00:00:00.099 --> 00:00:00.799 Nikolay: Hello, hello. 00:00:00.800 --> 00:00:02.060 This is PostgresFM. 00:00:02.220 --> 00:00:04.300 I don't remember episode number. 00:00:04.860 --> 00:00:05.360 Michael: 74. 00:00:06.340 --> 00:00:07.260 Nikolay: Thank you, Michael. 00:00:07.360 --> 00:00:10.480 This is Michael, by the way, and my name is Nikolay, as usual. 00:00:10.760 --> 00:00:12.600 Only once we had a guest, right? 00:00:12.880 --> 00:00:16.080 Maybe it's time to invite more, but it's a different story. 00:00:16.300 --> 00:00:23.940 So, this is PostgresFM and we do it since summer 2022, not skipping 00:00:23.940 --> 00:00:28.660 any weeks and I'm still surprised that we didn't skip any weeks. 00:00:28.660 --> 00:00:29.360 It's good. 00:00:29.760 --> 00:00:33.920 And today this topic was again suggested from outside. 00:00:34.240 --> 00:00:35.880 We didn't invent it, right? 00:00:36.280 --> 00:00:40.460 Michael: Yeah, I chose or insisted on this topic this week. 00:00:40.640 --> 00:00:44.740 We're going to go along with the monthly blogging event, PGSQL 00:00:45.060 --> 00:00:45.560 Phriday. 00:00:46.300 --> 00:00:51.740 Pavlo from Cybertec has suggested the topic events or Postgres 00:00:51.740 --> 00:00:53.080 events more specifically. 00:00:53.800 --> 00:00:54.960 Nikolay: Not event queue, right? 00:00:54.960 --> 00:00:55.860 No, not events. 00:00:56.920 --> 00:01:00.980 Michael: No, in-person conferences, online events. 00:01:01.860 --> 00:01:05.280 This quite broad topic and we could go in any direction you want 00:01:05.280 --> 00:01:05.640 with this. 00:01:05.640 --> 00:01:08.320 I've got a few things I'd love to talk about and ask you questions 00:01:08.320 --> 00:01:10.200 about. You've hosted meetups in the past. 00:01:10.200 --> 00:01:12.420 We've mentioned it briefly on the podcast before. 00:01:12.700 --> 00:01:16.420 So yeah, I'd love to get your perspective from an organization 00:01:16.860 --> 00:01:18.060 point of view as well. 00:01:18.400 --> 00:01:21.600 But yeah, speaking, we've both spoken at in-person and online 00:01:21.600 --> 00:01:24.900 events, both attended and listened to people's talks. 00:01:24.900 --> 00:01:25.620 So yeah. 00:01:25.960 --> 00:01:32.480 Nikolay: Yeah, this is an interesting area, which I have a very opinionated 00:01:32.780 --> 00:01:38.300 point of view on this topic and I think for me it started back 00:01:38.300 --> 00:01:41.460 to 2006-2007, actually earlier. 00:01:41.740 --> 00:01:47.980 So offline events are fun, They are good, but I don't look at 00:01:47.980 --> 00:01:48.780 them the same anymore. 00:01:48.820 --> 00:01:52.840 And this is funny, right now we have an AWS huge event happening, 00:01:52.840 --> 00:01:54.720 many Postgres folks are there, 00:01:55.440 --> 00:01:56.180 Michael: right? Re:Invent. 00:01:56.960 --> 00:02:01.180 Nikolay: Re:Invent, yeah, they just announced Limitless Aurora 00:02:01.180 --> 00:02:04.320 with Postgres support first and MySQL coming later. 00:02:04.400 --> 00:02:04.740 Yeah. 00:02:04.740 --> 00:02:08.900 And people are already joking about limitless bills, right? 00:02:09.520 --> 00:02:09.960 See? 00:02:09.960 --> 00:02:10.460 I haven't 00:02:10.460 --> 00:02:10.960 Michael: seen that. 00:02:10.960 --> 00:02:11.700 That's great. 00:02:12.260 --> 00:02:12.340 Nikolay: Yep. 00:02:12.340 --> 00:02:16.140 See, I have all news not coming there, right? 00:02:16.320 --> 00:02:19.640 For knowledge, we don't need to go anywhere anymore because the 00:02:19.640 --> 00:02:22.860 Internet is delivering knowledge better. 00:02:23.300 --> 00:02:27.480 I observe also hybrid approach when we go to offline event, but 00:02:27.480 --> 00:02:31.860 you consume knowledge mostly through computer being at offline 00:02:31.880 --> 00:02:32.380 event. 00:02:32.720 --> 00:02:35.140 Offline event is good to meet people, right? 00:02:35.580 --> 00:02:39.320 But I think, I still think there should be some new type of event 00:02:40.160 --> 00:02:45.720 invented to support human meetings, you know, just for like collaborations, 00:02:45.920 --> 00:02:51.500 so not in the form of sharing knowledge like 1 guy on stage with 00:02:51.500 --> 00:02:54.960 slide deck, because I think, like it's my opinion, but let's 00:02:54.960 --> 00:02:59.340 start from the past and maybe by the end of this podcast, some 00:02:59.340 --> 00:03:00.640 people will understand me better. 00:03:00.640 --> 00:03:05.500 I know not everyone will agree with me and I also enjoy meeting 00:03:05.500 --> 00:03:06.600 with people in person. 00:03:07.000 --> 00:03:09.600 But for knowledge it's not efficient. 00:03:09.600 --> 00:03:11.140 This is my position anymore. 00:03:11.940 --> 00:03:14.560 And meetups are kind of dead almost, unfortunately. 00:03:14.620 --> 00:03:20.500 There are some meetups, well, golden era of meetups is behind 00:03:20.500 --> 00:03:21.600 us, unfortunately. 00:03:21.900 --> 00:03:26.600 When, you know, like 200 people came and company hosting says, 00:03:26.840 --> 00:03:31.980 we don't have coffee break supplies anymore, let's close registration. 00:03:32.160 --> 00:03:36.240 I say, forget about coffee, let's bring more people. 00:03:36.420 --> 00:03:38.740 They're coming, coming because of Postgres's popularity. 00:03:39.240 --> 00:03:40.880 It happened many years ago. 00:03:41.460 --> 00:03:43.180 So, where to start? 00:03:43.780 --> 00:03:47.800 Michael: Well, you mentioned '06, '07 as a specific point for you. 00:03:47.800 --> 00:03:49.040 What was happening then? 00:03:49.640 --> 00:03:54.220 Nikolay: It was actually the first event, the first serious event for 00:03:54.220 --> 00:03:55.740 me was when I was speaking. 00:03:56.200 --> 00:03:59.700 It was actually, it was about databases but not about PostgreSQL. 00:04:00.180 --> 00:04:04.400 And I was presenting some, I don't remember, maybe my master 00:04:04.400 --> 00:04:08.660 thesis materials in Kyiv, Ukraine, actually. 00:04:08.940 --> 00:04:10.920 It was some scientific conference, actually. 00:04:10.920 --> 00:04:13.640 It's kind of, not scientific, academic conference. 00:04:14.380 --> 00:04:18.000 Yeah, it was kind of fun to come there to speak. 00:04:18.000 --> 00:04:21.060 It was very long ago, 2005, maybe '04 even. 00:04:21.600 --> 00:04:22.620 So, yeah. 00:04:22.900 --> 00:04:29.340 Then 2007 was a turning point for Russia and that part of the world 00:04:29.340 --> 00:04:34.040 when somehow a few things started to happen. 00:04:34.700 --> 00:04:40.240 First of all, I chose Postgres in 2006, and then I participated 00:04:40.460 --> 00:04:45.520 a little bit in XML development and visited PGCon in 2007. 00:04:46.520 --> 00:04:52.160 And in the same year, 2007, we started, not we, one guy actually 00:04:52.160 --> 00:04:54.880 started HighLoad conference in Russia. 00:04:55.840 --> 00:04:57.040 His name is Oleg. 00:04:59.080 --> 00:05:03.160 Oleg Bunin And another Oleg, Bartonov, I also met him around that 00:05:03.160 --> 00:05:06.780 time because Oleg Bartonov is, you know, like Teodor Sigaev and 00:05:06.780 --> 00:05:11.700 then Alexander Korotkov, these are big Russian names. 00:05:12.180 --> 00:05:17.420 Maybe after Vadim Mikheev, who was before them, working on WAL. 00:05:17.620 --> 00:05:21.920 These guys worked on full-text search, GIN indexes, GiST indexes, 00:05:21.960 --> 00:05:26.620 A lot of such stuff related to performance and how we retrieve 00:05:27.380 --> 00:05:29.120 data faster. 00:05:30.060 --> 00:05:32.580 And so it was happening very fast in 2007. 00:05:32.760 --> 00:05:35.660 I also had my first startup and I used Postgres a lot. 00:05:35.660 --> 00:05:39.440 And then this conference series started, High Load. 00:05:39.840 --> 00:05:45.360 And since I just visited PGCon, I immediately invited Bruce Momjian. 00:05:45.660 --> 00:05:49.200 Michael: For anybody that doesn't know, PGCon is or was hosted 00:05:49.200 --> 00:05:54.820 in Canada yearly and is very Postgres developer-centric, I believe. 00:05:55.680 --> 00:05:59.160 So for people working on the Postgres internals itself, it's 00:05:59.240 --> 00:06:02.500 probably the best conference each year for them, would you say? 00:06:02.780 --> 00:06:06.180 Nikolay: It's not kind of best, but it was the first in 2006, 00:06:06.380 --> 00:06:11.980 so I visited the second one in 2007 in Ottawa, and this year I 00:06:11.980 --> 00:06:15.600 visited the last one, so no more PGCon, unfortunately. 00:06:16.060 --> 00:06:18.660 Michael: But isn't it being taken over by new people? 00:06:19.300 --> 00:06:19.800 Nikolay: Yeah. 00:06:20.820 --> 00:06:26.200 Dan, who was the organizer of PGCon, said that the successor 00:06:26.200 --> 00:06:29.440 of it will be in Vancouver, I guess, next year. 00:06:29.440 --> 00:06:33.700 And a different set of people will be organizing, and the name 00:06:33.700 --> 00:06:37.640 will be changed to PGConf something, I don't remember. 00:06:37.660 --> 00:06:41.400 But anyway, my decision right now, I'm on the stage, like we're 00:06:41.400 --> 00:06:44.880 jumping between past and current and trade side. 00:06:45.040 --> 00:06:48.380 For me, I said no more offline events for a couple of years. 00:06:48.760 --> 00:06:50.040 I don't see the point. 00:06:50.280 --> 00:06:53.900 Last three events were terrible in terms of efficiency for me. 00:06:54.380 --> 00:06:56.940 And well, I'm not complaining. 00:06:57.040 --> 00:06:58.380 I just, this is my position. 