1
00:00:00,001 --> 00:00:04,000
[CLAIRE] Welcome to Talking Postgres, the podcast for developers who love Postgres,

2
00:00:04,000 --> 00:00:09,000
where we discuss the human side of databases, Postgres, and open source.

3
00:00:09,000 --> 00:00:13,000
For regular listeners, I want to point out that this podcast has been renamed,

4
00:00:13,000 --> 00:00:15,000
formerly called Path to Citus Con,

5
00:00:15,000 --> 00:00:20,000
our new name is Talking Postgres, as of early July 2024.

6
00:00:20,000 --> 00:00:25,000
I want to say thank you to the team at Microsoft for sponsoring this community conversation,

7
00:00:25,000 --> 00:00:31,000
and I am your host, Claire Giordano, and today's topic is podcasting about Postgres.

8
00:00:31,000 --> 00:00:33,000
It's a very meta topic today.

9
00:00:33,000 --> 00:00:37,000
And I want to introduce our guest, Pino de Candia,

10
00:00:37,000 --> 00:00:41,000
who is the former co-host of the Path to Citus Con podcast,

11
00:00:41,000 --> 00:00:46,000
and he was the co-host for the first 14 episodes or so.

12
00:00:46,000 --> 00:00:52,000
Pino is an engineering manager on the Azure Database for PostgreSQL team here at Microsoft,

13
00:00:52,000 --> 00:00:59,000
and these days he's spending a lot of time working with the engineers on Gen AI and Postgres things.

14
00:00:59,000 --> 00:01:01,000
Welcome, Pino.

15
00:01:01,000 --> 00:01:04,000
[PINO] Thanks, Claire. Thanks for having me back on the show.

16
00:01:04,000 --> 00:01:10,000
[CLAIRE] I'm so glad you're here for this meta conversation where we'll talk about podcasting about Postgres.

17
00:01:10,000 --> 00:01:14,000
And I think we have to start with the fundamental question, which is,

18
00:01:14,000 --> 00:01:18,000
why do we do this? And why does anyone listen?

19
00:01:18,000 --> 00:01:23,000
And why do we do this live on Discord?

20
00:01:23,000 --> 00:01:26,000
Do you want to help me answer those questions?

21
00:01:26,000 --> 00:01:31,000
[PINO] Yes, yes. And I think there are several levels to this question, right?

22
00:01:31,000 --> 00:01:36,000
At one level, there's a question of, like, as an organization, as a team, why do we do this?

23
00:01:36,000 --> 00:01:40,000
Then there are personal motives. And as community members, why do we do this?

24
00:01:40,000 --> 00:01:45,000
I think I'll start with the personal, because that's where I feel most comfortable.

25
00:01:45,000 --> 00:01:50,000
I think podcasting about the human side of Postgres in particular,

26
00:01:50,000 --> 00:01:58,000
it humanizes the software, the community, brings people, you know, puts a voice to people.

27
00:01:58,000 --> 00:02:03,000
Of course, we also have the conference where you can see people on video.

28
00:02:03,000 --> 00:02:07,000
And I find that that makes the community feel more intimate,

29
00:02:07,000 --> 00:02:13,000
maybe a little bit less intimidating for, you know, if psychological safety is your thing.

30
00:02:13,000 --> 00:02:18,000
And then it's just wonderful to get to know people, because part of the work we do,

31
00:02:18,000 --> 00:02:24,000
or at least maybe what makes the work meaningful, is interacting with people.

32
00:02:24,000 --> 00:02:29,000
So that would be where I would start off. I have more to say about it,

33
00:02:29,000 --> 00:02:32,000
but maybe we'll go back and forth.

34
00:02:32,000 --> 00:02:38,000
[CLAIRE] I got a note. I was trying to see if I could look it up really quickly,

35
00:02:38,000 --> 00:02:41,000
but I'm not fast enough this morning.

36
00:02:41,000 --> 00:02:47,000
But I got a note from somebody who is new to the Azure Database for PostgreSQL team,

37
00:02:47,000 --> 00:02:54,000
and he had discovered the podcast and had listened to like six episodes back to back,

38
00:02:54,000 --> 00:02:57,000
and just sent me a note of profuse thanks.

39
00:02:57,000 --> 00:03:02,000
And I was kind of surprised because, you know, if this was a new hire into the Azure Database for PostgreSQL team,

40
00:03:02,000 --> 00:03:09,000
you think he would be focused on spinning up on aspects of the Azure functionality, right?

41
00:03:09,000 --> 00:03:16,000
Versus trying to understand the Postgres community and the people behind it and how things are done and how they got their start.

42
00:03:16,000 --> 00:03:22,000
But he was learning a lot from these conversations about monitoring, about benchmarking,

43
00:03:22,000 --> 00:03:29,000
about how the Postgres core team works and the Postgres release cycles work.

44
00:03:29,000 --> 00:03:32,000
And anyway, it was kind of a cool feeling for me.

45
00:03:32,000 --> 00:03:38,000
Like that day, I was like, "Okay, I feel good about doing this podcast. It's helping people."

46
00:03:38,000 --> 00:03:46,000
And I had to write this blog post about the rename, and we'll talk about the rename in a little bit.

47
00:03:46,000 --> 00:03:57,000
And in the blog post, I was trying to express what the value is for a listener in listening to the podcast.

48
00:03:57,000 --> 00:04:01,000
And I'm going to go dig up what I said because I'm not sure I could say it better right now.

49
00:04:01,000 --> 00:04:06,000
But it was something like, it's kind of, and I stole this a little bit from Bryan Cantrill,

50
00:04:06,000 --> 00:04:11,000
but it was like, it's like you're eavesdropping in the hallway at a Postgres conference.

51
00:04:11,000 --> 00:04:17,000
And there are some people who've been working in Postgres maybe longer than you, maybe in a different area than you.

52
00:04:17,000 --> 00:04:24,000
They have different expertise than you, and you get to eavesdrop on their conversation and learn from their experiences.

53
00:04:24,000 --> 00:04:27,000
And I think that's pretty cool. That's why I do it.

54
00:04:27,000 --> 00:04:29,000
[PINO] I like that way of describing it.

55
00:04:29,000 --> 00:04:36,000
I also think there's something about if you're ramping up on a project and you're only going to need to work on it,

56
00:04:36,000 --> 00:04:41,000
say for two or four weeks, you're going to do something with it and then put it aside, move on to something else.

57
00:04:41,000 --> 00:04:44,000
Then you might not need to touch it because it kind of works.

