pgConf.EU 2012 report

I just got back from my first European PostgreSQL conference since 2009.  If you missed it, you should be sorry you did.  Me, I mostly went because it was in Prague this year ... my sweetie really wanted to go, so off we went.

Nearly 300 people attended from what I heard, and the rooms were certainly full enough to support that estimate.  I got to see a lot of people I don't see at pgCon.  Highlights of the conference for me were:

• Hallway Track: getting to hash stuff out with Joe Celko, Peter Geoghegan, Rob Napier, Hannu Krosing, and Laurenz Albe, whom I never see otherwise.  Not all at the same time, of course!
• Playing Chess in the DB: Gianni Colli's pgChess extension and supporting presentation were excellent.  If you want evidence that you can do anything with Postgres, load up pgChess!
• GSOC Students: Atri Sharma, Alexander Korotkov, and Qi Huang all came to the conference, got to meet the community, and presented on their projects from Google Summer of Code.
• Lightning Talks: I love LTs, of course.  Harald did a particularly good job running them.
• Boat Party: Heroku rented a party boat to cruise up the Vltava River while we drank lots of Budvar and talked databases.

Of course, I presented stuff too: Elephants and Windmills, about some of our work in wind power, and I rehashed Aaron's PostgreSQL Drinking Game as a lightning talk at Dave's request.  Follow links for slides.






Thanks to the whole pgConf organizing crew for a great time, and for helping with getting the students to the conference.

Not sure I'll make it next year; October is often a busy time for other conferences, and I think it's more important for me to speak at non-Postgres conferences than to our existing community.  However, if they hold it in Barcelona, I might have to find a way to go.