00:06:58.660 --> 00:07:02.660 I prefer sharing knowledge online right now and consuming and 00:07:02.660 --> 00:07:03.580 learning online. 00:07:04.060 --> 00:07:08.540 I still miss meeting some people, but I can organize it separately. 00:07:09.280 --> 00:07:10.460 So this is my vision. 00:07:10.480 --> 00:07:15.620 So back to 2007, we started again, not we, I just was like a 00:07:15.620 --> 00:07:19.760 member of committee from the beginning, responsible for the database 00:07:19.760 --> 00:07:23.480 topic, and I invited Bruce Momjian right away because I just met 00:07:23.480 --> 00:07:25.360 him in Ottawa. 00:07:25.360 --> 00:07:30.120 So he visited Moscow, and since then he visited many, many times, 00:07:30.140 --> 00:07:30.900 High Load. 00:07:30.920 --> 00:07:36.840 And at the same time, one guy and I, we were working on our startup 00:07:37.000 --> 00:07:37.500 together. 00:07:37.660 --> 00:07:40.700 We started a meetup in also 2007, 2008. 00:07:40.960 --> 00:07:43.120 In Moscow, we were a Russian user group. 00:07:43.420 --> 00:07:49.340 I later renamed it from Postgres Russia to RuPostgres when I realized 00:07:49.600 --> 00:07:53.220 that half of people speaking Russian are outside Russia. 00:07:53.940 --> 00:07:55.300 So it became RuPostgres. 00:07:56.920 --> 00:08:02.560 And this story continued for me with some ups and downs till 00:08:02.560 --> 00:08:09.520 2022, February 24, when the war started, like the war started 00:08:09.520 --> 00:08:15.060 earlier in 2014, but a new phase invasion started, and we had 00:08:15.060 --> 00:08:21.000 a disagreement internally because my position always was you cannot 00:08:21.460 --> 00:08:26.760 split completely politics from regular work and we need to be 00:08:26.760 --> 00:08:27.260 careful. 00:08:28.280 --> 00:08:31.980 The main organizer and the absolute majority of program committee 00:08:32.280 --> 00:08:37.400 were against me and we didn't agree that like they started to 00:08:37.960 --> 00:08:39.440 delete my messages internally. 00:08:39.720 --> 00:08:41.040 Michael: Sorry to hear that, yeah. 00:08:41.040 --> 00:08:44.340 Nikolay: And I exited the program committee like a few days after 00:08:44.340 --> 00:08:45.180 the war started. 00:08:45.560 --> 00:08:52.320 So but anyway, the experience I had running these meetups offline, 00:08:52.760 --> 00:08:57.120 again, up to a couple of hundred people, it's huge. 00:08:57.120 --> 00:09:01.960 It was insane, like 2015, maybe 16, when Postgres popularity 00:09:02.040 --> 00:09:03.800 started to grow significantly. 00:09:04.160 --> 00:09:06.300 Michael: So were these 1 day events? 00:09:06.340 --> 00:09:08.980 Were they evening events like meetup type things? 00:09:09.640 --> 00:09:12.180 Nikolay: It never was more than 3 hours. 00:09:12.880 --> 00:09:15.960 And sometimes I combined a couple of topics, 3 topics. 00:09:16.820 --> 00:09:22.320 The actually let's cover a few like 2008 we had very interesting 00:09:22.340 --> 00:09:22.840 event. 00:09:22.840 --> 00:09:25.220 It was recorded again in Moscow. 00:09:26.040 --> 00:09:30.440 After that, I was so exhausted because I thought I'm a very bad 00:09:30.440 --> 00:09:34.600 organizer and I don't understand technical details and like I 00:09:34.600 --> 00:09:35.600 cannot do it anymore. 00:09:35.600 --> 00:09:39.940 But later people, many years later people watched this recording 00:09:39.940 --> 00:09:44.360 and said, oh, this was a real amazing event. 00:09:44.680 --> 00:09:48.240 What I did, I invited 3 guys from the Postgres community and 3 guys 00:09:48.240 --> 00:09:51.540 from the MySQL community, including Peter Zaitsev. 00:09:53.100 --> 00:09:57.080 And we had kind of battle, Postgres versus MySQL. 00:09:57.440 --> 00:09:58.760 That was fun. 00:09:59.260 --> 00:10:00.300 But I was exhausted. 00:10:00.300 --> 00:10:03.520 After that, I took a break, like a couple of years, no events, 00:10:03.520 --> 00:10:05.580 and then only relaunched it. 00:10:05.740 --> 00:10:07.980 Not a couple, many years of break. 00:10:08.100 --> 00:10:13.040 Then I watched how Josh Berkus is running meetups in San Francisco, 00:10:13.340 --> 00:10:17.740 and I realized that it can be kind of interesting again. 00:10:18.160 --> 00:10:20.920 And then I returned to Moscow for like a few months. 00:10:20.920 --> 00:10:25.580 Then I started visiting, it was like, due to work and life reasons. 00:10:26.580 --> 00:10:31.360 It was already after the invasion of Crimea, but complicated things. 00:10:31.360 --> 00:10:36.980 But I relaunched meetups there and immediately got huge attention 00:10:37.300 --> 00:10:38.500 after many years of... 00:10:38.500 --> 00:10:43.920 You know, like before 2014-15 Postgres was like kind of an outsider. 00:10:45.280 --> 00:10:49.120 It was like you need to prove why you choose it because it's 00:10:49.120 --> 00:10:52.080 complicated, it's hard to maintain and so on. 00:10:52.120 --> 00:10:56.780 It's still hard to maintain, that's why RDS and others have their 00:10:57.180 --> 00:11:02.220 value delivery, maintenance headache is solved. 00:11:02.500 --> 00:11:08.080 But in 2014-15, probably because not only because of JSON, I 00:11:08.080 --> 00:11:11.420 think also because of RDS, popularity started to grow. 00:11:11.720 --> 00:11:12.540 Yes, yes. 00:11:12.840 --> 00:11:16.040 And I felt like, you know, like this, I need to choose some, 00:11:16.040 --> 00:11:18.580 you know, how to organize meetup once again. 00:11:18.760 --> 00:11:20.040 Well, I have some connections. 00:11:20.080 --> 00:11:25.060 I just ask some people who work at big companies, can you host? 00:11:25.360 --> 00:11:28.860 They are ready to host because, you know, they want to compete 00:11:28.860 --> 00:11:33.480 and show how good their offices are, you know, because for them it's 00:11:34.460 --> 00:11:36.840 advertising for HR purposes. 00:11:36.980 --> 00:11:40.460 Michael: Anybody hiring is a really good way of showing off. 00:11:40.640 --> 00:11:41.820 Nikolay: Yeah, yes, exactly. 00:11:41.880 --> 00:11:44.440 And you can just use it if you want to organize. 00:11:45.060 --> 00:11:48.220 Currently, the situation is different because of COVID and remote-focused 00:11:48.560 --> 00:11:49.060 companies. 00:11:49.740 --> 00:11:53.160 This is another reason why my Postgres meetups are declining. 00:11:53.740 --> 00:11:55.240 We can discuss it a little bit later. 00:11:55.240 --> 00:12:00.340 So what happened, I decided, okay, it will be Yandex. 00:12:00.360 --> 00:12:03.380 And I said, okay, how many people? 00:12:03.480 --> 00:12:07.060 They said, okay, maximum 80 people maybe. 00:12:07.060 --> 00:12:08.410 I said, okay. 00:12:08.620 --> 00:12:12.260 And then they quickly asked me to close registration because 00:12:12.260 --> 00:12:17.320 out of, you know, coffee cups or something like I said, coffee, 00:12:17.320 --> 00:12:18.300 it's not needed. 00:12:18.320 --> 00:12:20.640 Like we can do without coffee, you know. 00:12:20.740 --> 00:12:27.680 And then they asked a question I could not forget they said this 00:12:27.680 --> 00:12:31.160 is your event of course but can we like grab like 10 minutes 00:12:31.160 --> 00:12:35.660 and also present something that will be about Postgres. I said, 00:12:35.660 --> 00:12:37.540 well, of course, what will it be? 00:12:37.540 --> 00:12:40.760 They said, this is how we migrated the Yandex.Mail from Oracle 00:12:40.760 --> 00:12:41.440 to Postgres. 00:12:42.740 --> 00:12:46.820 I started to feel like, wow, this should be not 10 minutes only. 00:12:47.120 --> 00:12:50.740 And then Vladimir Borodin, who hired Andrei Borodin later, which 00:12:50.740 --> 00:12:54.200 is interesting, just coincidence, last names the same. 00:12:54.440 --> 00:12:58.360 And then they presented it at PGCon later, like it was huge migration 00:12:58.440 --> 00:13:02.140 from Oracle to Postgres, and the reasons were interesting, solutions 00:13:02.360 --> 00:13:04.900 were interesting, like super interesting topic. 00:13:05.020 --> 00:13:09.020 So I found the gem right away, just trying to come to a big company 00:13:09.020 --> 00:13:12.380 and use their facilities to host meetup. 00:13:12.720 --> 00:13:17.120 And then I remember, in the first row I saw new faces and then these 00:13:17.120 --> 00:13:21.920 new faces became kind of almost like friends for me in the following 00:13:21.980 --> 00:13:26.660 years because these guys worked at large companies, large e-commerce 00:13:26.920 --> 00:13:28.220 companies and so on. 00:13:28.820 --> 00:13:30.240 And all of them used Postgres. 00:13:30.240 --> 00:13:32.720 I was like, wow, Postgres is different now. 00:13:32.720 --> 00:13:34.300 This return was super successful. 00:13:35.020 --> 00:13:36.720 So I have good memories. 00:13:37.200 --> 00:13:40.280 But unfortunately, of course, like this political situation and 00:13:40.280 --> 00:13:44.220 so on, like I hate this, like we are divided right now and some 00:13:44.220 --> 00:13:46.480 people work at companies I don't appreciate. 00:13:46.640 --> 00:13:50.140 Not only appreciate, I consider like kind of enemies already 00:13:50.140 --> 00:13:54.040 because if a company has some, any connections with the military 00:13:54.180 --> 00:13:57.220 Russia, this is an enemy for me. 00:13:57.660 --> 00:13:59.700 Michael: Yeah, I think your cat agrees. 00:14:00.540 --> 00:14:04.780 Nikolay: Yes, unfortunately, it's sad but like anyway, this was 00:14:04.780 --> 00:14:05.560 a cat experience. 