PGDay and FOSDEM Report from Kai

The following thoughts and comments are completely my personal opinion and do not reflect my employers thoughts or beliefs. If you don’t like anything in this post, reach out to me directly, so I can ignore it ;-).

I’m currently on the train on my way back home from FOSDEM this year and man, I’m exhausted but also happy. Why? Because the PG and FOSDEM community is just crazily awesome. While it’s always too much of everything, it’s at the same time inspiring to see so many enthusiastic IT nerds in one place, discussing and working on what they love - technology and engineering challenges.

PGDay FOSDEM

It all started with the usual PGDay FOSDEM the day before FOSDEM. Just in case - this has been happening for over 15 years and if you read this as a little blame that you didn’t know about it, that’s absolutely correct, as you should. It’s been a great event as usual: around 150 Postgres enthusiasts collaborating with each other. There was a great set of talks (no recording available, so yes, just join next year to not miss anything), as well as the hallway track conversations.

I was able and accepted again as a volunteer helping to make the event happen. While you might think, what’s special about it, I cannot express my gratitude for being able to help in any way. I simply love it. I’m not a great coder and I’ve never been one. I’m the one that looks at his code from a year ago and questions his technical existence and overall abilities if I should rather do something without touching a keyboard. What I am very well capable of is helping and supporting events. So it was my pleasure and I hope you do feel inspired to do the same next year or at any future event, not only in the Postgres ecosystem but in general. I strongly believe in this: doing good things will get you good things back.

After the wrap up to the PGDay and a great community dinner to collaborate and discuss further, I simply fell completely tired asleep, as the next day and FOSDEM was already waiting.

FOSDEM Day 1

The next day started with volunteering at the Postgres booth. As usual, Saturday was simply crazy. The Postgres swag like hoodies, caps, mugs, shirts, etc. was almost ripped out of our living hands. We had people waiting in line just to be able to get some swag. That fact alone shows how Postgres is viewed outside of the internal PG ecosystem community. How many times I heard the sentence “Thanks a lot for the great work you do” or “Postgres just works.” Yeah, we can all argue about the details and scenarios, but what this is about is the overall ease of use. Not everyone has terabytes of data or the most complex HA and replication scenarios on this planet. Some just need a functional and boring database and, in the best case, open source - and we all know, looking at real open source, not single-vendor owned, Postgres is the king and here to stay.

After all of this, I switched clothes and helped at the Percona booth. This wasn’t any less interesting in comparison to the PG booth. How many people stepped by, asking about what we do or thanking us for our projects and that we remained open source even after all these years and so many other companies not withstanding the quick and easy money to go with open-core or closed offerings. That’s the reason I’m proud to be part of this company. We walk the talk, since 20y and we have no incentive ever changing it. Thanks to Peter Zaitsev and Peter Farkas aka P² - for those who know, just know.

Following that I had the pleassure of being the Slonik guide again. What is a Slonik guide you might ask? Slonik, the mascot of Postgres (big blue elephant), needs some help and guidance while walking throught the crowd, as you can barely see anything while inside the costome. As usual, Slonik is a celebraty. Everyone wants a picture and taking their chance to photograph Slonik in the “wild”. As you can see, even MySQL’s Sakila couldn’t resist and had to take a picture with Slonik.

If you’re wondering, like many others, why Slonik and why an Elephant? Click here for some nice written down history lesson

After an exciting but also energy-draining day, I enjoyed a Percona crew/team dinner at BrewDog, with some great conversations and good food. Fun Fact: Did you know that BrewDog is also open source?. I couldn’t stay too long - sorry about that - but I had another date. The famous Floor Drees organized in tradition another karaoke event that I couldn’t miss. As I couldn’t make it to earlier versions of it, I definitely wanted to join. What should I say apart from thanks, Floor, for this great tradition. Yes, I had a hard time talking the next day, but damn I had fun singing Swedish, Polish, German, and English songs - and yes, I most likely misunderstood all of them as usual.

Too many songs for my voice and maybe a “soft drink or two” later, I felt in my bed like a stone, and couldn’t really accept the fact that my alarm clock went off almost five minutes later (at least that’s how it felt to me).

FOSDEM Day 2

No whining helped, just getting up and making myself ready for Day 2 of FOSDEM, which started with another round of volunteering at the Postgres and Percona booths. Both basically matched the previous feedback, apart from a definitely dropped and less crowded space - seems I wasn’t the only one singing last night ;-).

With that, thanks a lot to everyone making this great FOSDEM happen. I’ll try now if the Deutsche Bahn restaurant actually works this time, as I need coffee, a big one, maybe two… See all of you next year again or at another event this year.

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