Postgres and Open Source Experts

Welcome to Episode 10 of More Than a Refresh Presents: T3D Sessions

Command Prompt Founder Joshua "JD" Drake chats with Andrew Sullivan — President of Anvil Walrus Den Holdings, Inc. and longtime Internet engineer and policy leader.

Andrew explains how the open, decentralized Internet envisioned by its founders is being reshaped by the dominance of just a handful of tech giants. From Canada’s policy battles with Meta and Google to the way platforms have replaced the open web for billions of people, Andrew highlights what’s at stake.

Welcome to Episode 9 of More Than a Refresh Presents: T3D SessionsIn this episode, Command Prompt Founder Joshua “JD” Drake sits down with Hunter O’Brien, Jr Sysadmin/Jr DBA at Command Prompt, to talk about why monitoring isn’t one-size-fits-all.They explore how out-of-the-box tools often give shallow insights, and why teams should leverage their QA and test environments to improve production monitoring.Hunter shares examples like catching Postgres sequence wraparound, setting up smarter disk alerts, and customizing metrics so they actually reflect your environment — not just a template.If you’re running PostgreSQL in production, this short talk will help you turn your monitoring from noise into useful signals.

Welcome to Episode 8 of More Than a Refresh Presents: T3D Sessions, where host Joshua "JD" Drake chats with Silona Bonewald, Open Source Standards Pioneer and InnerSource Expert, about 10 things you didn’t know about blockchain. Silona takes a historical and systemic look at how blockchain emerged long before Bitcoin, and why its uses go far beyond cryptocurrency.

If you’ve only heard blockchain discussed in the context of crypto, this 10-minute talk will change how you see its history, challenges, and potential.

Welcome to Episode 6 of More Than a Refresh Presents: T3D Sessions
Command Prompt Founder Joshua “JD” Drake sits down with his colleague Brian Fehrle, DBA at Command Prompt, to dive into one of the toughest challenges for fast-growing applications: scaling your database without breaking the bank.

Brian shares real-world lessons on what happens when traffic spikes, why simply “throwing more hardware at it” is a dangerous (and expensive) band-aid, and how smarter approaches—like monitoring PostgreSQL catalog stats, tuning autovacuum, and implementing partitioning—can save organizations hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Welcome to Episode 5 of More Than a Refresh Presents: T3D Sessions

Command Prompt Founder Joshua "JD" Drake chats with Alan Chavez — Product Engineer specialized in Growth, and Chief Technology Officer at Torta Studios — about the practice of growth engineering and how data-driven decisions shape the success of new products.

Alan shares how retention and activation metrics drive real business outcomes, why retention curves are critical signals of product viability, and how activation benchmarks can determine long-term success.

Welcome to Episode 4 of More Than a Refresh Presents: T3D Sessions
Command Prompt Founder Joshua "JD" Drake chats with Greg Dostatni, DBA at Command Prompt, about the Kubernetes mantra “cattle, not pets” — and why that doesn’t always hold true when it comes to PostgreSQL databases.

They explore why stateless services scale easily in Kubernetes, but databases face serious challenges around failover, replication, and recovery. Greg makes the case that databases must be treated as pets — because when the data is gone, it’s game over.

If you’re running Postgres at scale or evaluating Kubernetes for databases, this short talk is for you.

Welcome to Episode 3 of More Than a Refresh Presents: T3D Sessions

Command Prompt Founder Joshua "JD" Drake sits down with Dr. Aaron N. Cutshall, Principal Data Architect at SQLRV, LLC., to discuss the power and performance benefits of set-based processing in relational databases like PostgreSQL.

With database experience dating back to the 1980s, Aaron shares why set-based thinking is disappearing from modern education, how treating a database like a file system hurts performance, and why leveraging the database engine for what it was designed to do can yield exponential speed gains.

From clear analogies—like magnets for sorting ball bearings—to real-world performance comparisons, this short talk challenges developers to rethink iterative, row-by-row approaches and embrace the efficiency of set-based operations.If you work with Postgres, big data, or want to sharpen your database fundamentals, this episode is for you.

Welcome to Episode 2 of More Than a Refresh Presents: T3D Sessions

Command Prompt Founder Joshua "JD" Drake chats with Victor Olex, Founder and CEO of SlashDB — a platform that instantly turns databases into RESTful APIs with support for JSON, XML, CSV, and even a full HTML-based UI for exploring and querying data.

They explore how SlashDB stands out in a crowded API ecosystem — including in comparison to tools like PostgREST, which expose PostgreSQL as a RESTful API — by offering a plug-and-play solution for accessing and managing data in multiple formats with no middleware coding needed.

Victor also shares details about SlashDB v2.0, its new React-based front end, enhanced modularity, and connection pooling for performance at scale. If you’re working with legacy systems, SaaS transitions, or data accessibility, this short talk is for you.

Learn more about SlashDB at https://slashdb.com/

T3D sessions — Short, 10-minute conversations, where people share something they're passionate about: a project, a hobby, a business idea, or advice worth hearing. In this episode, we’re joined by Tushar Pednekar from Synx Data Labs

Welcome to episode 52 of More Than a Refresh, where JD sits down with Patrick Broderick, Consulting Forester and Founder @ Eastside Forestry.

In this episode, Patrick and JD discuss passion vs. profit, why our forests need a guiding hand, and how both sides of the political aisle are thinking about conservation all wrong.

For educational resources on the state of our forests, to get involved in the conservation effort, or to make a donation to a non-profit that is doing the boots-on-the-ground work, please visit https://www.kittitasconservationtrust.org/donate/