rails on PostgreSQL, by Andrew Atkinson, author of High Performance PostgreSQL for Rails (livestream 1, citus, extensions, multi-tenancy, rails, ruby, saas)
State of the Postgres Extension Ecosystem, by David Wheeler of Tembo (livestream 1, extensions, pgxn)
Vindicating ZFS with PostgreSQL: Unleashing the Power of Scalability, by Federico Campoli (livestream 4, file system, storage, zfs, zol)

8 Azure Database for PostgreSQL talks

All The Postgres Things at Microsoft, POSETTE edition, by Charles Feddersen (livestream 1, AzureDBPostgres, cloud, community, conferences, KEYNOTE, open source)
Autotuning PostgreSQL on Azure Flexible Server, by Luigi Nardi of DBtune (livestream 4, AzureDBPostgres, machine learning, performance, query tuning, self-driving database)
HA and DR at a glance with Azure Database for PostgreSQL, by Silvano Coriani (livestream 2, AzureDBPostgres, DR, HA, multi-region DR, PaaS)
Making Postgres inserts faster on Azure, by Gayathri Paderla (livestream 1, AzureDBPostgres, performance)
Tales from the Field - Oracle to PostgreSQL migrations, by Adithya Kumaranchath (livestream 3, migrations, Oracle to Postgres)
Using Azure Query Store to Understand PostgreSQL Performance, by Grant Fritchey of Redgate (livestream 3, AzureDBPostgres, performance, query store, query tuning)
What Enterprises like about Azure Database for PostgreSQL – Flexible Server, by Kanchan Bharati (livestream 1, AzureDBPostgres, cloud, enterprise)
What Makes Azure Database for PostgreSQL Great for Developers?, by Varun Dhawan (livestream 3, AzureDBPostgres, cloud, developers, extensions, ecosystem)

4 Postgres community talks

A Walking Tour of PostgreSQL, by Thomas Munro (livestream 4, community, KEYNOTE, open source, postgres history, postgres contributor story)
How to Work with Other People, by Jimmy Angelakos and Floor Drees (livestream 2, collaboration, community, neurodiversity, open source, people)
Open Source Contributions to Postgres: The Basics, by Elizabeth Christensen of Crunchy Data (livestream 1, contributing to postgres, community)
Why I love open source development & what I learned from K8s, by Sarah Novotny (livestream 3, collaboration, community, kubernetes, open source)

Please tell your friends & mark your calendars for this year’s POSETTE

If you are into PostgreSQL and into continuous learning, join us on Jun 11-13. No travel required.

Livestream 1: on Tue Jun 11 from 8:00am – 2:00pm PDT (UTC -7) with 11 unique talks (add to calendar / link to Livestream 1 schedule)
Livestream 2: on Wed Jun 12 from 8:00am – 2:00pm CEST (UTC +2) with 11 unique talks (add to calendar / link to Livestream 2 schedule)
Livestream 3: on Wed Jun 12 from 8:00am – 1:30pm PDT (UTC -7) with 10 unique talks (add to calendar / link to Livestream 3 schedule)
Livestream 4: on Thu Jun 13 from 8:00am – 1:30pm CEST (UTC +2) with 10 unique talks (add to calendar / link to Livestream 4 schedule)
Virtual hallway track is in the #posetteconf channel on the Microsoft Open Source Discord. You’re invited to pop in, say hello, and ask questions.
Opportunities for cool SWAG: There will be chances to snag sticker swag for those who join the livestreams—plus a cloud skills challenge for those who are into Azure Database for PostgreSQL.

And if you do the social media thing and want to help spread the word about the POSETTE livestreams to your friends and networks, you can follow @PosetteConf on X/Twitter to stay connected—or you can follow us on Mastodon or also on Threads.

Final thank you’s

And while this blog post has already thanked the 44 speakers and 7 livestream co-hosts, it’s time to thank everyone at Microsoft involved in organizing POSETTE 2024 especially the organizing chair Teresa Giacomini. And immense gratitude to the talk selection team without whom we wouldn’t have this amazing roster of talks.

We hope you get a lot of value out of POSETTE: An Event for Postgres 2024. Happy learning!

Footnotes

Not only was PGConf.dev fun, but according to Postgres committer Peter Eisentraut the conference was so engaging that nothing happened in the Postgres code base for days. PGConf.dev appears to be the cause of the “longest hiatus [in Postgres commits] in over 20 years and the 4^th-longest of all time.” Says Peter Eisentraut, “It might never be this quiet again!” ↩

This article was originally published on citusdata.com.

About Talk Selection for POSETTE: An Event for Postgres 2024

Claire Giordano — 2024-04-22T17:42:20+00:00

As promised in the CFP for POSETTE: An Event for Postgres 2024, all of the talk selection decisions were emailed out on April 17^th. Our talk selection work has now concluded, with the possible exception of accepting proposals from the Reserve list.