00:14:05.740 --> 00:14:08.700 We had at some point like a couple of hundred people. 00:14:09.620 --> 00:14:10.820 And you know, like, 00:14:11.000 --> 00:14:12.600 Michael: Yeah, that's a serious turnout. 00:14:12.700 --> 00:14:17.900 Like I went to a recent London PG day, which is so we have post, 00:14:17.900 --> 00:14:21.340 we have conferences in the Postgres world and obviously language 00:14:21.340 --> 00:14:23.960 specific ones that include some Postgres talks. 00:14:23.960 --> 00:14:28.680 But we also have these PG days that tend to be 1 day events full 00:14:28.680 --> 00:14:33.400 day, not just 3 hours, kind of like 6, 7, 8 hours full of talks as 00:14:33.400 --> 00:14:33.900 well. 00:14:34.020 --> 00:14:36.020 So maybe even 6, 7, 8 talks. 00:14:37.800 --> 00:14:38.860 And it's London, right? 00:14:38.860 --> 00:14:43.660 Like this is a hub for the UK and possible to get to from quite 00:14:43.660 --> 00:14:45.740 a lot of other places in Europe quite easily. 00:14:45.920 --> 00:14:48.440 And I think we had fewer than 100 attendees. 00:14:48.440 --> 00:14:51.960 It was a good turnout, but 200 people for a three-hour event 00:14:51.960 --> 00:14:53.040 is a serious turnout. 00:14:53.040 --> 00:14:55.480 Nikolay: It also depends on channels you use 00:14:55.480 --> 00:14:56.660 to attract people. 00:14:57.020 --> 00:15:00.260 But I honestly think the golden era was when Postgres community 00:15:00.400 --> 00:15:04.840 population started to grow, like 15, 16, 17, 18, these years. 00:15:04.840 --> 00:15:10.900 Now it's declining and people don't see big value coming to offline 00:15:10.900 --> 00:15:15.300 events because, you know, the problem with knowledge consumption, 00:15:15.540 --> 00:15:19.280 like learning at offline event, Of course, it's good you can 00:15:19.280 --> 00:15:22.440 ask your question definitely, but honestly, you can ask a question 00:15:22.440 --> 00:15:25.900 in a follow-up under YouTube right now and we will try to answer 00:15:25.900 --> 00:15:28.200 as well, but in a synchronous format. 00:15:28.400 --> 00:15:32.720 But the problem is if you miss something, you cannot rewind. 00:15:33.940 --> 00:15:35.400 This is problem number 1. 00:15:35.660 --> 00:15:38.540 The second problem if it's boring you cannot speed it up. 00:15:38.560 --> 00:15:41.180 For example, or skip. 00:15:41.760 --> 00:15:45.820 Right now I'm talking quite slowly, so you can probably use 1.5 00:15:46.160 --> 00:15:48.380 speed to still understand me, right? 00:15:49.300 --> 00:15:51.340 This is efficiency, right? 00:15:51.340 --> 00:15:54.620 And also tickets cost a lot, right? 00:15:54.720 --> 00:15:55.200 Usually. 00:15:55.200 --> 00:15:58.740 Like, okay, if it's the same town, okay, it's good. 00:15:58.740 --> 00:15:59.440 But yeah. 00:15:59.440 --> 00:16:00.400 Michael: That's a good point. 00:16:00.400 --> 00:16:01.960 It wasn't free as well. 00:16:01.960 --> 00:16:04.460 So I'm guessing your meetup was free for attendees? 00:16:05.380 --> 00:16:06.360 Nikolay: Always free. 00:16:06.500 --> 00:16:07.560 Michael: That's a big difference. 00:16:08.040 --> 00:16:11.520 I would say though I think there are these differences and I would say that meeting people 00:16:11.520 --> 00:16:15.540 and connections that you make are really interesting. 00:16:15.540 --> 00:16:18.040 It doesn't always happen in person events, but I've noticed when 00:16:18.160 --> 00:16:21.900 you're involved in some capacity, like as a speaker, I found 00:16:21.900 --> 00:16:25.640 people approached me and it was a much better level of conversation 00:16:25.640 --> 00:16:30.720 with people when I was a speaker than attendee to attendee type 00:16:30.860 --> 00:16:34.760 conversations. 00:16:34.760 --> 00:16:35.260 Like it's not always difficult to have good conversations, but 00:16:35.740 --> 00:16:39.300 yeah, I found as a speaker, it definitely helped. 00:16:42.340 --> 00:16:45.540 Nikolay: Some online events which happen synchronously about 00:16:45.540 --> 00:16:50.220 recording and then the ability to asynchronously rewatch or watch 00:16:50.220 --> 00:16:51.240 what you missed. 00:16:51.500 --> 00:16:57.920 Some events try to have formats like moving the speaker and people 00:16:57.920 --> 00:17:02.920 who are interested in a separate room or virtual room and then 00:17:02.920 --> 00:17:06.340 you can spend time asking questions and so on. 00:17:06.340 --> 00:17:11.120 Actually, honestly, with online events, it's also sometimes good, 00:17:11.120 --> 00:17:11.880 sometimes bad. 00:17:11.880 --> 00:17:18.240 Like I had, for example, a couple of hours event when more than 00:17:18.240 --> 00:17:20.400 500 people watched me. 00:17:20.860 --> 00:17:23.800 The key here is that the Postgres community, the core Postgres community 00:17:23.800 --> 00:17:24.740 is quite small. 00:17:25.200 --> 00:17:28.880 And if you want more people, you need to reach backend developers, 00:17:29.120 --> 00:17:32.920 like analyst people and others, like maybe even frontend developers 00:17:32.960 --> 00:17:33.840 and so on. 00:17:33.900 --> 00:17:35.580 In this case, it can be huge. 00:17:36.100 --> 00:17:39.620 But if you're just targeting the same people all the time, it 00:17:39.620 --> 00:17:40.840 won't grow fast, I think. 00:17:40.840 --> 00:17:44.700 But the quality of questions will be also different in this case, 00:17:44.700 --> 00:17:45.200 right? 00:17:46.160 --> 00:17:48.600 Michael: Well, there are big Postgres-only events. 00:17:49.540 --> 00:17:53.940 The one in Europe I went to, the one last year, we both, that's the 00:17:53.940 --> 00:17:55.680 one time we've met in person actually. 00:17:56.600 --> 00:18:02.860 That was over 600 people at one event, but it was 3 or 4 simultaneous 00:18:03.220 --> 00:18:03.720 tracks. 00:18:03.960 --> 00:18:07.960 So it wasn't 600 people watching every talk or watching one talk. 00:18:07.960 --> 00:18:10.340 It was split across multiple tracks. 00:18:10.680 --> 00:18:12.880 And then, so it was jam-packed. 00:18:12.900 --> 00:18:15.320 In fact, I was on the program committee for that, which was a 00:18:15.320 --> 00:18:16.180 lot of work. 00:18:16.400 --> 00:18:17.840 In fact, we can cover that a little bit. 00:18:17.840 --> 00:18:20.140 I think it might be interesting to people how those work. 00:18:20.140 --> 00:18:22.800 But my point for that was it was stacked each. 00:18:22.800 --> 00:18:28.140 It was multiple days, 3 or 4 days of 3 or 4 tracks of talks with 00:18:28.140 --> 00:18:31.740 breaks with coffee breaks and lunch breaks, but no 00:18:31.840 --> 00:18:36.140 kind of like nothing else, no other structure around meeting 00:18:36.140 --> 00:18:36.420 people. 00:18:36.420 --> 00:18:39.280 And then I've heard this phrase, is it the hallway track people 00:18:39.280 --> 00:18:39.800 call it? 00:18:39.800 --> 00:18:43.680 So skipping the odd talk, sometimes it's good to skip just for 00:18:43.680 --> 00:18:47.500 a break and maybe if you run a business, maybe check your emails, 00:18:47.500 --> 00:18:50.740 or if you're still working, if you're on call, that kind of thing, 00:18:50.740 --> 00:18:51.860 just check in. 00:18:51.960 --> 00:18:53.500 Or just go for a walk. 00:18:53.560 --> 00:18:56.760 But the alternative is to hang around and chat with other people that 00:18:56.760 --> 00:18:58.000 are skipping a talk. 00:18:58.580 --> 00:18:58.980 Nikolay: Right. 00:18:58.980 --> 00:19:03.000 If you know the area in general, the field in general, probably 00:19:03.100 --> 00:19:08.680 even if you attend offline, what I think all speakers and conference 00:19:08.680 --> 00:19:11.620 organizers, event organizers should do is collect... 00:19:12.540 --> 00:19:16.800 Collecting slide decks in advance doesn't work, because a lot 00:19:16.800 --> 00:19:20.140 of people, including myself, prepare them until the last minute. 00:19:20.600 --> 00:19:25.020 But there should be a way to distribute SlideDecks, the finalized 00:19:25.080 --> 00:19:26.760 version, right away online. 00:19:27.040 --> 00:19:30.140 Like when the talk is started, SlideDeck is ready for sure. 00:19:30.280 --> 00:19:32.060 So this version should be distributed. 00:19:32.460 --> 00:19:36.440 It's a simple thing, but even organizers fail here often. 00:19:36.860 --> 00:19:41.540 They try to tell me, oh, you need to send me your slide deck 2 weeks 00:19:41.540 --> 00:19:42.280 in advance. 00:19:43.140 --> 00:19:44.280 I have done it many times. 00:19:44.440 --> 00:19:45.560 I never did. 00:19:46.060 --> 00:19:48.660 And they cannot do anything with it. 00:19:48.660 --> 00:19:49.540 It's not possible. 00:19:49.540 --> 00:19:51.300 Because there is no slide deck yet. 00:19:51.900 --> 00:19:55.120 But in the last minute, they should collect and distribute because 00:19:55.120 --> 00:19:59.760 others who probably are attending another track or they're just working, 00:19:59.760 --> 00:20:00.780 as you said, right? 00:20:01.260 --> 00:20:05.740 When I attend the events, I usually give my talk and I never 00:20:05.740 --> 00:20:07.220 attend anything, honestly. 00:20:07.920 --> 00:20:09.640 But it's just not efficient. 00:20:09.960 --> 00:20:14.740 I cannot sit for 1 hour and listen to this thing of which 80% I understand 00:20:15.140 --> 00:20:16.060 just from slides. 00:20:16.060 --> 00:20:17.060 It's not efficient. 00:20:17.220 --> 00:20:20.280 I want to look at slides quickly and then probably talk to this 00:20:20.280 --> 00:20:21.240 guy directly. 