58
00:04:44,000 --> 00:04:47,000
Then you'll study the technical aspects of the project.

59
00:04:47,000 --> 00:04:51,000
You'll solve the problem you need to do to solve at that point in time.

60
00:04:51,000 --> 00:04:54,000
But you might not invest in getting to know the community.

61
00:04:54,000 --> 00:05:05,000
Whereas Postgres is the kind of tool, the kind of software that you can interact with a lot over the course of years, eventually.

62
00:05:05,000 --> 00:05:11,000
And so I think it's worth making that investment, not just understanding it at a technical level,

63
00:05:11,000 --> 00:05:16,000
but understanding meeting some of the people in the community, understanding some of the history.

64
00:05:16,000 --> 00:05:18,000
And the podcast does that.

65
00:05:18,000 --> 00:05:22,000
We don't do it in a – we haven't done it in a potentially maybe systematic way,

66
00:05:22,000 --> 00:05:28,000
but you hear a lot about the past experiences of people, both their personal journeys,

67
00:05:28,000 --> 00:05:34,000
and then little tidbits about what changed in Postgres, when and why.

68
00:05:34,000 --> 00:05:38,000
So that's – yeah, that definitely aligns with what you just said about, you know,

69
00:05:38,000 --> 00:05:43,000
why would someone feel like when they're ramping up on a managed Postgres service,

70
00:05:43,000 --> 00:05:50,000
why would they learn about Postgres via this podcast?

71
00:05:50,000 --> 00:05:56,000
[CLAIRE] I found the quote of what I ended up writing, and I got feedback from Boriss Mejías and Floor Drees

72
00:05:56,000 --> 00:06:02,000
as I was trying to articulate, like, why? Why listen? Why care?

73
00:06:02,000 --> 00:06:07,000
But I welcome anybody else's feedback who's listening to this later.

74
00:06:07,000 --> 00:06:14,000
If they have a different perspective on why they listen to the podcast or what the value is to them,

75
00:06:14,000 --> 00:06:21,000
feel free to pop into this Discord at aka.ms/open-source-discord.

76
00:06:21,000 --> 00:06:27,000
Go to the Talking Postgres channel and, like, drop in why you think it's valuable,

77
00:06:27,000 --> 00:06:29,000
because maybe I can articulate this better.

78
00:06:29,000 --> 00:06:33,000
But what I wrote before was, "Listening to the Talking Postgres podcast is the next best thing

79
00:06:33,000 --> 00:06:37,000
to being in the hallway at a Postgres conference, eavesdropping on other people's conversations,

80
00:06:37,000 --> 00:06:40,000
and learning from the experiences of experts.

81
00:06:40,000 --> 00:06:44,000
As Floor Drees says, it's as if you're sharing a coffee with them."

82
00:06:44,000 --> 00:06:49,000
So there's the quote. The question is, could we do better? Could we do better?

83
00:06:49,000 --> 00:06:52,000
[PINO] I love that quote, and I love that you're asking for feedback.

84
00:06:52,000 --> 00:06:58,000
And one of the things I've seen you do over the course of the podcast is pull your contacts

85
00:06:58,000 --> 00:07:01,000
in the community for advice on various aspects.

86
00:07:01,000 --> 00:07:09,000
And I hope that others, whether they already know you or not, do chime in, send you a note,

87
00:07:09,000 --> 00:07:15,000
give you some more feedback about why they like the podcast, what works well, what doesn't.

88
00:07:15,000 --> 00:07:21,000
[CLAIRE] And then the other question you told me, one of the things people should know is we do not practice.

89
00:07:21,000 --> 00:07:25,000
Most podcasters do not practice beforehand.

90
00:07:25,000 --> 00:07:30,000
You want the conversation to be happening for the first time and not to be stale

91
00:07:30,000 --> 00:07:35,000
and not to be rehearsed, because that makes it robotic and boring.

92
00:07:35,000 --> 00:07:41,000
So anyway, we didn't practice, but you did say, "Claire, I want to make sure we talk about

93
00:07:41,000 --> 00:07:47,000
why we record live on Discord. Why does it happen that way?"

94
00:07:47,000 --> 00:07:49,000
So we should talk about that, right?

95
00:07:49,000 --> 00:07:54,000
[PINO] That's right, because I actually wanted to, you know, I've heard you maybe say parts of this story,

96
00:07:54,000 --> 00:07:57,000
but I like the story, and so I'd like to know where you got the inspiration.

97
00:07:57,000 --> 00:08:01,000
And then we can talk about how that adds value.

98
00:08:01,000 --> 00:08:09,000
[CLAIRE] Well, I used to work in the kernel group at Sun, and across the hall was where DTrace was created.

99
00:08:09,000 --> 00:08:16,000
Down the hall is where ZFS was created. Solaris Zones was kind of around the corner.

100
00:08:16,000 --> 00:08:21,000
I was an engineering manager. My team created Solaris Zones, among other things,

101
00:08:21,000 --> 00:08:24,000
and we did a lot of other resource management work as well.

102
00:08:24,000 --> 00:08:31,000
And so two of those people, Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, are now at Oxide Computer,

103
00:08:31,000 --> 00:08:37,000
and they host the Oxide and Friends podcast, and I was listening to it back before it was on Discord.

104
00:08:37,000 --> 00:08:41,000
It was still on Twitter Spaces, and they were trying to find a new home, new technology.

105
00:08:41,000 --> 00:08:47,000
And that's right at the point when we were thinking of starting a podcast.

106
00:08:47,000 --> 00:08:52,000
And so I was watching them with bated breath and messaging them and saying,

107
00:08:52,000 --> 00:08:57,000
"Okay, what technologies and what platforms have you tried, and what are you going to decide on?"

108
00:08:57,000 --> 00:08:59,000
And they picked Discord.

109
00:08:59,000 --> 00:09:05,000
And then right around that same time, we were preparing for--was it year two of Citus Con?

110
00:09:05,000 --> 00:09:11,000
I think it was. We wanted to do a pre-event, and that kind of allowed us to kind of combine these ideas

111
00:09:11,000 --> 00:09:17,000
of using Discord for Citus Con as a virtual hallway track,

112
00:09:17,000 --> 00:09:23,000
and then having a pre-event also on Discord for Citus Con year two,

113
00:09:23,000 --> 00:09:28,000
and then potentially having that pre-event turn into a podcast, maybe, if it takes off.

114
00:09:28,000 --> 00:09:34,000
So anyway, we ended up copying the Oxide and Friends playbook. That's the short answer.

