These are filling up fast, so you will want to get your registration in.
Of note, Jim Mlodgenski maintainer of Stado (a proper, stable fork of GridSQL) will be teaching a Practical PostgreSQL Administration course. This is a full day course. Jim has graciously agreed to allow his percentage of the training revenue to be used for the feature development community initiative.
I received (reprinted with permission) this email from him today:
Hi Josh,
I am excited to say that the Schemaverse contest at DEFCON 19 went great! By the end of the tournament we had 108 registered players and over a million queries ran against the game in a four day span. Not only did the server do great as far as performance goes but the fact that it wasn't exploited during DEFCON is also an impressive stat to note.
I can also proudly tell you that your contribution was mentioned during my own two presentations, found in our How To guide, discussed at our contest booth (right by the front doors to the high traffic contest area! :D) AND was announced during the DEFCON 19 closing ceremonies during my allotted 2 minutes of speaking time.
The winner of your prize is Ian Haken (xxxx@xxxxxx.com). He kicked some butt in the competition and is certainly deserving of it. He has authorized me to send you his name and email. If you need any further details you can talk to him directly.
I likely sound like a broken record at this point but I really do need to say thanks again. Your contribution definitely helped us generate some interest in the first year of our competition and has helped us gain the respect needed to return with the contest for years to come.
Best Regards,
Josh (Abstrct) McDougall
http://schemaverse.com/
It was an honor to sponsor this contest. It is great little things like this that truly show the power of PostgreSQL in places you least expect.
Just a note, although the CFP is technically closed we have not closed the submission form, if you wanted to sneak in a talk or two you are welcome to.
May 25th: Talk submission opens August 12th: Talk submission closes (EXTENDED!) August 16th: Speaker notification
Help us continue to provide the overwhelming support to the PostgreSQL Community we always have. Submit your talk today!
A recurring question in our community is, "How do I get feature X sponsored?". It is a frustrating question because there are many variables that are at play anytime you do development within an Open Source project. Just because you can develop the feature doesn't mean that the community actually wants the feature. There is also the problem of raising money for a feature, a lot of very skilled hackers do not have the contacts or frankly person skills to "sell" their idea. Once you have the money even more problems arise, what if you underbid the project? What if you can't get everyone to pay that said they would? What if you miss a commit deadline and you have to wait for the next release to start development? The list goes on and on.
The traditional method of getting a feature developed would be to contact a company to do so. There are many people and companies that are used to working in the community, who know how to navigate the shark infested waters and are actively willing to work with you to get whatever feature done. Two of the most well known companies that do this are Command Prompt (duh moment), and 2ndQuadrant. We both have had much of the feature development we do for PostgreSQL sponsored by our customers (some of them, mutual customers). If you have a feature that you wish to get developed I highly recommend contacting one of us.
The traditional method can be too much for a single entity to bare. If you have a feature that is 15,000 USD to develop, that just might be out of the budget of the sponsoring company and it is certainly out of the budget of most individuals. In some communities there is a bounty system where multiple entities can chose to donate to get a bug squashed or a feature developed. Unfortunately, bounties can go on forever and very little money is normally raised. So what do you do?
The PostgreSQL Conference organizers team had an idea. What if, we take one of the resources we are rich in and use that resource in a manner that allows the community as a whole to benefit. What is this resource you might ask? Well people of course. Every 6 months the PostgreSQL Conference pulls more people into a single room than any other PostgreSQL event. What if the PostgreSQL Conference worked out a way to get those people to part with their hard earned dollars to get a feature developed? Imagine, one night instead of pub crawling if we put that 50.00, 100.00 or 250.00 to work for the betterment of PostgreSQL?
If every person that attended #PgEast gave 100.00 to feature development, we would have raised $23,000 dollars. That would have more than paid for the ALTER TABLE ALTER COLUMN work that Command Prompt would like to develop. So that is what we are going to do at #PgWest. This year at #PgWest there will be up to 5 proposals on the table to sponsor. Only one will be from Command Prompt, we would like the others to be from other developers and companies are welcome to submit as well. Further, #PgWest will also be donating a portion of the registration fees to get these features developed.
Stay tuned for how to submit your proposals.
PostgreSQL Conference West Call for Papers
What is #PgWest?
The theme for #PgWest is:
"Next Generation Data"
PostgreSQL Conference West is designed to get you up to speed on how to use the data existing already locked in your organization and cope with the massive amounts of data that is coming. Our industry today is at a major inflection point with Cloud Computing, Big Data, and GeoSpatial all converging into fascatining new architecture resulting in amazing new applications. The existing advanced features and some truely innovative features in PostgreSQL 9.1 will allow PostgreSQL to be the foundation of these new architectures.
#PgWest is the PostgreSQL West Coast conference (thus #PgWest) and it happens every year in the fall. Last year we held it in November, normally we hold it in October. This year, we are really close to October at September 27th - 30th in San Jose. #PgWest is also the single largest contributor of educational materials as well as the single largest direct financial contributor to the PostgreSQL community. If you are working with PostgreSQL, #PgWest is where you want to be in September, maybe. #PgWest is the largest PostgreSQL Conference in the United States and will continue to be as we experience easy double digit (not 10%, think 30% - 50%) growth every time we hold it.
Why should you go to Surge?
Surge, from all reports, rocks. It is a great conference full of very smart, fun people who are there for solutions to problems, not minutia political babble. If you want to go to Surge, go to Surge and I guarantee you, it will be worth your time and conference dollars.
Why are you telling me to go to Surge?
Surge is an annual East Coast conference, if you are torn between going to #PgWest and Surge, wait for #PgEast next March. The PostgreSQL Conference is a semi-annual conference with one conference #PgWest on the West coast and one #PgEast on the East coast. By the time Surge and #PgWest happen, #PgEast will only be six months away. I want Surge to be successful. If Surge was on the West coast, I would be reaching out to the Surge folks and trying to share facilities to save costs for everyone.
Time line:
May 25th: Talk submission opens
July 31st: Talk submission closes
August 8th: Speaker notification
This year we will be continuing our trend of covering the entire PostgreSQL ecosystem. We would like to see talks and tutorials on the following topics:
* General PostgreSQL:
* Administration
* Performance
* High Availability
* Migration
* GIS
* Integration
* Solutions and White Papers
* The Stack:
* Python/Django/Pylons/TurboGears/Custom
* Perl5/Catalyst/Bricolage
* Ruby/Rails
* Java (PLJava would be great)/Groovy/Grails
* Operating System optimization
(Linux/FBSD/Solaris/Windows)
* Solutions and White Papers
The website is not quite updated yet but should be this week. I will post an official announcement soon with a full wrap up of the Gartner BI conference.