00:20:21.780 --> 00:20:24.960 Well, sometimes it works, sometimes it's interesting, but not 00:20:24.960 --> 00:20:26.020 often at all. 00:20:26.480 --> 00:20:31.560 Well, I mean, my situation is probably different because at the 00:20:31.560 --> 00:20:37.860 same time I found myself attending person-to-person rehearsals 00:20:39.060 --> 00:20:44.720 or PostgresFM open talk series, and there I enjoy, I can spend 00:20:44.800 --> 00:20:48.240 1 hour diving deep and so on. 00:20:48.340 --> 00:20:52.360 But regular talks, very often I just see like this I know, this 00:20:52.360 --> 00:20:53.300 I know, this I know. 00:20:53.300 --> 00:20:58.160 And it's like, I would just rather look at slides and catch you 00:20:58.160 --> 00:21:00.520 later in the hall, right? 00:21:00.900 --> 00:21:01.860 Michael: Yeah, I don't think you're... 00:21:01.860 --> 00:21:03.360 to discuss some deep... 00:21:03.520 --> 00:21:07.220 I think you're atypical here because you probably know the contents 00:21:07.400 --> 00:21:08.000 like it. 00:21:08.000 --> 00:21:11.240 Most good talks start with like some introductory stuff for people 00:21:11.240 --> 00:21:14.300 that don't know the topic well, that's almost never going to 00:21:14.300 --> 00:21:17.220 be useful for you. But it's really useful for other people and 00:21:17.220 --> 00:21:20.660 I personally probably have a higher tolerance for watching these 00:21:20.660 --> 00:21:24.520 talks live partly because I know less and partly because I think 00:21:24.520 --> 00:21:28.220 there's this every now and again there's a throwaway comment 00:21:28.220 --> 00:21:31.720 that the speaker probably didn't even plan to say but just happened 00:21:31.720 --> 00:21:34.940 to come to their mind during the talk that's not in the slides, 00:21:35.220 --> 00:21:38.080 that is the most interesting thing to me about that talk. 00:21:38.080 --> 00:21:41.980 And sometimes 55 minutes of a talk were not useful, but the 5 00:21:41.980 --> 00:21:45.400 minutes that were, were so helpful to me that it was worth it. 00:21:45.400 --> 00:21:47.000 So I think there's... 00:21:47.220 --> 00:21:47.900 Nikolay: I agree here. 00:21:47.900 --> 00:21:51.360 And if a speaker says, like, you can interrupt me anytime, I 00:21:51.360 --> 00:21:52.420 usually also do it. 00:21:52.420 --> 00:21:53.360 And this is good. 00:21:53.360 --> 00:21:53.800 Why does 00:21:53.800 --> 00:21:55.160 Michael: that not surprise me? 00:21:55.840 --> 00:21:56.880 Nikolay: Probably, yeah. 00:21:57.880 --> 00:22:02.360 Probably we can just cover some additional, like, deep, narrow 00:22:02.920 --> 00:22:04.340 topic during the talk. 00:22:04.540 --> 00:22:06.340 It can be interesting, I agree here. 00:22:06.340 --> 00:22:10.700 But anyway, I think flexibility should be good here. 00:22:10.920 --> 00:22:14.240 People who want to watch it fully in person, okay. 00:22:14.540 --> 00:22:18.100 People who want to watch it later, because sometimes too... 00:22:18.520 --> 00:22:24.360 HighLoad had more than 3,000 attendees and 10 tracks in parallel. 00:22:25.480 --> 00:22:28.780 Almost always I saw some interesting materials in parallel, like 00:22:28.780 --> 00:22:32.620 I cannot attend them if I can't walk between them, but they also 00:22:33.080 --> 00:22:37.120 compiled everything and later, a couple of months later, you 00:22:37.120 --> 00:22:38.160 can watch everything. 00:22:39.840 --> 00:22:41.260 They also published books. 00:22:41.280 --> 00:22:43.940 I remember reading these books from time to time. 00:22:44.540 --> 00:22:45.920 You just download it. 00:22:46.160 --> 00:22:47.360 Today it's easy. 00:22:47.360 --> 00:22:50.100 We have a pipeline for our subtitles. 00:22:50.500 --> 00:22:54.500 Michael: But a talk's not the same as writing a book. 00:22:54.920 --> 00:22:56.040 It wouldn't be a very good 00:22:56.040 --> 00:22:56.540 Nikolay: book. 00:22:56.540 --> 00:22:59.760 There are many goals why you want to attend a talk. 00:22:59.760 --> 00:23:00.560 Many goals. 00:23:01.620 --> 00:23:06.200 And if it's pure knowledge, if you want to understand some other 00:23:06.200 --> 00:23:10.860 people's experience and some just knowledge, you want to understand 00:23:10.860 --> 00:23:14.440 some method how to do something or complexities, you probably 00:23:14.440 --> 00:23:17.560 don't need it now, but you might need it later, like in half 00:23:17.560 --> 00:23:18.680 a year, for example. 00:23:18.780 --> 00:23:23.100 In this case, having a recording, having books transcribed, it's 00:23:23.100 --> 00:23:25.460 easy again, like with AI it's super easy. 00:23:25.640 --> 00:23:26.780 We have it, right? 00:23:27.180 --> 00:23:31.860 In this case, this builds value, this conference delivers, right? 00:23:32.000 --> 00:23:34.020 And I remember these books were helpful. 00:23:34.080 --> 00:23:38.040 I was reading some MySQL talks, which I didn't attend because 00:23:38.040 --> 00:23:38.860 I was not interested. 00:23:38.860 --> 00:23:42.640 But now I'm interested in this topic and Postgres and I see MySQL 00:23:42.660 --> 00:23:43.400 has something. 00:23:43.980 --> 00:23:46.210 I remember there were talks about it. 00:23:46.210 --> 00:23:51.240 I just read these materials with slides and text and you understand. 00:23:52.200 --> 00:23:55.260 Then you can watch the recording if you want or you can combine. 00:23:55.760 --> 00:23:56.880 There are many ways. 00:23:56.980 --> 00:24:00.560 Also some people are okay with listening, some people need to 00:24:00.860 --> 00:24:01.660 see it. 00:24:01.660 --> 00:24:03.340 There are different people, right? 00:24:03.700 --> 00:24:07.620 Some people want to redo, oh, I don't understand, I want to rewind. 00:24:08.000 --> 00:24:12.720 What I'm trying to say, offline works for some, online works 00:24:12.720 --> 00:24:13.980 also for some. 00:24:14.280 --> 00:24:18.760 And if there is good material and a good speaker, today we 00:24:18.760 --> 00:24:23.280 can produce many results just from 1 recording. 00:24:23.280 --> 00:24:28.640 I mean, 1 time you explain something, and then we have all possible 00:24:29.060 --> 00:24:33.580 variations of this knowledge and we can help people consume it 00:24:33.580 --> 00:24:37.580 asynchronously or synchronously and in any way, like text, video, 00:24:37.580 --> 00:24:38.940 audio, right? 00:24:39.020 --> 00:24:41.960 Michael: I think you're right about different people having ideal 00:24:41.960 --> 00:24:45.480 methods of learning, but I think there's also a point here about 00:24:45.480 --> 00:24:45.980 accessibility. 00:24:46.380 --> 00:24:49.900 And I mean, I don't mean it in the kind of technical sense. 00:24:49.900 --> 00:24:53.100 I mean, it almost from a, like being able to afford to do things 00:24:53.100 --> 00:24:57.360 and also being able to like traveling to events is it can be 00:24:57.360 --> 00:24:57.860 expensive. 00:24:57.980 --> 00:24:59.240 Staying can be expensive. 00:24:59.840 --> 00:25:01.120 Tickets can be expensive. 00:25:01.440 --> 00:25:04.540 And in the, at least in my experience in the Postgres world, 00:25:04.540 --> 00:25:09.520 unlike some of the bigger language conferences, we don't tend 00:25:09.520 --> 00:25:09.960 to pay. 00:25:09.960 --> 00:25:13.560 I don't think I've seen any many events, if any, that pay speakers 00:25:13.580 --> 00:25:15.540 or pay for travel or pay for a conversation. 00:25:15.540 --> 00:25:16.960 Nikolay: How lot always do that? 00:25:17.000 --> 00:25:17.820 Michael: That's great. 00:25:18.940 --> 00:25:22.620 Nikolay: Not pay, but reimburse the travel costs and hotel costs 00:25:22.660 --> 00:25:27.100 just to make it simpler to bring better speakers. 00:25:27.540 --> 00:25:29.380 Yeah, but not just 00:25:29.380 --> 00:25:33.880 Michael: better but also just a wider, well I guess that doesn't 00:25:33.960 --> 00:25:35.020 imply better, does it? 00:25:35.020 --> 00:25:38.680 If you're recruiting from a wider pool of people, that your quality 00:25:38.680 --> 00:25:39.440 will improve. 00:25:40.080 --> 00:25:43.580 Nikolay: PGCon also I remember that then, I mean PGCon paid me 00:25:43.580 --> 00:25:49.640 in 2007 to go to Ottawa, and it was amazing that 00:25:49.740 --> 00:25:53.600 I was very young and of course like lack of money obviously and 00:25:54.020 --> 00:25:54.860 this helped me. 00:25:54.860 --> 00:25:56.380 I always remember this. 00:25:56.760 --> 00:25:57.620 Michael: I do apologize. 00:25:57.620 --> 00:26:00.400 I think PGCon is the exception or was the exception. 00:26:01.160 --> 00:26:02.300 Nikolay: Right, right. 00:26:02.320 --> 00:26:03.540 PGCon did it. 00:26:03.780 --> 00:26:04.600 And that's great. 00:26:04.600 --> 00:26:07.440 I saw they did it this year again. 00:26:07.840 --> 00:26:10.280 Actually, I could use that help. 00:26:10.680 --> 00:26:14.320 I just didn't use it because already I can cover myself. 00:26:15.040 --> 00:26:16.100 I don't need it. 00:26:16.360 --> 00:26:18.940 But it was cool to see it was still happening. 00:26:18.940 --> 00:26:23.280 And I think it's the right thing to do to help people come from 00:26:23.320 --> 00:26:24.740 various parts of the world. 00:26:24.840 --> 00:26:25.340 Michael: Yeah. 00:26:26.240 --> 00:26:30.120 And with the sponsor, I think there is enough money in Postgres. 00:26:30.280 --> 00:26:31.460 I haven't tried running an event. 00:26:31.460 --> 00:26:33.740 I do realize it's really difficult to break even. 00:26:34.280 --> 00:26:36.680 I think money-wise it is difficult. 