115
00:09:34,000 --> 00:09:38,000
[PINO] The first few episodes were a little bit of an experiment,

116
00:09:38,000 --> 00:09:43,000
and both with the idea of podcasting and also the format.

117
00:09:43,000 --> 00:09:51,000
What--and what I love about the Discord channel is that it's been very lively,

118
00:09:51,000 --> 00:09:57,000
and people--it's the hallway track, and it feels right that we have this conversation,

119
00:09:57,000 --> 00:10:00,000
we can have an interaction with folks that are on the channel as well.

120
00:10:00,000 --> 00:10:02,000
People like to participate. Not everyone.

121
00:10:02,000 --> 00:10:06,000
And you can also listen--you can listen to the recordings later.

122
00:10:06,000 --> 00:10:11,000
But then those inputs have made it into our conversations very often.

123
00:10:11,000 --> 00:10:13,000
[CLAIRE] Yeah, and into the show notes as well.

124
00:10:13,000 --> 00:10:19,000
Like, people drop in links to books, podcasts, blogs, videos, resources, whatever.

125
00:10:19,000 --> 00:10:26,000
And oftentimes that chatter that happens, that parallel text chat,

126
00:10:26,000 --> 00:10:29,000
ends up influencing the show that we publish,

127
00:10:29,000 --> 00:10:34,000
both in voice and also in the set of links that we share.

128
00:10:34,000 --> 00:10:37,000
[PINO] It does feel more like an event, right? Doesn't it?

129
00:10:37,000 --> 00:10:39,000
There's a little bit more excitement.

130
00:10:39,000 --> 00:10:44,000
We wave hello to people, to familiar faces when we start the episode,

131
00:10:44,000 --> 00:10:46,000
so that makes it more fun--that makes it fun.

132
00:10:46,000 --> 00:10:52,000
[CLAIRE] I am--in working on Citus Con and POSETTE,

133
00:10:52,000 --> 00:10:55,000
which I know we're here to talk about the podcast and not about those events,

134
00:10:55,000 --> 00:11:00,000
but I've invited people to be keynote speakers for those events before,

135
00:11:00,000 --> 00:11:03,000
and only one person has ever turned me down.

136
00:11:03,000 --> 00:11:06,000
And I'm not going to name his name, but the reason he turned me down,

137
00:11:06,000 --> 00:11:10,000
and I think that was in year two or year three or year one, I don't know,

138
00:11:10,000 --> 00:11:12,000
they all blend together, but the reason he turned me down

139
00:11:12,000 --> 00:11:15,000
is because he doesn't like doing virtual events.

140
00:11:15,000 --> 00:11:18,000
He gets his energy from the audience.

141
00:11:18,000 --> 00:11:22,000
And so I kind of feel the same way.

142
00:11:22,000 --> 00:11:24,000
When we're here doing the podcast conversation,

143
00:11:24,000 --> 00:11:31,000
it is super helpful to see the chat flying by and see what people are saying.

144
00:11:31,000 --> 00:11:34,000
And it does--it gives you a little feeling of validation.

145
00:11:34,000 --> 00:11:39,000
It gives you new ideas of questions to ask or things to say.

146
00:11:39,000 --> 00:11:43,000
And, yeah, it gives me energy, certainly.

147
00:11:43,000 --> 00:11:45,000
So I really like it.

148
00:11:45,000 --> 00:11:50,000
We get a lot of variability in terms of the number of people that join

149
00:11:50,000 --> 00:11:54,000
the virtual chat that happens.

150
00:11:54,000 --> 00:11:58,000
I think a lot of times it depends on how good a job we did

151
00:11:58,000 --> 00:12:02,000
making sure people knew about the live recording, right, in advance.

152
00:12:02,000 --> 00:12:06,000
But it's quite fun.

153
00:12:06,000 --> 00:12:10,000
So I think there's a link we can drop in there, too,

154
00:12:10,000 --> 00:12:17,000
that you can use to subscribe to the future calendar of live recordings.

155
00:12:17,000 --> 00:12:24,000
So it's like aka.ms/talkingpostgres-cal

156
00:12:24,000 --> 00:12:27,000
And that subscribes you to the series.

157
00:12:27,000 --> 00:12:34,000
And usually we've got the dates and times for the next six episodes all lined up.

158
00:12:34,000 --> 00:12:37,000
So, anyway, hopefully that's useful to people.

159
00:12:37,000 --> 00:12:46,000
[PINO] Can I just add, what I really love about the Discord is that the folks on it represent--

160
00:12:46,000 --> 00:12:48,000
you know, it's different folks.

161
00:12:48,000 --> 00:12:52,000
There's some regulars and then there's different folks for different episodes.

162
00:12:52,000 --> 00:12:58,000
There's a range, and some have a ton of knowledge and experience in the Postgres space.

163
00:12:58,000 --> 00:13:03,000
So they bring to our attention links, information, and then there's side conversations

164
00:13:03,000 --> 00:13:10,000
that can go off in other directions, folks, points of interest.

165
00:13:10,000 --> 00:13:14,000
So there's really something here for everyone.

166
00:13:14,000 --> 00:13:18,000
[CLAIRE] Okay, so why do we do the rename? Do you want to talk about that briefly?

167
00:13:18,000 --> 00:13:20,000
It's an important moment, I think.

168
00:13:20,000 --> 00:13:22,000
[PINO] Yes, yes, yes, absolutely.

169
00:13:22,000 --> 00:13:25,000
And there's been some excitement about that.

170
00:13:25,000 --> 00:13:27,000
Please, please.

171
00:13:27,000 --> 00:13:31,000
So, yeah, please go ahead. I'd like you to tell the story.

172
00:13:31,000 --> 00:13:34,000
[CLAIRE] Oh, okay. Well, I'll do my best.

173
00:13:34,000 --> 00:13:38,000
I can remember being in New York City last September.

174
00:13:38,000 --> 00:13:41,000
We've been talking about renaming this podcast since September.

175
00:13:41,000 --> 00:13:43,000
Or maybe it was early October.

176
00:13:43,000 --> 00:13:46,000
And I was there for PGConf New York City.

177
00:13:46,000 --> 00:13:49,000
I was the speaker, and there were a bunch of my teammates there.

178
00:13:49,000 --> 00:13:51,000
Also speakers. My company was a sponsor, so Microsoft had a table.

179
00:13:53,000 --> 00:13:57,000
And I was walking to a dinner.

