Magnus Hagander's PostgreSQL blog

This blog seems to be turning into a PGDay blog rather than a general PostgreSQL blog. But I promise I'll get back to some more technical content soon - or at least that I'll try.

A couple of days ago we closed the feedback system from PGDay.EU 2010, and have been busy tallying the result. It turns out that my constant nagging on people to please fill out the feedback worked - we got a lot more feedback this year than last year. That also means there's a lot more work in going through mainly all the freetext comments - that's the price I have to pay, I guess. In total we had around 60 people who left "full conference feedback", which is almost double from last year. It's still only just over 25% of the attendees, so it could certainly be even better yet. We also had 86 people who left session feedback (this is around 40% and a much better number of course) for a total of 570 session feedback entries.

So what did the feedback say - time for some pie charts! We've actually seen a slight decrease in the ratings for topic importance. This may well be because we've broadened the topics more. We're still seeing very good grades for content quality, which reinforces my feeling that our speakers deliver very valuable content to the attendees, and that the conference is well worth attending. (As a note to readers - I've had several people point out to me that german people are used to rating 1 being the highest and 5 being the lowest, so there may be some skewing in the voting because of this. Even though the pages very clearly stated that 5 is the highest, this is something we need to make even more clear for next year)

We spent a lot of time trying to put together the puzzle that is the schedule for so many talks over so short time. It turns out that we did a good job in general, but there was a large amount of overlap where people wanted to go to many talks at the same time. We also received a lot of comments in the freetext fields about this, and this is definitely something that we will consider for next year. It would probably have been better content-wise to have three tracks spread over three days (maybe not entirely complete) rather than four tracks over two days, but that would also have increased many of the costs with 33% which is a lot of money...

Of course, the "Hallway track" is a very important part of any conference like this, and this year we collected specific feedback on this side. I'm very happy to see that more than two thirds of our attendees rated the learning part of the hallway track as 4 or 5, and well over half found it a good way to connect with other people in the community!

If these numbers don't make you interested in next years PostgreSQL Conference Europe then, really, you're reading them wrong...

That's enough pie-charts for one post. I will follow this up with more feedback summary on our speakers and on our venue once it's ready.

The registration deadline for pgday.eu has been extended. Instead of ending today, the new deadline is Saturday, December 4, 17:00 CET. There are, however, a few restrictions with this extension:

• After today, November 26th at midnight, we will only be able to process creditcard/paypal payments, or cash payments at the registration desk.
• After 17:00 CET today, November 26, the pre-paid discounted internet access for people not staying at the hotel will no longer be available. Internet access is still included in your room rate if you book with the PGEUROPE group rate.

Once this second deadline expires on the December 4th, you are still welcome to attend the conference - but in this case, you have to pay the higher price for a pay at the door registration. Even if you choose this, we do appreciate if you register online first (choosing that rate), so we can prepare a badge and conference pack for you.

If you have any further questions, please contact us at contact@pgday.eu.

Initial numbers from our registration database for PGDay.EU 2010 is showing that we are expanding our international reach more than last year. In 2009, 60% of the attendees were from France, which is where the conference was held. This year the number of attendees from Germany is "down" to about 50%, meaning we have more people from other countries. The total number of countries is down one though - we have no registration from Nicaragua this year! Even our attendance from the US is up to three more people.

Pardon my horrible openoffice.org chart, but here is the current spread of attendees. Where does your country stack up? If it's not Germany, then it's not high enough - time to suggest/encourage/force/trick your friends and colleagues to register and attend! (And if it's Germany - hey, can you really let the French get to 60% last year and not beat them this year?)

Registration for PGDay.EU 2010 closes soon! Don't miss out on the biggest PostgreSQL event in Europe this year, and all the great presentations!

PGDay Europe 2010 is drawing closer - only two weeks until kickoff! Some of the training is filled up, but we still have space for some more people on the general conference (and some of the training sessions). It's not too late - go register!