00:26:36.980 --> 00:26:37.540 But we can get 00:26:37.540 --> 00:26:39.010 Nikolay: a lot of satisfaction from it. 00:26:39.010 --> 00:26:39.860 It's not difficult. 00:26:39.860 --> 00:26:42.980 It's a lot of work, but if you do it with passion, it's not super 00:26:42.980 --> 00:26:43.480 difficult. 00:26:43.580 --> 00:26:46.600 And there are many companies who are good sponsors, right? 00:26:46.840 --> 00:26:51.840 For example, I don't know, like big events, like some I participated 00:26:52.020 --> 00:26:56.160 in, 3,000 people and so on, had budgets like more than $1 million 00:26:56.160 --> 00:26:56.880 per event. 00:26:59.020 --> 00:27:00.820 There are many companies who are attracted. 00:27:00.920 --> 00:27:06.160 If you go with like banks, like e-commerce, they come and you 00:27:06.160 --> 00:27:07.760 just need to organize a lot. 00:27:08.240 --> 00:27:12.180 This is like 24/7 work for a couple of weeks before the conference 00:27:12.180 --> 00:27:16.500 starts and you won't be able to sleep if you need a huge event. 00:27:16.800 --> 00:27:17.700 But it's possible. 00:27:18.200 --> 00:27:21.600 Michael: Most of our events are still run by very hardworking 00:27:21.960 --> 00:27:24.240 volunteers, people that aren't getting paid. 00:27:24.380 --> 00:27:26.540 Nikolay: Right, but why we discuss this? 00:27:26.580 --> 00:27:29.860 Once they started accepting money from companies, they should 00:27:29.860 --> 00:27:31.280 stop saying volunteers. 00:27:31.520 --> 00:27:32.640 They have money. 00:27:32.640 --> 00:27:35.940 Just charge them more and that's it and deliver better quality. 00:27:36.900 --> 00:27:38.800 Just do it or like, I don't know. 00:27:38.800 --> 00:27:43.300 For example, here we discuss the controversial topic which I 00:27:43.300 --> 00:27:45.040 have very strong opinion on. 00:27:45.300 --> 00:27:48.500 If you have sponsors, you must provide recording. 00:27:48.940 --> 00:27:51.020 At least for people who paid, right? 00:27:51.300 --> 00:27:56.620 Otherwise, for speakers, it's not fair. 00:27:56.760 --> 00:28:01.720 They come, they see, okay, you brought like 20 or 50 people, 00:28:02.300 --> 00:28:08.040 but the work is so huge it's better to go to YouTube and then later 00:28:08.040 --> 00:28:11.380 people who are interested will be able to listen and see your 00:28:11.380 --> 00:28:11.880 material. 00:28:13.480 --> 00:28:17.080 So of course a conference in person delivers better connections. 00:28:17.080 --> 00:28:19.300 I had very good follow-ups, very good. 00:28:19.300 --> 00:28:22.800 Like they said, we attended your talk, blah, blah, blah, super. 00:28:23.440 --> 00:28:29.520 But I don't understand why I need to spend a huge effort preparing 00:28:29.540 --> 00:28:30.040 slides. 00:28:30.660 --> 00:28:33.620 And this happened with the last three conferences actually. 00:28:33.960 --> 00:28:37.100 So you spend a lot of effort. 00:28:37.820 --> 00:28:41.580 Probably you pay for your tickets and hotel to come. 00:28:41.580 --> 00:28:42.880 How do you do it as 00:28:42.880 --> 00:28:43.540 Michael: a speaker? 00:28:45.060 --> 00:28:48.940 Nikolay: I mean, well, usually it's so, as we discussed. 00:28:49.080 --> 00:28:53.660 There are exceptions, but for a Postgres community, the norm is... 00:28:54.960 --> 00:28:55.960 I don't know. 00:28:57.340 --> 00:28:59.780 Okay, this is PGCon 2007, that was an exception. 00:29:00.460 --> 00:29:02.140 HighLoad, always paid. 00:29:02.720 --> 00:29:04.460 Nobody else paid, usually. 00:29:05.020 --> 00:29:09.080 I always come just because I'm interested in presenting, you 00:29:09.080 --> 00:29:09.480 know. 00:29:09.480 --> 00:29:10.140 And not anymore. 00:29:10.140 --> 00:29:12.780 I'm not coming anymore and I can tell everyone. 00:29:13.320 --> 00:29:16.300 Last year I had a rule, I come only if you record. 00:29:16.980 --> 00:29:18.160 Now I just don't. 00:29:18.260 --> 00:29:18.760 No. 00:29:19.120 --> 00:29:21.340 I tested once recently with Jung. 00:29:21.340 --> 00:29:22.440 Ah, it was online. 00:29:22.500 --> 00:29:26.300 I could come to East Coast, but I decided to present online only 00:29:26.840 --> 00:29:30.900 and I confirmed I'm not doing offline events anymore. 00:29:30.920 --> 00:29:33.620 So what I'm trying to say is a very simple idea. 00:29:33.820 --> 00:29:35.580 You do a lot of effort. 00:29:36.180 --> 00:29:38.560 You have a break in your work. 00:29:38.560 --> 00:29:42.180 Of course, if your employer pays, this is a different story, 00:29:42.180 --> 00:29:42.680 right? 00:29:42.720 --> 00:29:44.340 Basically, the employer bribes you here. 00:29:44.340 --> 00:29:49.300 So like you have a vacation, you visit, it's super fun, cool, 00:29:49.600 --> 00:29:56.240 but if we speak purely about professional efficiency like work 00:29:56.240 --> 00:30:00.940 efficiency and so on, like effort versus result, I don't understand 00:30:01.080 --> 00:30:05.500 any reason why this talk cannot be recorded because you did a 00:30:05.500 --> 00:30:09.980 lot of effort and you want the result to be recorded too. 00:30:10.840 --> 00:30:14.280 It's super annoying when you spend a lot of effort. 00:30:14.800 --> 00:30:19.400 You came to some conference, you found even 50 people, cool. 00:30:19.820 --> 00:30:23.240 But you understand, if it was recorded, maybe a few hundred more 00:30:23.240 --> 00:30:27.440 from different parts of the world would watch it and tell you something 00:30:27.440 --> 00:30:31.760 interesting, for example, or follow up, or like you would find 00:30:31.760 --> 00:30:34.200 more like-minded thinking, right? 00:30:34.540 --> 00:30:36.260 This is why you're presenting usually. 00:30:36.960 --> 00:30:40.520 Michael: Several of my first, so I was late 00:30:40.520 --> 00:30:41.200 Nikolay: for the post-question. 00:30:41.200 --> 00:30:42.740 Recording was super expensive. 00:30:43.320 --> 00:30:45.180 Michael: That's the normal reason, yeah. 00:30:45.840 --> 00:30:47.660 Nikolay: I only have rude words here. 00:30:47.900 --> 00:30:48.900 It's not a... 00:30:48.900 --> 00:30:49.900 Michael: Can I move us? 00:30:49.900 --> 00:30:53.600 I think you've got a point, but also it's difficult to... 00:30:54.100 --> 00:30:57.620 All we can do is ask and see what people do. 00:30:57.660 --> 00:30:59.480 If they can afford to... 00:30:59.540 --> 00:31:02.460 Some conferences are now saying that these videos are sponsored 00:31:02.480 --> 00:31:05.660 by this sponsor, so the sponsor paid the money for the recording. 00:31:05.660 --> 00:31:06.820 So that's a way of 00:31:06.820 --> 00:31:07.200 Nikolay: solving it. 00:31:07.200 --> 00:31:10.800 This conference has forgotten that this is open source and we should 00:31:10.800 --> 00:31:12.900 go low-key, like simple approach. 00:31:13.040 --> 00:31:16.920 We all have like iPads or something and we can record on a laptop. 00:31:17.360 --> 00:31:21.520 We don't need like high, expensive production. 00:31:21.760 --> 00:31:22.260 Yes. 00:31:22.660 --> 00:31:24.120 Well, it will be high quality. 00:31:24.380 --> 00:31:29.120 The microphones are good already enough, or you can buy a $100 microphone. 00:31:29.160 --> 00:31:30.160 It's not expensive. 00:31:30.960 --> 00:31:32.040 $100 or $200. 00:31:32.280 --> 00:31:36.500 The Rode, they're like this, like, how it's called, I don't remember. 00:31:36.500 --> 00:31:39.840 This, you attach them, it's wireless, super cheap. 00:31:39.920 --> 00:31:41.820 I mean $200, what is it? 00:31:41.960 --> 00:31:45.520 And then you don't need to record faces at all. 00:31:45.520 --> 00:31:48.460 All you need is just sound and slides. 00:31:48.540 --> 00:31:49.520 Michael: Yeah, good point. 00:31:50.020 --> 00:31:52.620 Nikolay: It can be 100% automated. 00:31:53.240 --> 00:31:58.260 And then one guy, one student, you can pay this guy like 300 bucks 00:31:58.260 --> 00:32:01.340 to publish these 20 talks or how many you have. 00:32:01.480 --> 00:32:02.300 That's it. 00:32:02.640 --> 00:32:05.520 I honestly, like, for me, it's such a deep problem. 00:32:06.000 --> 00:32:08.560 Michael: I want to move us on, but partly to advertise something 00:32:08.560 --> 00:32:12.700 you've been doing, which is PostgresFM's OpenTalk series on YouTube. 00:32:12.700 --> 00:32:16.000 So if any speakers out there, I know reaching out to them is 00:32:16.000 --> 00:32:18.400 quite a lot of work, but if any speakers out there have given 00:32:18.400 --> 00:32:21.560 a talk that they wish was recorded or was at an event that wasn't 00:32:21.560 --> 00:32:25.020 able to record for some reason, you'll have them on to the YouTube 00:32:25.040 --> 00:32:27.740 channel to present and ask a couple of questions. 00:32:27.980 --> 00:32:29.700 And I think that's a really great service. 00:32:29.700 --> 00:32:32.860 So if anybody wants to reach out, that would be awesome. 00:32:33.160 --> 00:32:34.620 We can add to that series. 00:32:35.200 --> 00:32:36.600 Nikolay: Yes, thank you. 00:32:36.780 --> 00:32:40.460 Indeed, I did it last in this year a little bit. 00:32:40.600 --> 00:32:43.880 I don't know, like maybe 10 or 15 talks. 00:32:44.800 --> 00:32:48.060 But I found like I don't have the capacity for inviting people, but 00:32:48.060 --> 00:32:51.100 if someone is interested and this is a very interesting material, 00:32:51.100 --> 00:32:54.520 definitely I will be happy to do it. 00:32:54.520 --> 00:32:59.440 Because for me, it's actually zero overhead except one hour or how 00:32:59.440 --> 00:33:00.540 much time do we need. 00:33:00.540 --> 00:33:04.940 We do it online, nothing like no special production at all. 00:33:05.140 --> 00:33:09.100 And now we have a beautiful workflow, or how is it called, pipelines, 00:33:09.720 --> 00:33:13.400 that delivers very good quality subtitles. 