180
00:13:57,000 --> 00:13:59,000
And I got to the dinner.

181
00:13:59,000 --> 00:14:03,000
It was at this kind of a hole-in-the-wall Italian restaurant.

182
00:14:03,000 --> 00:14:06,000
I got lost once or twice on the way there, but I finally made it.

183
00:14:06,000 --> 00:14:08,000
But I was later than everyone else.

184
00:14:08,000 --> 00:14:10,000
And it seemed like I was ganged up on.

185
00:14:10,000 --> 00:14:14,000
Like, people were like, "Hey, Claire, the podcast is great, but you've really got to rename it.

186
00:14:14,000 --> 00:14:17,000
It's not about Citus Con. Why do you call it Path to Citus Con?"

187
00:14:17,000 --> 00:14:21,000
Every single month, you bring on Postgres people, and you talk about Postgres things.

188
00:14:21,000 --> 00:14:23,000
You know, it should have Postgres in the name.

189
00:14:23,000 --> 00:14:31,000
And so that was kind of the point at which I realized, "Okay, I'm not going to be able to resist this anymore."

190
00:14:31,000 --> 00:14:40,000
So some people think that we renamed the podcast because the previous virtual Citus Con event was renamed to POSETTE.

191
00:14:40,000 --> 00:14:41,000
Right?

192
00:14:41,000 --> 00:14:46,000
So what was Citus Con: An Event for Postgres, was renamed to POSETTE: An Event for Postgres.

193
00:14:46,000 --> 00:14:50,000
But the podcast has kind of become its own thing.

194
00:14:50,000 --> 00:14:57,000
It has forked off from its original role as a pre-event for Citus Con.

195
00:14:57,000 --> 00:14:59,000
It's become a monthly podcast.

196
00:14:59,000 --> 00:15:05,000
It really has nothing to do with POSETTE, previously Citus Con.

197
00:15:05,000 --> 00:15:10,000
So the real reason to rename it is just because the name was misleading.

198
00:15:10,000 --> 00:15:11,000
Right?

199
00:15:11,000 --> 00:15:13,000
It was no longer a Path to Citus Con.

200
00:15:13,000 --> 00:15:15,000
It really was about Postgres.

201
00:15:15,000 --> 00:15:17,000
And we needed to get Postgres in the name.

202
00:15:17,000 --> 00:15:24,000
We went through, I'm trying to think, I'm trying to picture the list, a very long list of possibilities.

203
00:15:24,000 --> 00:15:28,000
Probably a couple of pages long.

204
00:15:28,000 --> 00:15:30,000
I don't know, 75?

205
00:15:30,000 --> 00:15:32,000
It was a long list.

206
00:15:32,000 --> 00:15:39,000
And we ended up coming down to like 10 finalists and then 5 finalists.

207
00:15:39,000 --> 00:15:45,000
Anyway, eventually landed on Talking Postgres and I'm thrilled with it.

208
00:15:45,000 --> 00:15:50,000
I got feedback from a friend saying he thought it was a perfect name.

209
00:15:50,000 --> 00:15:53,000
I don't know if any name is perfect, but I'll take the compliment.

210
00:15:53,000 --> 00:15:57,000
Other people have just said it's just a lot more fitting.

211
00:15:57,000 --> 00:15:59,000
It makes more sense.

212
00:15:59,000 --> 00:16:02,000
I also hope it helps people discover it.

213
00:16:02,000 --> 00:16:12,000
[PINO] And I'll say I always thought that the taglines, the podcast for developers who love Postgres, the human side of Postgres,

214
00:16:12,000 --> 00:16:16,000
fit the podcast better than the main title.

215
00:16:16,000 --> 00:16:18,000
And there's a question of timing there.

216
00:16:18,000 --> 00:16:24,000
And maybe there's an interesting experience there about how do you start a podcast and what do you learn as you go.

217
00:16:24,000 --> 00:16:31,000
Because since this did start as a pre-event for the conference, it made sense at the time to name it Path to Citus Con.

218
00:16:31,000 --> 00:16:38,000
And then once you've done that and we had not initially planned to keep the podcast running past the conference,

219
00:16:38,000 --> 00:16:46,000
when we did, there was a question of, well, changing the name, that can create complications.

220
00:16:46,000 --> 00:16:50,000
So there wasn't a right time initially to rename.

221
00:16:50,000 --> 00:16:52,000
Right?

222
00:16:52,000 --> 00:16:54,000
You have to get some momentum.

223
00:16:54,000 --> 00:16:59,000
You have to get some attention around the podcast.

224
00:16:59,000 --> 00:17:03,000
So it's appropriate that we waited.

225
00:17:03,000 --> 00:17:08,000
And then -- and also we had this -- I think the podcast had to take shape.

226
00:17:08,000 --> 00:17:10,000
And we had to find our footing.

227
00:17:10,000 --> 00:17:12,000
What was it really going to be about?

228
00:17:12,000 --> 00:17:15,000
And we'll talk through -- I think it will come up in this episode.

229
00:17:15,000 --> 00:17:24,000
We'll talk through how we felt about the podcast and the kinds of things that we asked and the kinds of how we let the conversation flow.

230
00:17:24,000 --> 00:17:30,000
So that's why I think it took a while to change the name.

231
00:17:30,000 --> 00:17:32,000
And then changing the name is not easy either.

232
00:17:32,000 --> 00:17:38,000
It takes some marketing and there's some effort behind the scenes by you, the producers.

233
00:17:38,000 --> 00:17:41,000
So, yeah.

234
00:17:41,000 --> 00:17:50,000
[CLAIRE] Well, we kind of had a window where we might have been able to get the rename to happen in, say, April.

235
00:17:50,000 --> 00:17:56,000
And then after that, May and June, our team also works on POSETTE: An Event for Postgres.

236
00:17:56,000 --> 00:18:03,000
And so we were completely distracted and all hands on deck to produce POSETTE and make it happen.

237
00:18:03,000 --> 00:18:13,000
And so that's why the rename ended up, instead of happening in that kind of March/April time frame, happened in early July.

238
00:18:13,000 --> 00:18:15,000
But, yeah, now it's happened.

239
00:18:15,000 --> 00:18:18,000
And I should point out that the URL is now different as well.

240
00:18:18,000 --> 00:18:20,000
So you can just go to TalkingPostgres.com.

241
00:18:20,000 --> 00:18:26,000
So we have a domain for all the past episodes if people want to go catch up on them.

242
00:18:26,000 --> 00:18:30,000
And there's a subscribe tab there that makes it easy to subscribe.

