This year I was happy to join the Swiss PGDay in Rapperswil Switzerland on the 26th and 27th of June! I was recommended for this PG conference by my co-worker Laurenz Albe, who writes brilliant blog posts, is always happy to help, and is incredibly knowledgeable. He told me it would be a smaller event within the PG conferences, but it is a must see!
Long story short - it was an incredibly warm, welcoming, and inspiring event!
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My journey to the event started on Wednesday the 25th from Vienna airport, with two colleagues of mine. The check-in and flight were so smooth it seemed like a dream, or maybe it just seemed like that because I napped the whole flight. After we landed in Zürich, we walked to the train station. A short trip of roughly an hour awaited us. Our final destination was exactly between the event venue and our hotel.
We were staying at the hotel Speer right across the train station. Some of us were even lucky enough to get rooms with a direct view of the campus of the OST, which was hosting the Swiss PGDay. However, when we checked in at the reception, a problem arose, as some room’s AC units weren’t working. My room was the only one with a working AC unit, which seemed just like a lucky foreshadowing of the following days. The rooms were beautiful and clean, and the personnel were really helpful and friendly as well. The best part about our hotel to me was that there was an Asian restaurant in the hotel, which served very delicious food.
On the day before the conference, some colleagues went to the speakers dinner hosted by the Swiss PGDay. What was I doing in the meantime? Getting food and getting some good night’s sleep, to calm my nerves before my first Postgres conference.
The first day of the PGDay started off with a nice conversation over breakfast with Laurenz. Afterwards, we made our way to the event location. We entered the registration/break room of the conference first, where we got badges with our names on it. There were about 125 attendees in total, with two rooms for talks and the registration/break room.
The break room slowly filled up, everybody engaging in conversation with fellow attendees like they had all known each other for years. All the people there were so approachable, even for me, a newcomer to the conference. I could chat with anybody over a coffee, ask for help or any question regarding Postgres and the conference. It felt incredibly welcoming, like an open floor to educate, explore, and even make mistakes, but all within a safe space! The most unexpected thing for me was that even older, more successful and experienced people asked me questions, trying to understand the younger generation and their problems and goals in the Postgres and job field. Despite expecting the conversation to be more one-sided, they told me everything I wanted to know about Postgres and technical themes and I told them about the obstacles of young people in the field.
On the first day I attended three talks that stuck out to me. First, the talk “Mach das nicht!” by Laurenz Albe, which was even better than expected! He knows how to keep a crowd engaged and interested during a talk, and I hope I can keep learning much from him in the future. Second best I liked “The Why and What of WAL” by Gianni Ciolli. He explained the history of WAL, why it was invented, how it is currently used, and what the future use for it might look like. Afterwards, I had a very interesting conversation with him over a cup of coffee. My third place from the first day was “Benchmarking - Eine unerwartete Reise” by Dirk Krautschick, where he spoke about the obstacles and challenges he faced during a task of gathering and comparing benchmarking data from different databases, including Postgres.
The second day was quite a rush; while I listened to Matthias Grömmers talk about graphic databases “Graphdatenbanken für alle - Warum PostgreSQL mit Apache AGE eine echte Alternative zu Neo4j ist”, I got an idea for a lighting talk. So I tried to work on my lighting talk and what it should look like after his talk. I asked other attendees of the conference for tips, tricks, and if they would appreciate a lightning talk from a newcomer. With positive feedback and a little coffee rush, I got some pictures of my dwarf rats, created a powerpoint, and came up with a presentation.
Before the lighting talk, I chose to listen to one more talk; I chose Pavlo Golubs “Customizing the Wordle Game Experience with PostgreSQL”. I had heard some good feedback about the talk, because he had given it at other conferences before, so I wanted to make sure to attend it. It was even better than expected! He talked about how he created the game in PostgreSQL and at the end of the talk we were even able to play the PostgreSQL Wordle together!
The ligthing talks edged closer, and as I awaited my turn I could only think of my grandpa, who always told me to learn new things, even if I make mistakes at the beginning. So when it was my time to break the ice on Postgres conference talks, I had confidence, since it would be a learning experience either way.
My talk was a story about Karl the dwarf rat, who wants to use a social media app with Postgres as the backend on Web2. However, after uploading a selfie of himself on the app, he learns that the provider, a company with a bad owner, Icarus the evil dwarfrat, sold his data for money to other companies. Karl gets angry. He thinks of another way he can use social media, while still having control over his own data. Then, Karl finds a Web3 social media app, which also uses Postgres as the backend. Now Karl has, with this decentralized approach, his own command over the data he shares online and doesn’t need to worry about the bad Icarus anymore.
It wasn’t the most informative presentation, but it made the crowd laugh. I had my first experience holding a talk and I could gather some confidence in talking before the Postgres attendees. They were all pretty nice about the presentation and some people even told me that they liked the lighting talk.
I am very thankful for each member of the Postgres community who helped make this event happen! This must have been a big challenge to handle and organise. The location was nice and tidy, there was always a snack or coffee available, you could always ask somebody in case of questions, and you could talk to anyone! The attendees, speakers, and even the sponsors were so nice to talk to and helpful! Hopefully I can attend more Postgres events and become more and more of a Postgres community member.
All roads lead to Rome! So does every conference for Postgres. The next Postgres conference I will attend will be the PGDay Austria in Vienna. I am already excited for the talks, the attendees, and the overall experience. Every piece of experience is knowledge you can gather for yourself, and if I may say so, Postgres and its community events have a lot of experiences and people to learn from.
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