I'll be spending much of the time working with the conference administration, hopefully making things flow. But with a schedule like this, there are some sessions that I'm definitely not going to miss:

• The keynote, of course. Simon Phipps is a well known and very experienced Open Source speaker and worker. He'll be talking about "Back to the Future of Open Source", and it will be very interesting to hear his perspective on this, having been on the inside of for example Sun.
• Play chess against PostgreSQL (and get beaten) with Gianni Colli. You just need to read the title, of course I have to see it Unfortunately it's up against PgOpenCL, but that's what happens when you have so many good talks.
• I think I can skip out of Simon Riggs talk about replication - I need to have my class for Wednesday ready before this anyway. But I highly recommend it to anybody who is planning to deploy the 9.0 replication features.
• That afternoon I'll be busy with the conference, and won't get to go to any of the talks... I'll definitely miss the Concurrency talk, the clustering and the psycopg one.
• Tuesday, I can't quite decide between Developing PostgreSQL performance or Graph Constraints, and Why You Care. But we put two such great talks early in the morning to make sure everybody gets up!
• Next I'd go to Stefans talk about benchmarking, but it's in German, so I think I'm better off not doing that. It'll be the case-study of the large deployment that Bull did for the French social services instead.
• Before lunch, I think it'll be Postgres-XC. I've been to a lot of conferences now where Mason has held a talk about this, and never actually managed to see one...
• After lunch, I'm again stuck at doing work (sheesh). If you haven't seen it already, I recommend Bruce's MVCC talk. There are other good ones as well, of course, but Bruce does a very good "deep introduction" to PostgreSQL's implementation of MVCC.
• Obviously there's no skipping out on the closing keynote. Ed usually does a good job - I expect no less this time.

With this much great content, it's hard to choose - but those are my choices for PGDay. (I of course reserve the right to change my mind, depending on how late the speaker left from the party the day before)

What are yours?

And if you haven't registered yet, you still have a few more days. Don't miss your chance to attend the biggest PostgreSQL event in Europe this year! Registering is easy and quick - not to mention cheap!

It's finally time - we've opened up for registrations for PGDay Europe 2010.

We are not finished with the schedule yet, so if you are looking for a specific talk, you'll have to wait a while longer. Work is in progress though - we've already notified some of our speakers that they are approved. However, if you submitted a talk and have not heard from us yet, it's not yet time to panic. The reason we haven't published a schedule yet is that we're working on ways to include more talks!

So why would you want to go register now, even though the schedule isn't posted yet? Well, first of all, the schedule is looking like it'll be at least as good as last year. We have several well known good speakers from the community showing up again, and also some fresh faces with interesting topics!

But more importantly, this year, we've added training for the first time. Training will run on the wednesday (the main conference being monday and tuesday). This training is *limited availability* (25 seats per session), and *extra cost*. You pay this at registration. And the seats are handed out on a first come/first serve basis. So if you want to attend the training, now is the time to register! The training schedule *is* final, so be sure not to pick two training sessions that run at the same time.

The conference this year will be held at the Millennium Hotel in Stuttgart. We do recommend that you reserve a room with that hotel, as we have a group rate there, and it's conveniently located (hint: no need to go outside to get from A to B). But using this hotel is not mandatory - you can book your room anywhere you like. However, it should be noted that *wireless internet* is only included if you booked a room *using our group rate*. If you don't, you can pre-purchase the access when you register, or you can solve it yourself for example using 3G data. We will *not* have the ability to provide or sell you wireless access unless you pre-purchase it!

With all that said, head off and register!

PGDay.EU 2010 has finally been announced. It will be in Stuttgart, Germany, on December 6th to 8th. More details available on the conference website.

We have also sent out our call for papers. If you have done something interesting with PostgreSQL, please go ahead and submit a talk! We are currently looking for talks in both English and German!

We've finally opened the merchandise store for PostgreSQL Europe. It's a chance for everybody who haven't had the chance to attend one of the many PostgreSQL events where we've been selling mugs and shirts for a long time, as well as a chance to get some stuff that we haven't previously had available.