243
00:18:30,000 --> 00:18:40,000
So hopefully that will make it more discoverable as well for people who are just kind of searching on the Internet for podcasts about Postgres.

244
00:18:40,000 --> 00:18:49,000
I think the only other story that I think is kind of interesting is Path to Citus Con, which really does roll off the tongue.

245
00:18:49,000 --> 00:18:52,000
It's four words, but it's so easy to say.

246
00:18:52,000 --> 00:19:04,000
It was actually inspired by a series of user group presentations that were done in 2020, organized by Floor Drees, I think,

247
00:19:04,000 --> 00:19:10,000
and José Miguel Parella, who I know from Microsoft, was one of the speakers.

248
00:19:10,000 --> 00:19:14,000
And this series of user group meetings was called Path to FOSDEM.

249
00:19:14,000 --> 00:19:16,000
And I was just inspired by that.

250
00:19:16,000 --> 00:19:17,000
I thought it was really cool.

251
00:19:17,000 --> 00:19:26,000
It happened in January, and it was in different cities in Europe, kind of for people as they were on their path to FOSDEM.

252
00:19:26,000 --> 00:19:36,000
And FOSDEM, as you know, is like this huge, amazing gathering of thousands upon thousands of developers from all over the world

253
00:19:36,000 --> 00:19:45,000
that happens each year in the beginning of the year in the cold of winter in Brussels, Belgium, at the Université Libre de Bruxelles.

254
00:19:45,000 --> 00:19:47,000
Did I say that right? I don't know.

255
00:19:47,000 --> 00:19:50,000
Somebody who speaks French better than me can correct me.

256
00:19:50,000 --> 00:19:54,000
And so Path to FOSDEM was the original inspiration.

257
00:19:54,000 --> 00:20:01,000
And I just wanted to put that out there to record it before I forget so that we have that moment captured.

258
00:20:01,000 --> 00:20:05,000
[PINO] Absolutely. And Claire, you've been to FOSDEM?

259
00:20:05,000 --> 00:20:08,000
[CLAIRE] Yes. Yes. Many times.

260
00:20:08,000 --> 00:20:12,000
I've been a speaker in the Postgres Dev Room a couple of times.

261
00:20:12,000 --> 00:20:20,000
And I think FOSDEM is fun, but it's also a challenging event to go to for the first time.

262
00:20:20,000 --> 00:20:25,000
Like, I remember not... It's very unstructured.

263
00:20:25,000 --> 00:20:30,000
And so you really have to have a plan of where you want to be and when.

264
00:20:30,000 --> 00:20:36,000
And, you know, sometimes it's on a college campus, and sometimes it's a 15-minute walk from one building to the other.

265
00:20:36,000 --> 00:20:41,000
And then there might be long lines to get into the room that you want to get into.

266
00:20:41,000 --> 00:20:46,000
And so you can't necessarily plan on just getting in to that session.

267
00:20:46,000 --> 00:20:51,000
Maybe you have to also attend the session before, or you'll never get a seat.

268
00:20:51,000 --> 00:20:58,000
So it takes some planning. It takes some know-how to really get the most out of the event. But it's fun.

269
00:20:58,000 --> 00:21:03,000
[PINO] Sounds like it's very exciting and you have to really put the energy in.

270
00:21:03,000 --> 00:21:06,000
Maybe they... Right. It's a big event, isn't it?

271
00:21:06,000 --> 00:21:12,000
[CLAIRE] Yes. Yes. And bring your winter down coat, too.

272
00:21:12,000 --> 00:21:16,000
And maybe your snow boots, depending on the weather.

273
00:21:16,000 --> 00:21:21,000
So since we're talking about podcasting about Postgres today, I was wondering if...

274
00:21:21,000 --> 00:21:31,000
Unless you have more questions about the rename, I was wondering if we could reflect back on the 16 episodes that we've had so far.

275
00:21:31,000 --> 00:21:37,000
And then I also want to talk a little bit about other podcasts, because we are not the only game in town.

276
00:21:37,000 --> 00:21:44,000
There are other interesting podcasts about Postgres. But first, I thought we could do this reflection.

277
00:21:44,000 --> 00:21:47,000
Are you game to do that, Pino, still?

278
00:21:47,000 --> 00:21:48,000
[PINO] Let's do that, please.

279
00:21:48,000 --> 00:21:53,000
[CLAIRE] OK. So we'll find out if you did your homework or not, because we divvied these up.

280
00:21:53,000 --> 00:21:57,000
So I took about half the episodes and you took about half the episodes, right?

281
00:21:57,000 --> 00:21:59,000
[PINO] That's right.

282
00:21:59,000 --> 00:22:02,000
[CLAIRE] All right. So let's start at the beginning. Episode one.

283
00:22:02,000 --> 00:22:08,000
And this was, I think, the very end of March in 2023.

284
00:22:08,000 --> 00:22:14,000
This was one of those pre-events for last year's Citus Con.

285
00:22:14,000 --> 00:22:17,000
And we had the two keynote speakers as our guests.

286
00:22:17,000 --> 00:22:20,000
So Simon Willison and Marco Slat.

287
00:22:20,000 --> 00:22:23,000
And the topic was "Working in Public."

288
00:22:23,000 --> 00:22:32,000
And I think some of the takeaways that I remember most from that was this concept of doing something for future you.

289
00:22:32,000 --> 00:22:39,000
And these Simon and Marco were not the only people to talk about, you know, future you.

290
00:22:39,000 --> 00:22:44,000
That is a motivation. That is a term that lots of people use these days.

291
00:22:44,000 --> 00:22:52,000
But it really captured at least my mind as a motivation for why I might do something today.

292
00:22:52,000 --> 00:22:56,000
I was in a meeting with someone the other day and I was talking about doing a retrospective

293
00:22:56,000 --> 00:23:02,000
and reflecting on how things went wrong in a particular project and what we can do better next time.

294
00:23:02,000 --> 00:23:05,000
And there was this question of, "Is it really worth our time?"

295
00:23:05,000 --> 00:23:13,000
And I think the answer is that, yeah, I want to be nice to future Claire so that I don't have to go through this pain again.

296
00:23:13,000 --> 00:23:20,000
And if I can learn something from this and do it better, avoid the pain in the future, then that's a good thing.

297
00:23:20,000 --> 00:23:26,000
[PINO] That also stuck with me. And I'll say that I have actually told my children about future you.