00:33:14.760 --> 00:33:18.960 We have it, and it's super cheap and super fast, and the quality 00:33:18.960 --> 00:33:19.900 is super good. 00:33:19.900 --> 00:33:20.940 I enjoy it. 00:33:20.940 --> 00:33:24.720 Last time I said, in the previous episode I said, "begin except" 00:33:24.720 --> 00:33:28.940 blocks because I spent too much time with Python recently. 00:33:29.540 --> 00:33:35.100 And this pipeline, because it's based on Whisper and GPT-4 Turbo 00:33:36.260 --> 00:33:38.700 models, APIs from OpenAI. 00:33:39.620 --> 00:33:43.820 It corrected me and in subtitles you have "begin exception" as 00:33:43.820 --> 00:33:44.720 it should be. 00:33:44.760 --> 00:33:48.740 So it's a good example, but it's very gentle correcting. 00:33:49.000 --> 00:33:52.080 So with most corrections, usually when you write a book, for 00:33:52.080 --> 00:33:56.280 example, and the corrector starts to bring some stupid corrections, 00:33:56.280 --> 00:33:59.100 you know, like you stop it, don't do it. 00:33:59.100 --> 00:34:03.460 Here it's very gentle and just uses the list of terms we've built 00:34:03.660 --> 00:34:05.620 and extend from time to time. 00:34:06.040 --> 00:34:10.040 And optionally we can have an article or blog post out of that. 00:34:10.040 --> 00:34:11.620 Talk also. 00:34:11.820 --> 00:34:16.220 It would require some additional effort, but I think it makes 00:34:16.220 --> 00:34:20.640 sense if it's an interesting material we can redo the talk if 00:34:20.640 --> 00:34:25.940 it was not recorded at some conference and then we can also have 00:34:25.940 --> 00:34:29.320 a blog post out of it with very low effort. 00:34:29.800 --> 00:34:31.120 Michael: If people want, right? 00:34:31.360 --> 00:34:32.760 Nikolay: Yeah, if they want to. 00:34:32.900 --> 00:34:37.900 If anyone listening to this is also an event organizer, I also 00:34:37.900 --> 00:34:39.840 offer to cooperate here. 00:34:40.920 --> 00:34:41.820 I can share. 00:34:41.980 --> 00:34:43.680 It's not rocket science. 00:34:43.780 --> 00:34:44.720 It's just AI. 00:34:45.620 --> 00:34:46.300 Oh, nice. 00:34:48.100 --> 00:34:52.240 If you have some recordings already, we can ask authors if they 00:34:52.240 --> 00:34:53.440 are okay with it. 00:34:53.440 --> 00:34:58.780 By the way, with my talks, I usually give in Russian, in the 00:34:58.780 --> 00:35:03.220 past, there's a guy who just enjoyed doing it and just publishing 00:35:03.280 --> 00:35:09.320 these posts, transforming recordings from YouTube to a good blog 00:35:09.320 --> 00:35:11.680 post which was discussed on some platform. 00:35:12.180 --> 00:35:16.120 He was just enjoying, like he was trying to find good materials 00:35:16.120 --> 00:35:18.180 and then publish a good article. 00:35:18.680 --> 00:35:22.860 It's like translation, but not from English to some language, 00:35:22.860 --> 00:35:26.700 but it's translation from video audio to text because many people 00:35:26.820 --> 00:35:28.460 are better consuming texts. 00:35:28.820 --> 00:35:34.020 So we can do it if you have a lot of video recordings of recent 00:35:34.460 --> 00:35:39.140 events, we can transcribe them and create blog posts out of it. 00:35:39.140 --> 00:35:41.320 Michael: Or just get better subtitles, right? 00:35:41.320 --> 00:35:43.440 Like the subtitles alone are great. 00:35:43.490 --> 00:35:47.020 Nikolay: Subtitles can be improved or I still think if you had 00:35:47.020 --> 00:35:52.920 a good event, you have a good opportunity to reach out to a wider 00:35:52.920 --> 00:35:54.740 audience if you convert it to text. 00:35:55.260 --> 00:35:58.680 It's text with pictures from slides. 00:35:59.440 --> 00:35:59.940 Illustrations. 00:36:00.400 --> 00:36:01.480 So step by step. 00:36:01.500 --> 00:36:03.340 And it's quite easy to read. 00:36:03.340 --> 00:36:06.140 I also enjoy reading such like transcoded talks. 00:36:06.780 --> 00:36:09.560 Maybe sometimes better than watching full video because... 00:36:09.720 --> 00:36:10.820 Michael: Well, much more skimmable. 00:36:11.680 --> 00:36:13.760 Nikolay: Yeah, skim through is the keyword here. 00:36:15.060 --> 00:36:17.480 Michael: The thing I wanted to share about the, like for anybody 00:36:17.480 --> 00:36:21.040 out there considering submitting talks to conferences, there 00:36:21.040 --> 00:36:23.880 were a couple of things that surprised me being on a selection 00:36:23.880 --> 00:36:24.380 committee. 00:36:25.400 --> 00:36:30.260 One was that experienced speakers often submit multiple talks to 00:36:30.260 --> 00:36:33.480 the same, multiple abstracts to the same event. 00:36:33.580 --> 00:36:34.400 That shocked me. 00:36:34.400 --> 00:36:36.720 It never occurred to me to submit multiple. 00:36:36.820 --> 00:36:40.060 I thought I've got this one idea for a talk, I'm gonna submit that. 00:36:40.440 --> 00:36:44.060 But the problem is as a selection committee, you don't really 00:36:44.060 --> 00:36:46.120 want to talk of a similar topic at 00:36:46.120 --> 00:36:46.560 Nikolay: the same 00:36:46.560 --> 00:36:47.060 Michael: event. 00:36:47.260 --> 00:36:53.200 So you happen to submit a talk to the same event as maybe the 00:36:53.200 --> 00:36:58.040 world expert on that specific topic. 00:36:59.440 --> 00:37:02.020 Nikolay: Yeah, fun story related to this. 00:37:02.400 --> 00:37:06.140 I also usually submit multiple because I know that this increases 00:37:06.340 --> 00:37:07.780 my conversion. 00:37:09.120 --> 00:37:12.280 You submit, you want something to be selected. 00:37:12.400 --> 00:37:15.960 If it's a narrow topic, maybe the program committee doesn't find 00:37:15.960 --> 00:37:18.000 it interesting for the audience of this conference. 00:37:18.000 --> 00:37:21.200 So you submit multiple, because you have materials or pre-materials, 00:37:22.220 --> 00:37:25.780 like maybe you already tried some of them at some meetups for example, 00:37:26.060 --> 00:37:30.540 or maybe you have a new version of an old talk with better details, 00:37:31.000 --> 00:37:35.100 like recently with DjangoCon, which I presented online, It was 00:37:35.320 --> 00:37:40.120 my seamless SQL optimization tutorial, like a three-hour tutorial, 00:37:40.120 --> 00:37:40.860 like insane. 00:37:41.320 --> 00:37:46.520 But it was version 3 already of this talk and they selected it, 00:37:46.520 --> 00:37:50.420 although I submitted I think 5 materials as I usually do. 00:37:50.500 --> 00:37:53.660 Yeah, it's just experienced speakers usually have a lot of materials. 00:37:54.920 --> 00:38:01.720 Bruce Momjian usually says, check my website, brucemomjian.us, 00:38:03.300 --> 00:38:04.400 I don't know, talks. 00:38:04.920 --> 00:38:06.960 There are updated talks, there are new talks. 00:38:06.960 --> 00:38:08.400 You just select what you want. 00:38:08.420 --> 00:38:10.440 This is what most experienced people do. 00:38:10.440 --> 00:38:13.240 But let me tell you a short funny story. 00:38:13.380 --> 00:38:17.580 During COVID, I actually decided to return to PGCon in 2019-20, 00:38:19.400 --> 00:38:22.400 but I wanted to visit Ottawa once again. 00:38:22.440 --> 00:38:26.280 And I did it this year, but previous years due to COVID it was 00:38:26.280 --> 00:38:27.840 fully online, unfortunately. 00:38:28.360 --> 00:38:35.140 So I was selected in 2020 And then they selected both my tutorial 00:38:35.380 --> 00:38:36.300 and some talk. 00:38:36.680 --> 00:38:40.680 And then I remember during online session, Dan administrated everything, 00:38:40.680 --> 00:38:43.520 like he was managing a lot of computers. 00:38:43.940 --> 00:38:48.340 And then I remember I connect to my second talk and Dan says, 00:38:48.340 --> 00:38:53.500 oh, like off of recording, he says, oh, you again? 00:38:55.080 --> 00:38:56.700 Like I said, yes, I was. 00:38:56.760 --> 00:38:58.040 2 talks were selected. 00:38:58.140 --> 00:38:59.600 He said, it should not happen. 00:38:59.600 --> 00:39:02.560 We have a rule to select only 1. 00:39:02.600 --> 00:39:07.780 We need to fix the SQL which guarantees maybe a wrong group by, you 00:39:07.780 --> 00:39:08.700 know, Michael: or something. 00:39:08.840 --> 00:39:09.340 Nikolay: Constraint. 00:39:10.080 --> 00:39:10.580 Yeah, constraint. 00:39:10.580 --> 00:39:12.260 Lack of constraint, I guess. 00:39:15.600 --> 00:39:18.740 I guess I hacked it and it should not be so. 00:39:18.900 --> 00:39:21.100 Michael: Probably a mistake by the committee, but that's a good 00:39:21.100 --> 00:39:21.600 point. 00:39:21.600 --> 00:39:22.360 Nikolay: No, no, no, no. 00:39:22.360 --> 00:39:26.340 He mentioned that technically it shouldn't be possible because 00:39:26.360 --> 00:39:28.400 the talks are obviously stored in Postgres. 00:39:29.100 --> 00:39:36.460 And when they select, they select trying to have only 1 talk 00:39:36.460 --> 00:39:37.200 per speaker. 00:39:37.420 --> 00:39:40.320 So I guess it's a bug or SQL and it should be fixed. 00:39:40.320 --> 00:39:41.000 That's it. 00:39:41.000 --> 00:39:41.980 But not anymore. 00:39:42.380 --> 00:39:43.920 No more this event, unfortunately. 