So what’s next? First I want to thank all of you Postgres people who submitted such amazing talk proposals into the CFP for POSETTE, now in its 3rd year. I was so impressed by the submissions and wish we could have accepted more of them.

And I also want to thank Alicja Kucharczyk, Daniel Gustafsson, and Melanie Plageman from POSETTE’s Talk Selection Team for contributing their time and expertise to collaborate with me to select the talks for this year’s virtual POSETTE event. It’s not easy to carefully read through and review 184 talk proposals—in just 8 days—to come up with the program for an event like #PosetteConf.

That’s right, 184 talk proposals—from 120 unique speakers. (The CFP had a maximum of 4 submissions per speaker.) With just 38 talks to accept this year, that means POSETTE 2024 has a ~20% talk acceptance rate. Bottom line, we had some difficult decisions to make.

So many great talk proposals we had to lengthen the POSETTE schedule to make space

The original POSETTE plan for 2024 was to have 4 livestreams with 9 talks each. The math looked like this:

Each livestream would have:
- 1 invited keynote—not selected through the CFP talk selection process, but rather an invited keynote speaker
- 8 unique talks selected via the CFP process
Hence, 36 talks total:
- 32 talks selected via the CFP process + 4 unique keynotes

However, the best laid plans of mice and men and all that, we had to throw that math out the window. There were too many good talk proposals.

Luckily the talk production team led by Teresa Giacomini was able to rejigger their recording schedules to make room for 6 more talks.

So the final POSETTE 2024 schedule will have:

42 talks total: 38 talks selected via the CFP process + 4 unique keynotes

And yes, we’ve already started discussions to figure out how we could support more talks in the schedule next year, for POSETTE 2025.

Here is POSETTE’s “CFP hockey stick” as evidence that many are deadline driven

Below is a chart of the CFP submissions by Day, so those of you who are deadline driven (I’m guilty as charged too) will see you’re not alone. In fact, more than 50% of the talk proposals were submitted in the last week of the CFP.

Side-note: When a talk proposal was submitted had zero bearing on the talk selection process. We didn’t start reviewing and voting until after the CFP was closed and all proposals were in the system.

Figure 1: This chart shows the number of talk proposals submitted (by day) into the CFP for POSETTE: An Event for Postgres 2024, with a big hockey stick of talk proposals submitted in the last 2 days. The 184 talk proposals were submitted by 120 unique speakers.

Transparency into talk selection for Postgres conferences

Transparency into the process used for talk selection can be helpful for Postgres conference speakers which is why I’m writing this post. And in particular, it helps to remind yourself that many of the Postgres conference CFPs are competitive. So if your talk proposal was one of the submissions that was declined (or placed on the reserve list) for this year’s POSETTE, please remember:

even the best speakers get rejected sometimes
even great talk proposals get rejected sometimes
don’t give up: please continue to submit your talk proposals—and if you want to be accepted in the future, do the work to get feedback, and make sure the submissions are on point for whatever each event is looking for

Speaking of which, there are probably some Postgres CFPs that are open right now! One big one that comes to mind is PGConf NYC 2024, happening in midtown Manhattan from Sep 30^th to Oct 2^nd 2024. The PGConf NYC 2024 CFP will be open until Jun 5^th 2024.

About the 2-phase POSETTE talk selection process

Our talk selection team used a 2-phase process for doing talk selection.

During Phase 1

I sent the talk selection team guidance for talk selection, which was basically just a refresher about the CFP: what the goal of the event is, what types of talks and speakers we were looking for, reminders that new speakers are welcome, clarifying that it’s OK to accept a talk from a speaker who had spoken at a previous Citus Con... since after all, a good speaker is a good speaker.
We each (separately, individually) reviewed all 184 talk proposals, along with any other information and links the Speakers provided about the proposal in the Additional Notes sections and the Speaker Experience section.
We used the “Comparison evaluation method” in Sessionize to rank 3 sessions at a time. This technique is based on the Elo rating system used in the world of chess. What’s good about it is that at any given point, you’re only looking at 3 proposals. You don’t have to remember how you voted on similar talk proposals 5 hours beforehand. Rather, at any point, you’re just ranking 3 talk proposals against each other.
After completing our Comparison Evaluation, we had a rough draft Phase 1 ranking to start applying holistic considerations to.

What’s a holistic consideration?

Holistic considerations are when we look at the “whole” of the schedule, and the desire to have a balanced and diverse set of topics, teaching styles, and speakers.

For example, we knew we wanted speakers from around the globe and didn’t want to accidentally end up with speakers from just one corner of the world.

And we knew we didn’t want 50% of the talks to be about AI in Postgres. But clearly AI is a hot topic, which is why there will be a handful of super-interesting talks about the role of AI in the Postgres ecosystem.