298
00:23:26,000 --> 00:23:33,000
I use that as a motivation to get -- yeah, I use that as a motivation to explain to the children,

299
00:23:33,000 --> 00:23:43,000
"Look, think about --" in lots of different situations, not only necessarily preserving work, but just kids' behavior.

300
00:23:43,000 --> 00:23:49,000
You know, how will staying up late today, tonight, affect how you're going to feel tomorrow, for example?

301
00:23:49,000 --> 00:23:51,000
But it's a wonderful idea.

302
00:23:51,000 --> 00:24:01,000
And Simon, especially Simon, reflected on how working in public and jotting and making notes,

303
00:24:01,000 --> 00:24:07,000
which Simon does regular engineering notes on a regular basis, is something that is just --

304
00:24:07,000 --> 00:24:15,000
first it's become a force of habit, and then it's just an incremental effort on the kind of prep he needs to do anyway.

305
00:24:15,000 --> 00:24:25,000
And then it is useful to avoid solving the same problem twice, which I think in general we don't like to do.

306
00:24:25,000 --> 00:24:29,000
It's not efficient. Yeah.

307
00:24:29,000 --> 00:24:38,000
[CLAIRE] Yeah, part of why I invited Simon to be a keynote speaker at Citus Con year 2 was because I've been following him for years online, right?

308
00:24:38,000 --> 00:24:44,000
Reading his blog, following him on Twitter, now also, you know, some of the other platforms.

309
00:24:44,000 --> 00:24:53,000
And I always thought that there was something a little bit altruistic to his Today I Learned blog, right?

310
00:24:53,000 --> 00:25:00,000
To how he shares insights into his learnings and his processes and his accomplishments.

311
00:25:00,000 --> 00:25:03,000
And it turns out it's not altruistic at all. It's completely selfish.

312
00:25:03,000 --> 00:25:07,000
And it was all motivated by the fact that he doesn't want to solve the same problem twice.

313
00:25:07,000 --> 00:25:15,000
And so he documents it, and then he publishes it, and he benefits, but also the rest of us do too, which is kind of cool.

314
00:25:15,000 --> 00:25:17,000
All right.

315
00:25:17,000 --> 00:25:23,000
[PINO] Yeah, maybe we'll just mention, you know, it was also interesting to see the contrast between how, you know, Simon and Marco.

316
00:25:23,000 --> 00:25:36,000
Marco worked much more in a team setting, so he was able to talk about the difference and the team point of view of working in open source.

317
00:25:36,000 --> 00:25:40,000
So that was another interesting part of the conversation.

318
00:25:40,000 --> 00:25:42,000
[CLAIRE] Yeah, yeah.

319
00:25:42,000 --> 00:25:53,000
Marco spent years as the technical lead for the Citus open source project, and having him share that perspective on working in public was also useful.

320
00:25:53,000 --> 00:25:55,000
Okay, episode two.

321
00:25:55,000 --> 00:26:03,000
[PINO] So episode two was, the title of the episode was "Next 100 Million Users."

322
00:26:03,000 --> 00:26:09,000
And the topic was, how does Postgres need to change or get ready for the next 100 million users?

323
00:26:09,000 --> 00:26:12,000
We all know that this is a really fast-growing community.

324
00:26:12,000 --> 00:26:20,000
We had as guests, we had four guests, which was more than we've had on any other episode.

325
00:26:20,000 --> 00:26:38,000
We had Samay Sharma, who's now at Tembo, and Melanie Plageman, who's now a committer in Postgres, as well as Burak Yucesoy and Abdullah Ustuner, who are in the managed -- I'm sorry, were in the managed service of Azure Postgres.

326
00:26:38,000 --> 00:26:47,000
So we had both open source folks, focus on open source, and folks focused on managed services, giving their perspective.

327
00:26:47,000 --> 00:27:03,000
And so that was interesting because, for example, Burak was able to talk about pain points for the managed service, and managed service keeping up with PostgreSQL and making it easy for users and defaults.

328
00:27:03,000 --> 00:27:28,000
And Samay and Melanie talked more about how either project could do -- some technical aspects of the project could change to accommodate new developers that are not DBAs or not as technical or just want -- come with an expectation of the database should work and just be easy and shouldn't necessarily have to try very hard.

329
00:27:28,000 --> 00:27:45,000
But they also talked -- and I remember this -- Melanie talked a lot about making it easy to make your first commit and expanding the community in that way of inclusiveness.

330
00:27:45,000 --> 00:27:58,000
And for me, what stuck with me about Melanie's part of the conversation was she talked about learning styles, and she talked about pair programming and learning from people.

331
00:27:58,000 --> 00:28:01,000
And I thought that was very interesting.

332
00:28:01,000 --> 00:28:05,000
That appealed to me because I actually like to learn that way a lot.

333
00:28:05,000 --> 00:28:07,000
I love to learn from a conversation.

334
00:28:07,000 --> 00:28:08,000
I learn faster.

335
00:28:08,000 --> 00:28:10,000
It sticks better.

336
00:28:10,000 --> 00:28:20,000
She talked about her early days in work environments where you learn by being side by side with folks.

337
00:28:20,000 --> 00:28:31,000
[CLAIRE] I'm actually trying to get Melanie back on the show because she is one of the newest Postgres committers as of a couple of months ago.

338
00:28:31,000 --> 00:28:35,000
I think it was announced at the end of April of 2024.

339
00:28:35,000 --> 00:28:47,000
So I was trying to see if I could get Melanie and Richard Guo together to come back on the show because Richard is also -- they were both announced on the same day as the newest Postgres committers.

340
00:28:47,000 --> 00:28:50,000
So we'll see if I'm successful with that.

341
00:28:50,000 --> 00:29:00,000
But my big takeaway from this is that I would have loved to have all four of these people as separate guests.

342
00:29:00,000 --> 00:29:11,000
In other words, there just wasn't enough time to hear from Samay and Melanie and Burak and Abdullah all together as a group, not in the hour-plus time that we had.

343
00:29:11,000 --> 00:29:17,000
So as you can see, we've never had four guests on a single episode again, and we will never do it again.

344
00:29:17,000 --> 00:29:20,000
It was just -- I found myself dissatisfied.

345
00:29:20,000 --> 00:29:25,000
Like, oh, I wanted to hear more from each of them, and there just wasn't enough time.

346
00:29:25,000 --> 00:29:26,000
[PINO] That's right.

347
00:29:26,000 --> 00:29:28,000
And they had such different perspectives and interesting things to say.