00:39:44.070 --> 00:39:48.840 Michael: Well yes, so you're talking about kind of from an experienced 00:39:48.840 --> 00:39:51.600 speaker perspective, but I'm talking about new speakers, people 00:39:51.600 --> 00:39:54.960 that don't have experience doing this, try and come up with a 00:39:54.960 --> 00:39:55.880 second one. 00:39:56.140 --> 00:39:57.720 No, no, no, so as a 00:39:57.720 --> 00:39:58.180 Nikolay: speaker, 00:39:58.180 --> 00:40:00.680 Michael: as a new speaker, and I would encourage people to try 00:40:00.680 --> 00:40:04.900 it out because I think it can seriously improve your like the 00:40:04.900 --> 00:40:08.200 number of connections you make at an event or it definitely helped 00:40:08.200 --> 00:40:12.000 my confidence talking to people at events for some reason. 00:40:12.740 --> 00:40:15.320 I did actually also want to make an offer to anybody that hasn't 00:40:15.320 --> 00:40:19.400 ever spoken at a Postgres event before, I know it can be daunting 00:40:19.940 --> 00:40:21.680 and practice is really helpful. 00:40:22.120 --> 00:40:27.120 If you want to practice in private, I'm happy to be a sounding 00:40:27.120 --> 00:40:27.620 board. 00:40:28.080 --> 00:40:29.380 So do message me. 00:40:29.380 --> 00:40:30.140 I'm happy to do 00:40:30.140 --> 00:40:30.640 Nikolay: that. 00:40:30.740 --> 00:40:32.020 I think, yeah, yeah, yeah. 00:40:32.620 --> 00:40:39.840 I also see that selection of talks just based on abstract is 00:40:39.840 --> 00:40:43.120 a very poor-quality event organization. 00:40:43.660 --> 00:40:47.900 It should be done with, I think it should be done almost always 00:40:47.900 --> 00:40:52.780 with pre-vetting talks, because it's mutually helpful. 00:40:52.840 --> 00:40:55.940 Of course, it's time-consuming, but it's mutually helpful for 00:40:56.140 --> 00:40:56.820 both sides. 00:40:56.820 --> 00:41:01.580 So the speaker has a rehearsal, feedback, can improve, and the 00:41:01.580 --> 00:41:06.200 program committee understands better and has aligned content. 00:41:08.020 --> 00:41:10.760 Because usually bigger events do this. 00:41:11.820 --> 00:41:12.880 Why are you skeptical? 00:41:12.880 --> 00:41:13.940 I see your face. 00:41:13.940 --> 00:41:17.440 Michael: I'm pulling your face for anybody listening Well my 00:41:17.440 --> 00:41:21.460 experience with the the big Europe event We had hundreds 00:41:21.460 --> 00:41:24.520 of submissions which but what which I know I was encouraging 00:41:24.520 --> 00:41:28.540 people to submit multiple, but 5 or 6 is potentially too many. 00:41:28.660 --> 00:41:33.900 If I'm just talking about 2 or 3, and you get hundreds of submissions, 00:41:35.300 --> 00:41:37.580 and to vet, maybe you need a two-phase process. 00:41:37.580 --> 00:41:38.560 1 is on abstract. 00:41:38.560 --> 00:41:39.340 Nikolay: No, no, no. 00:41:39.340 --> 00:41:41.260 It should be a four or five-phase process. 00:41:41.348 --> 00:41:43.612 It should be five. 00:41:43.700 --> 00:41:47.520 But of course, the process here requires development. 00:41:47.860 --> 00:41:52.360 It requires experience and ideas and maybe this is for bigger 00:41:52.360 --> 00:41:52.860 events. 00:41:53.000 --> 00:41:56.760 For meetups, of course, a couple of talks, let's go, and you 00:41:56.760 --> 00:41:57.780 just decide. 00:41:57.880 --> 00:42:01.380 But if it's big, okay, 500 submissions, so what? 00:42:01.500 --> 00:42:06.300 You see which won't go for sure, just remove them, it will be 00:42:06.300 --> 00:42:08.200 already 200, and so on and so on. 00:42:08.200 --> 00:42:11.820 Then you have shortlist, shortlist probably is 100, depending 00:42:11.820 --> 00:42:13.400 on how many slots you have. 00:42:13.700 --> 00:42:16.080 Then you need, of course, you need several. 00:42:16.120 --> 00:42:18.740 For some people you need more than the accent speakers. 00:42:19.540 --> 00:42:22.980 I don't know, Peter Zaitsev, you don't need to vet him at all. 00:42:23.040 --> 00:42:24.100 It's really fine. 00:42:24.280 --> 00:42:26.760 So automatic, fast track, we call it fast track. 00:42:26.760 --> 00:42:27.440 That's it. 00:42:27.440 --> 00:42:30.460 So automatically accepted, you just need to choose the topic 00:42:30.460 --> 00:42:35.260 because always Peter Zaitsev is submitting 5 talks, always, maybe 00:42:35.260 --> 00:42:35.760 more. 00:42:36.540 --> 00:42:41.380 But for people you see first time or you have doubts, sometimes 00:42:41.380 --> 00:42:42.440 people have doubts. 00:42:42.860 --> 00:42:46.800 Also funny story, I was voting as program committee member, 1 00:42:46.800 --> 00:42:50.040 guy, and then I ask questions, simple questions. 00:42:51.600 --> 00:42:55.900 In the evening of the conference, the guy says, I won't do it. 00:42:56.180 --> 00:42:57.840 These questions are killing me. 00:42:57.840 --> 00:43:01.640 I understand I don't understand this topic well enough, but I 00:43:01.640 --> 00:43:03.160 didn't agree with this guy. 00:43:03.740 --> 00:43:06.360 I said he's good enough to present still. 00:43:06.760 --> 00:43:10.400 I asked some important questions, but people can ask them as 00:43:10.400 --> 00:43:10.900 well. 00:43:11.120 --> 00:43:12.660 It's for preparation and so on. 00:43:12.660 --> 00:43:16.560 It's not just to say failed and they said no, no, no, we still 00:43:16.560 --> 00:43:17.300 want you. 00:43:17.320 --> 00:43:22.580 So I needed to spend time in the evening before the event to 00:43:22.580 --> 00:43:23.860 convince him to present. 00:43:23.860 --> 00:43:26.140 I was like, please, you're still good. 00:43:26.160 --> 00:43:30.040 So we had another call and I just said, you're good. 00:43:30.900 --> 00:43:35.920 I needed to refill his energy and level of confidence because 00:43:35.920 --> 00:43:37.580 I actually destroyed it. 00:43:37.820 --> 00:43:45.480 It also requires experience from program committee members not 00:43:45.480 --> 00:43:46.160 to attack. 00:43:47.860 --> 00:43:52.540 I'm sitting like an expert, I'm going to like for self satisfactory, 00:43:53.500 --> 00:43:57.100 you're saying so hard questions just but this is not right. 00:43:57.980 --> 00:44:02.000 The goal is not to praise yourself, right? 00:44:02.080 --> 00:44:08.040 You need to help to improve the quality of material and maybe 00:44:08.440 --> 00:44:12.020 to give some idea what kind of questions people may ask. 00:44:12.380 --> 00:44:15.800 Sometimes you say, our audiences, for example, usually are very 00:44:15.800 --> 00:44:16.820 practical oriented. 00:44:17.040 --> 00:44:21.360 You're from academia, let's try to connect better, right? 00:44:21.380 --> 00:44:24.960 And you start asking questions and shift slightly focus here. 00:44:24.960 --> 00:44:29.040 There are many nuances here, but the idea is sometimes if you're 00:44:29.040 --> 00:44:31.900 too offensive, it can be harmful. 00:44:32.200 --> 00:44:37.360 And this is, I think, the story, I was not super harmful, it 00:44:37.360 --> 00:44:41.820 was just this speaker particularly was quite fragile. 00:44:42.880 --> 00:44:46.240 By that time, in the early days when I was on the program committee, 00:44:46.240 --> 00:44:49.620 for sure I was harmful sometimes, I know it. 00:44:49.740 --> 00:44:51.600 But I fixed it myself. 00:44:51.980 --> 00:44:56.960 So yeah, sometimes you need to put additional energy to fix it. 00:44:57.620 --> 00:44:59.840 But if we don't have this process, we are blind. 00:45:00.380 --> 00:45:04.080 Like we don't know, it's like maybe it will work, maybe not, 00:45:04.080 --> 00:45:06.420 and people don't have time to prepare better. 00:45:06.420 --> 00:45:07.160 They're alone. 00:45:07.480 --> 00:45:11.540 People always appreciated this kind of process we had. 00:45:11.580 --> 00:45:13.880 Always. They said, thank you, now I know. 00:45:13.940 --> 00:45:17.500 Sometimes it was in person, by the way, like rehearsals in person, 00:45:17.500 --> 00:45:22.840 if it's the same city, some people say, I'm going to ask this, 00:45:22.840 --> 00:45:26.520 you don't need to rehearse the whole talk, you just say I'm going 00:45:26.520 --> 00:45:28.940 to cover this, that, and this sequence. 00:45:29.440 --> 00:45:33.520 And you have good feedback from people who are on the program committee, 00:45:33.520 --> 00:45:36.960 usually, the program committee is organized from people who are CTOs 00:45:37.060 --> 00:45:40.960 or something like that from big companies that have a lot of experience 00:45:41.120 --> 00:45:43.280 so their feedback can be very helpful. 00:45:43.380 --> 00:45:45.060 Not always but sometimes, right? 00:45:45.060 --> 00:45:48.040 But you at least understand what to expect and improve and so 00:45:48.040 --> 00:45:48.340 on. 00:45:48.340 --> 00:45:51.180 So I think both conferences should follow this process. 00:45:51.180 --> 00:45:51.820 They don't. 00:45:51.820 --> 00:45:53.660 Many of them, they're just lazy. 00:45:53.920 --> 00:45:55.080 Good enough, you know. 00:45:55.080 --> 00:45:59.060 We don't record, we don't do rehearsals, we don't have money 00:45:59.060 --> 00:46:01.120 for that or we don't have time for that. 00:46:01.940 --> 00:46:03.220 Michael: Or it's different people, right? 00:46:03.220 --> 00:46:06.420 Like I was on the talk selection committee, but I had no other 00:46:06.420 --> 00:46:08.000 like I wasn't paid for it. 00:46:08.000 --> 00:46:10.260 And it was like it was free. 00:46:10.260 --> 00:46:12.500 Nikolay: I wasn't paid either for the program committee. 00:46:12.500 --> 00:46:13.380 Never I was paid. 00:46:13.380 --> 00:46:16.200 Oh, maybe we discussed it, but no. 00:46:16.240 --> 00:46:17.660 Michael: That's the problem, right? 