And we knew we wanted at least a few Postgres talks that were Django-focused or Rails-focused.

We also knew there is an expectation that Postgres experts who work at Microsoft will share their expertise at this event, particularly as it relates to the Azure managed services for PostgreSQL.

However, we also wanted to make space for Postgres users and open source community members outside of Microsoft too. After all, Postgres is a global community that spans countries, companies, and timezones! The final schedule is not yet published, but I predict that over 65% (or even 70%) of the sessions will have speakers from outside of Microsoft.

During Phase 2 of POSETTE talk selection

First I needed to know how many slots we had to fill, so I reached out to the POSETTE organizing team to find out whether we could accept more than the original plan for 32 talks! So glad they said yes and we were able to accept 38 talks.
I categorized the talk proposals in a spreadsheet so we could filter and view all of the Phase 1 rankings in a few different ways, to look at the holistic considerations. Then I made a few adjustments to balance the set of accepted talks—and delivered the Talk Selection Team a proposed draft of Phase 2 rankings, with all 184 of the talk proposals in the various states of Accept / Reserve / Decline DUP¹ / Decline.
Phase 2 voting involved a long ~3.5 hour meeting to decide on specific changes we each wanted to make to the final roster of accepted talks/speakers. To make a change to the Phase 2 rankings, we had to make a case for the change. As a team, we would discuss the proposed change, ask questions, advocate, and then vote. I abstained from voting during this part unless I was needed as a tie-breaker (but I did not abstain from discussion.) We did this over and over, about 12 times, until landing on the final schedule.

Thanks for all your CFP submissions!

Thank you again to everyone who submitted proposals into the CFP for POSETTE.

And big welcome to those of you whose talks are accepted to POSETTE. And to those of you whose talk proposals are on the Reserve list, we’ll reach out to you right away if a spot opens up in POSETTE for your proposal.

When will the POSETTE Schedule be announced?

As for the schedule, it gets announced on May 1^st 2024. That’s when you’ll be able to see all the talks in each of the 4 livestreams for this year’s POSETTE: An Event for Postgres, happening virtually on Jun 11-13.

We hope you will be as excited about these speakers and these Postgres talks as we are.

In the meantime if you want to proactively mark your calendar for the livestreams which are most convenient for your schedule, here you go:

Add Livestream 1 to your calendar: Tue Jun 11, 2024 | 8:00am-1:30pm PDT (UTC-7)
Add Livestream 2 to your calendar: Wed Jun 12, 2024 | 8:00am-1:30pm CEST (UTC+2)
Add Livestream 3 to your calendar: Wed Jun 12, 2024 | 8:00am-1:30pm PDT (UTC-7)
Add Livestream 4 to your calendar: Thu Jun 13, 2024 | 8:00am-1:30pm CEST (UTC+2)

You can also subscribe to POSETTE news if you want email notifications as things happen, such as when the schedule is announced or when the videos are published, or when next year’s event is announced and the CFP opens for 2025.

And of course you can always follow @PosetteConf on Threads or on X/Twitter, or on Mastodon by following @posetteconf@mastodon.social. The event hashtag is #PosetteConf.

Shout-out to transparency from other Postgres program committees

Several other PostgreSQL events this year have also shared info about their CFP submissions and talk selection processes. A few recent examples:

PGConf.dev 2024: I loved this blog post by Paul Ramsey about Building the PGConf.dev Programme about how the PGConf.dev talk selection was done, to pick 33 talks out of over 180 submissions.
pgDay Paris 2024 Program committee feedback: This PDF from the pgDay Paris 2024 program committee also sheds light into the talk selection process used to pick 12 talks out of 116 CFP submissions. A daunting task I’m sure.
PGConf.EU 2023: During the “So long and thanks for all the fish” session at the very end of PGConf.EU 2023 in Prague, Dave Page and Magnus Hagander put a slide up on the big screen that showed the number of CFP submissions by day over the course of the CFP, from CFP open to CFP close—not just for the 2023 event, but for every PGConf.EU since 2009². As you might imagine, the number of talk proposals has grown over the years commensurate with the size of PGConf.EU: The 2023 conference had over 360 submissions. With just 51 talks accepted, that's a ~14% acceptance rate for PGConf.EU 2023.

Footnotes

Decline DUP is a state for a session proposed by a speaker who has another talk accepted already. As soon as that speaker’s talk is accepted, all the rest of their talk proposals move into the “Decline DUP” state, since we try not to accept more than 1 talk from any given speaker. ↩
I have a photo of the PGConfEU slide about the CFP that Dave & Magnus put on screen, but don’t want to publish it without permission of the PGConf.EU team, since it’s their decision to publish it for the whole world and not just the ~500+ people who were in the room! ↩

This article was originally published on citusdata.com.