348
00:29:28,000 --> 00:29:30,000
Yes.

349
00:29:30,000 --> 00:29:33,000
[CLAIRE] So I guess that was an anti-pattern of that episode.

350
00:29:33,000 --> 00:29:43,000
[PINO] And maybe I'll say I don't think we asked them each to tell us their origin stories, but we did ask them about how they got involved with Postgres.

351
00:29:43,000 --> 00:29:51,000
And I found that interesting because in later episodes, we made a point of asking about folks' origin stories.

352
00:29:51,000 --> 00:29:59,000
And I think that's why, when I'm listening to old episodes, I found that part of the conversation so much fun.

353
00:29:59,000 --> 00:30:05,000
Everybody has an interesting story to tell, a slightly different approach.

354
00:30:05,000 --> 00:30:10,000
They may have come from -- I'm trying to remember.

355
00:30:10,000 --> 00:30:11,000
Maybe it will come to me later.

356
00:30:11,000 --> 00:30:17,000
I think it was Chelsea Dole who said she was studying econ and poli sci and then doing research,

357
00:30:17,000 --> 00:30:19,000
she got into coding.

358
00:30:19,000 --> 00:30:34,000
Others might have -- Thomas talked about how he programmed 8-bit computers when he was -- I can't remember how old, a child.

359
00:30:34,000 --> 00:30:37,000
And so just looking back, you get a little bit of history.

360
00:30:37,000 --> 00:30:41,000
You see everyone's journey is different.

361
00:30:41,000 --> 00:30:48,000
And then a little bit about how people reason about what they like, why they went in what direction.

362
00:30:48,000 --> 00:30:58,000
So the podcast, that aspect of the podcast was also helpful for folks in any -- maybe software, but in any part of software.

363
00:30:58,000 --> 00:31:06,000
[CLAIRE] Yeah, there's a nice -- well, I was going to save this for when we talk about the episode with Chris Ellis later.

364
00:31:06,000 --> 00:31:18,000
But one of my big takeaways from the Chris Ellis conversation was that there is no such thing as a traditional way of learning to be a developer.

365
00:31:18,000 --> 00:31:24,000
There's no such thing as a traditional way of becoming a Postgres expert either, right?

366
00:31:24,000 --> 00:31:30,000
And I found myself, I think in a few of the episodes, asking people, well, did they take the traditional learning path?

367
00:31:30,000 --> 00:31:33,000
And I've just now hit myself on the head.

368
00:31:33,000 --> 00:31:35,000
I've got a fresh bruise.

369
00:31:35,000 --> 00:31:40,000
But I've realized that my assumption was wrong.

370
00:31:40,000 --> 00:31:42,000
There is no traditional way.

371
00:31:42,000 --> 00:31:47,000
Every single person has their own story, has their own path, and has their own journey.

372
00:31:47,000 --> 00:31:51,000
And so that's the education of Claire, I guess.

373
00:31:51,000 --> 00:31:53,000
Okay, so episode three.

374
00:31:53,000 --> 00:31:57,000
The topic was why give talks at Postgres conferences.

375
00:31:57,000 --> 00:32:02,000
And our guests were Boriss Mejías and Álvaro Herrera.

376
00:32:02,000 --> 00:32:07,000
Boriss and Álvaro have known each other since university days.

377
00:32:07,000 --> 00:32:11,000
And I can't remember if it was undergraduate or grad school.

378
00:32:11,000 --> 00:32:19,000
But they have known each other for decades and obviously work together in the Postgres community now.

379
00:32:19,000 --> 00:32:24,000
And I just love the friendship and the dynamic between the two of them.

380
00:32:24,000 --> 00:32:34,000
Even though we have since moved to not always, but usually having just one guest, like today, Pino, you're the only guest.

381
00:32:34,000 --> 00:32:38,000
I really thought it was fun to have Boriss and Álvaro together.

382
00:32:38,000 --> 00:32:45,000
And also, we talked about the concept of, like, as you think about giving talks at a Postgres conference,

383
00:32:45,000 --> 00:32:49,000
are more of the speakers extroverted, are more of the speakers introverted?

384
00:32:49,000 --> 00:32:52,000
Does it help to be an extrovert or an introvert?

385
00:32:52,000 --> 00:33:03,000
And I thought that was, they have very different teaching styles and very different ways of approaching their conference talks.

386
00:33:03,000 --> 00:33:06,000
And so I found that contrast interesting.

387
00:33:06,000 --> 00:33:12,000
And again, it validates the fact that there is no one best way to be a conference speaker.

388
00:33:12,000 --> 00:33:15,000
[PINO] Yes, I'll second that.

389
00:33:15,000 --> 00:33:25,000
I wanted to call out that Boriss has this amazing talk series, and I'm struggling to remember if it's DeBea?

390
00:33:25,000 --> 00:33:28,000
[CLAIRE] Oh, Monica DeBea.

391
00:33:28,000 --> 00:33:30,000
[PINO] Thank you, Monica DeBea.

392
00:33:30,000 --> 00:33:37,000
This narrative style of teaching about Postgres by talking about Monica DeBea.

393
00:33:37,000 --> 00:33:43,000
And I think, I don't know if he's disclosed whether this is based on a real character or someone he's invented.

394
00:33:43,000 --> 00:33:53,000
But as she struggles with challenging problems in keeping her production systems running, it's just wonderful.

395
00:33:53,000 --> 00:34:02,000
He just starts out with, you know, she's off and getting coffee, and she gets an alert, comes back, tries this, tries that, and it's captivating.

396
00:34:02,000 --> 00:34:07,000
So shout out to Boriss for that creativity and how he gives talks.

397
00:34:07,000 --> 00:34:15,000
[CLAIRE] Yeah, he gave Monica DeBea, DBA, I'm pronouncing the last name wrong, talk last year, Citus Con year 2.

398
00:34:15,000 --> 00:34:20,000
And then he had another new talk based on that character this year.

399
00:34:20,000 --> 00:34:24,000
And the artwork was done by Scarlett Riggs.

400
00:34:24,000 --> 00:34:29,000
And I just thought it was a really cool way to teach in a storytelling style.

401
00:34:29,000 --> 00:34:36,000
So I'll try to dig up the link and drop the link of his newest talk in here, because the video is available on YouTube now.

402
00:34:36,000 --> 00:34:39,000
And I think, oh, someone's already got it for me.

403
00:34:39,000 --> 00:34:40,000
Cool.

404
00:34:40,000 --> 00:34:44,000
Postgres storytelling, what's going on with synchronous replication?