There's close to zero earnings for PostgreSQL Europe off these purchases - we're trying to make it as cheap as we can for everybody. You are of course most welcome to donate some extra to the project, should you wish.

The elections for PostgreSQL Europe are now closed, and the full results are published on http://www.postgresql.eu/elections/2/.

The PostgreSQL Europe Board would like to welcome our new board members Dave Page and Guillaume Lelarge, as well as welcome back Andreas Scherbaum who was re-elected.

I would also like to personally thank Gabriele Bartolini, member of our original board and one of the initiators for PostgreSQL Europe, who will now be leaving the board. Gabriele has been instrumental in getting PostgreSQL Europe off the ground, and I'm sure we will see much of him within our community in the future as well, even if he is not serving on the board.

A total of 20 persons voted in the elections, out of the 39 that were eligible.

Thanks to all who participated in the elections!

If you have any further questions around this, please feel free to contact me or any of the other board members (old or new) directly.

We have now opened the nominations period for the upcoming elections to the board of PostgreSQL Europe. It's simple - anybody who is a member of PostgreSQL Europe (if you're in Europe and doing PostgreSQL stuff, as a developer, consultant or just a user, you really should be. It's easy!) can be a candidate to be elected. You just need to be nominated by one member (who can be yourself, just to let people know you are interested in being a candidate) and seconded by one other member - that's all.

So if you're interested in this, or know somebody who should be, post your nominations to the pgeu-general mailinglist. For full details about the procedure, see this email.

Those of you who were at FOSDEM, heard my bold announcement that we will finally get off the ground and hold proper elections fort he board of PostgreSQL Europe, per a decision made the day before. Now, when we got home and read up on the statutes that govern the organization, it turns out we actually can't do that. The way forward that we've found around this, is to actually change the statutes to make these things possible.

To change the statutes, we need a majority of the General Assembly, made out of the active members, to agree on a change. It turns out that given how the statues are formed, there are currently only four members in PostgreSQL Europe, and these four members are the original board. Because of this, it was pretty easy to change the statutes (we only needed 3 of these people to agree, which we all did). And this we have done. The reason for changing them is to make sure we can get a working system going where we have more people involved. But in order to make that work, we first had to make this small-group decision.

The changes have just been published to www.postgresql.eu, and should show up any minute there. The changes that have been made are:

• We have removed the definition of "Benefactor members", to keep things simple. We are keeping Active and Honorary members.
• Created a membership fee, to control who is a member.
• Change so that any resignations are handled by the Board, not the President, to make things more flexible.
• Add that a membership is terminated if the fee isn't paid.
• Added mailinglist as an approved way to do meetings. Since this is how we do most of our communicating, it made no sense not to have it on there.
• Moved the budget out of the GA, it's just a tool for the executive board. Keeps down the paperwork.
• Add a defined way for the GA to vote on issues, using a web based system (to be developed).
• Since we will be voting over the internet, remove the ability to vote by proxy.

As you can see, the main change is the creation of a membership fee. This is the most controversial change. The idea here is that it will be a nominal fee (€10 for two years of membership - though that exact amount isn't part of the statutes, to keep flexibility). This will make it possible for us to have an actual membership list, which will be the grounds for who can vote.

The current method for handling membership requires the signing and sending around of forms on paper (yes! Actual dead trees!). Given how our organization works, this simply does not work. That is the main driver behind us changing this.

We did evaluate several other ways to deal with membership, ranging from things like requiring physical meetings (not really a good idea for a pan-European organization) to fancy PGP signing schemes (which really is way too complex for a lot of people). Our conclusion was that this was at least the least bad way to do it.

We are going to build on this shortly with more information about exactly how the elections are going to be held. The plan is still to have completed this years election before the summer, and we are well on track to make that goal.

The changes to the English statutes are of course available in our git repository. The binding french changes will be made shortly.

If you have any changes or comments, please direct them at the pgeu-general@postgresql.org mailinglist, or directly contact the board.