00:46:17.660 --> 00:46:20.660 If you're already looking through hundreds of abstracts, the 00:46:20.660 --> 00:46:25.360 idea of also looking at dozens of talks and giving constructive 00:46:25.580 --> 00:46:28.980 feedback on early versions of those is just so much work for 00:46:28.980 --> 00:46:30.060 unpaid people to do. 00:46:30.060 --> 00:46:31.460 I think it's a lot to expect. 00:46:31.560 --> 00:46:33.600 The problem isn't we shouldn't do that. 00:46:33.600 --> 00:46:36.380 It's that we should work out a way to fund it and do it. 00:46:36.380 --> 00:46:40.120 But on the flip side, I've been at very few bad talks. 00:46:40.120 --> 00:46:43.633 Like what's the worst that happens if we give a chance to people 00:46:43.633 --> 00:46:44.140 that haven't had it? 00:46:44.140 --> 00:46:45.380 Nikolay: Super boring talk. 00:46:45.440 --> 00:46:46.760 Michael: Yeah, that's the worst. 00:46:47.100 --> 00:46:49.540 Nikolay: Audience knows material much better than the speaker. 00:46:49.540 --> 00:46:50.240 It happens. 00:46:50.380 --> 00:46:52.120 Yeah, but not often. 00:46:52.260 --> 00:46:53.000 Michael: How often? 00:46:53.400 --> 00:46:54.260 Nikolay: Quite often. 00:46:54.640 --> 00:46:55.140 Okay. 00:46:55.920 --> 00:46:59.440 And always when it happened, it was a mistake from the program 00:46:59.440 --> 00:46:59.940 committee. 00:47:00.020 --> 00:47:01.740 They didn't pay attention to it. 00:47:01.840 --> 00:47:02.780 I had it. 00:47:03.340 --> 00:47:10.720 I usually visited some talks for control level, for high load. 00:47:10.720 --> 00:47:14.040 I just visited and then I provided feedback like, this is super 00:47:14.040 --> 00:47:14.540 boring. 00:47:14.700 --> 00:47:17.720 How come we selected it in the first place. 00:47:17.720 --> 00:47:18.760 It's super boring. 00:47:18.980 --> 00:47:22.360 And we improved over years and established a very good process. 00:47:22.360 --> 00:47:26.020 And other events adopted a similar approach. 00:47:26.040 --> 00:47:30.360 I know it for like 100% and all like some Java events adopted 00:47:30.360 --> 00:47:31.080 and so on. 00:47:31.080 --> 00:47:34.640 And they learned from us and we also developed it further, we 00:47:34.640 --> 00:47:35.620 learned from them. 00:47:35.660 --> 00:47:42.560 It was a mutual process and it lasted between 2007 to 2022. 00:47:43.780 --> 00:47:45.980 Kind of like 15 years, right? 00:47:46.220 --> 00:47:48.980 It was super fun and I think it's a good experience. 00:47:49.300 --> 00:47:53.480 But again, I think, like, the bottom line from my side, it's 00:47:53.480 --> 00:47:56.400 a lot of effort if you want a very good quality event. 00:47:57.040 --> 00:48:01.520 And I think offline events must be with online components, at 00:48:01.520 --> 00:48:03.360 least asynchronously with recordings. 00:48:03.560 --> 00:48:08.400 And It's also, by the way, an additional ad for the conference, 00:48:08.400 --> 00:48:11.820 because if you distribute materials with some delay and people 00:48:11.820 --> 00:48:14.580 consume it even for free, they know this conference exists and 00:48:14.580 --> 00:48:15.800 it delivers good materials. 00:48:15.800 --> 00:48:19.740 Next time, probably they will convince their employer to pay 00:48:19.740 --> 00:48:21.910 for a trip in person. 00:48:22.400 --> 00:48:25.840 So this builds value over time and brand and so on. 00:48:25.840 --> 00:48:28.860 Michael: I agree, I think free is great but even if you can't 00:48:28.860 --> 00:48:31.640 afford to do it for free and it needs to be some small fee, I 00:48:31.640 --> 00:48:34.440 think there's also a potential thing to be done there. 00:48:34.440 --> 00:48:36.660 I think people are willing to pay for these things. 00:48:37.120 --> 00:48:39.720 Nikolay: In my opinion, many more interesting things are happening 00:48:39.720 --> 00:48:44.980 online these days, but okay, I might be returning to offline 00:48:45.040 --> 00:48:46.700 events in a couple of years. 00:48:46.720 --> 00:48:48.920 Michael: I think there's something to be said for local events. 00:48:48.920 --> 00:48:52.440 I like going to any that are local to me in the UK or I'm planning 00:48:52.440 --> 00:48:55.880 to go to one in Paris that I can get the train to quite easily. 00:48:55.920 --> 00:48:58.840 Do you think that's quite nice to meet people in the area that 00:48:58.840 --> 00:49:00.740 are also working on similar things? 00:49:00.960 --> 00:49:03.600 The more international ones I think are interesting and the huge 00:49:03.600 --> 00:49:05.240 ones I find quite daunting. 00:49:06.000 --> 00:49:08.440 But I think there are some examples that we can learn from. 00:49:08.440 --> 00:49:14.280 Like, I think the Rails world recent conference was organized 00:49:14.380 --> 00:49:20.280 by professionals that were set up and funded by companies that 00:49:20.280 --> 00:49:24.060 use Rails specifically to do things like improve the documentation 00:49:25.020 --> 00:49:27.720 and hold a conference and do you think and they 00:49:27.720 --> 00:49:28.420 Nikolay: super helpful 00:49:28.420 --> 00:49:30.240 Michael: people that went to that conference I don't actually 00:49:30.240 --> 00:49:31.920 know that it was made available online. 00:49:31.920 --> 00:49:35.040 I don't think it was, but please correct me if I'm wrong there. 00:49:35.140 --> 00:49:38.520 But people that went to that conference had such a great time 00:49:38.520 --> 00:49:40.940 and were telling stories about it on podcasts I listened to 00:49:40.940 --> 00:49:44.440 about, they were raving about how well organized it was, how 00:49:44.440 --> 00:49:46.100 many fun things were put on. 00:49:46.560 --> 00:49:50.740 It can be done even for open like, Rails is open source. 00:49:50.740 --> 00:49:54.560 There's no reason you can't have paid people doing a professional 00:49:54.720 --> 00:49:57.880 job in an open source world if it's a big enough community. 00:49:57.880 --> 00:50:00.180 Maybe that's where we suffer a little bit. 00:50:00.620 --> 00:50:02.020 Nikolay: Yeah, well, yeah, I agree. 00:50:02.020 --> 00:50:06.160 So, yeah, anyway, a multi-modal approach is good. 00:50:06.560 --> 00:50:08.720 Like, and a multi-channel approach is good. 00:50:08.720 --> 00:50:10.620 So I agree there are big events. 00:50:10.940 --> 00:50:15.180 I just maybe happened to have some special experience. 00:50:15.620 --> 00:50:16.120 Michael: Yeah. 00:50:16.400 --> 00:50:17.980 Thanks so much for sharing it. 00:50:17.980 --> 00:50:18.780 Nikolay: Yeah, sure. 00:50:20.220 --> 00:50:21.760 Sorry it took so long. 00:50:22.060 --> 00:50:23.040 No, it's because... 00:50:23.400 --> 00:50:24.640 Yeah, yeah. 00:50:24.960 --> 00:50:28.220 Anyway, good luck to everyone who is attending. 00:50:28.620 --> 00:50:31.860 If speakers, if it's not recorded, we can redo, definitely. 00:50:32.540 --> 00:50:36.720 I just stopped inviting, but it doesn't mean, just because I 00:50:36.720 --> 00:50:39.520 stopped inviting doesn't mean that we stopped fully. 00:50:39.620 --> 00:50:43.500 And now we also have a pipeline to build blog posts easily from 00:50:43.500 --> 00:50:44.000 that. 00:50:44.540 --> 00:50:45.040 Michael: Great. 00:50:45.040 --> 00:50:47.520 Nikolay: I know blog posting takes a lot of time, so this is 00:50:47.520 --> 00:50:50.980 the way you spend 1 hour redoing your talk without preparation 00:50:51.340 --> 00:50:53.900 and then you have a blog post out of it. 00:50:53.900 --> 00:50:57.940 You fix some issues if any, and we post it anywhere. 00:50:58.320 --> 00:51:00.840 Michael: Although I have noticed a slight trend towards some 00:51:00.840 --> 00:51:02.040 slightly shorter blog posts. 00:51:02.040 --> 00:51:04.600 I think some people are getting back into blogging a little bit 00:51:04.600 --> 00:51:07.160 more and it's okay to write short blog posts. 00:51:07.280 --> 00:51:12.280 In fact, this podcast is an entry into a blogging event that 00:51:12.280 --> 00:51:16.040 is encouraging more people to write blog posts, no matter how 00:51:16.120 --> 00:51:19.580 short or long they are or how much work they are, I would encourage 00:51:19.900 --> 00:51:20.460 getting into chat. 00:51:20.460 --> 00:51:23.080 Nikolay: Just be careful with ChatGPT for it, right? 00:51:23.400 --> 00:51:24.620 Michael: Please don't, yeah. 00:51:25.840 --> 00:51:26.540 Nikolay: Why not? 00:51:27.980 --> 00:51:28.480 Okay. 00:51:29.100 --> 00:51:33.220 Michael: Like, well, if you use Chat GPT, we'll do that, but 00:51:33.220 --> 00:51:37.480 please, if you use Chat GPT, verify things that you're saying. 00:51:38.000 --> 00:51:39.880 Nikolay: Not each word, but each token. 00:51:39.880 --> 00:51:43.120 A token is a part of a word, you need to verify it very carefully. 00:51:43.520 --> 00:51:46.720 Michael: And please verify it before you ask others to check 00:51:46.720 --> 00:51:47.660 your blog post. 00:51:47.800 --> 00:51:51.820 I've been burnt by that, and it's particularly painful verifying 00:51:51.820 --> 00:51:53.080 it for someone else. 00:51:53.600 --> 00:51:57.080 So yeah, that would be my advice to people using Chat GPT. 00:51:57.100 --> 00:51:59.880 If you want people to keep reviewing your blog posts. 00:52:01.340 --> 00:52:02.120 Nikolay: Makes sense. 00:52:02.560 --> 00:52:04.320 Michael: All right, thanks so much, Nikolay. 00:52:04.480 --> 00:52:07.000 Catch you next week. And thanks, everyone, for listening. 00:52:07.459 --> 00:52:07.959 Nikolay: Bye.