405
00:34:44,000 --> 00:34:50,000
So there's a lot of technical learning that you get, but in a storytelling style, which is really, really cool.

406
00:34:50,000 --> 00:34:51,000
Okay.

407
00:34:51,000 --> 00:35:05,000
[PINO] And maybe I'll add, can I add, if just another second, it's that what's wonderful is that you also, because you've given a lot of talks and Álvaro has, and everybody has a slightly different approach, whether they want to repeat talks or have always new topics.

408
00:35:05,000 --> 00:35:14,000
Again, you said introverted versus extroverted, but you did spend some time giving advice to people who are thinking about giving talks.

409
00:35:14,000 --> 00:35:16,000
And I thought that was really, really interesting.

410
00:35:16,000 --> 00:35:23,000
And it's worth repeating that the community is really open to new folks giving talks.

411
00:35:23,000 --> 00:35:26,000
And maybe this is a quick segue.

412
00:35:26,000 --> 00:35:31,000
You were on the talk selection committee for POSETTE.

413
00:35:31,000 --> 00:35:37,000
And that's one of the goals, to give people who are new to giving talks a chance.

414
00:35:37,000 --> 00:35:38,000
Is that right?

415
00:35:38,000 --> 00:35:50,000
[CLAIRE] Yeah, I think a lot of the Postgres community events consider whether someone is a new speaker as a factor, as a positive factor.

416
00:35:50,000 --> 00:35:51,000
Right?

417
00:35:51,000 --> 00:35:59,000
Because we all know that everybody, even the best, most experienced speakers, once upon a time, they were new speakers and somebody had to give them a chance.

418
00:35:59,000 --> 00:36:00,000
Right?

419
00:36:00,000 --> 00:36:02,000
Somebody had to open that door.

420
00:36:02,000 --> 00:36:08,000
And so I know for POSETTE: An Event for Postgres, we on the talk selection team considered it.

421
00:36:08,000 --> 00:36:13,000
And in fact, next year for the CFP, I think I plan to make that an explicit field.

422
00:36:13,000 --> 00:36:19,000
Because for some people, we knew they were a new speaker because they added that comment in the submission notes.

423
00:36:19,000 --> 00:36:21,000
And for other people, they never mentioned it.

424
00:36:21,000 --> 00:36:22,000
And we weren't sure.

425
00:36:22,000 --> 00:36:26,000
And we kind of had to guess or had to do some research online and figure it out.

426
00:36:26,000 --> 00:36:31,000
So I think I'm going to ask people explicitly in the CFP for next year.

427
00:36:31,000 --> 00:36:36,000
But I was also on the talk selection team for PGDay Chicago this year as well.

428
00:36:36,000 --> 00:36:44,000
And from my friends who serve in other talk selection teams, I do think it's something that we all think about.

429
00:36:44,000 --> 00:36:46,000
Because you want to open that door to more people.

430
00:36:46,000 --> 00:36:57,000
So if you are listening and you are thinking about giving a talk, but maybe you've never done it before, there are some good tips in that episode.

431
00:36:57,000 --> 00:36:59,000
So it's probably worth listening to.

432
00:36:59,000 --> 00:37:09,000
I also gave a lightning talk at pgDay Paris that was all about encouraging people to fight the butterflies and give their first conference talk.

433
00:37:09,000 --> 00:37:12,000
And so I'll drop that link in there too.

434
00:37:12,000 --> 00:37:14,000
I think there's a video recording of it.

435
00:37:14,000 --> 00:37:19,000
And yeah, we want to encourage people to do this.

436
00:37:19,000 --> 00:37:21,000
We want to hear from new voices.

437
00:37:21,000 --> 00:37:22,000
[PINO] Awesome. Thanks.

438
00:37:22,000 --> 00:37:23,000
All right.

439
00:37:23,000 --> 00:37:26,000
So then I'll talk about episode four a bit.

440
00:37:26,000 --> 00:37:31,000
So this was an episode titled "How I Got Started as a Dev and in PG," in Postgres.

441
00:37:31,000 --> 00:37:37,000
And our guests were Thomas Munro and Melanie Plageman, whom we mentioned a second ago.

442
00:37:37,000 --> 00:37:41,000
But I'll repeat that they're committers in PostgreSQL.

443
00:37:41,000 --> 00:37:48,000
And OK, so before I talk about them, I should say one of the fun things was that in this episode, I learned a lot about you.

444
00:37:48,000 --> 00:38:08,000
So, for example, I learned that when you talked about your origin story, you said that you had started out wanting to be a patent attorney and how that was related to things that adults had told you and things you'd felt as a child about being good at math and about debate.

445
00:38:08,000 --> 00:38:11,000
So that was really very interesting.

446
00:38:11,000 --> 00:38:19,000
And then I learned that you and Thomas bonded over talking about Solaris for a few hours when you first met, which was really fun.

447
00:38:19,000 --> 00:38:36,000
And this maybe is a segue to Thomas talked a lot about how he really, really was always interested in, you know, ever since tinkering with his 8-bit Sinclair ZX81 back in the '80s, I think.

448
00:38:36,000 --> 00:38:48,000
He then always wanted to understand how things worked under the covers, really understanding systems programming and hence that conversation with you about Solaris.

449
00:38:48,000 --> 00:38:58,000
I think I already talked about how Melanie in this episode described her journey and learning and pair programming.

450
00:38:58,000 --> 00:39:02,000
I think that was that EDB or at the time Second Quadrant?

451
00:39:02,000 --> 00:39:05,000
[CLAIRE] Maybe Greenplum.

452
00:39:05,000 --> 00:39:07,000
[PINO] Oh, Greenplum. Yes, yes.

453
00:39:07,000 --> 00:39:08,000
Maybe.

454
00:39:08,000 --> 00:39:09,000
Pivotal working at Greenplum.

455
00:39:09,000 --> 00:39:12,000
Oh, apologies if we've.

456
00:39:12,000 --> 00:39:18,000
[CLAIRE] We'll just have to have Melanie on the show in the future and get clarity or we can just check the transcript.

457
00:39:18,000 --> 00:39:20,000
[PINO] Check the transcript. Absolutely.

458
00:39:20,000 --> 00:39:23,000
I'm trying. It was a bit of a cramming session.

459
00:39:23,000 --> 00:39:40,000
I'll just take a moment to say that although we had this homework and I listened to a few episodes almost fully and then I sampled from other episodes and it just really felt like, just as you said, a fireside chat, listening in, eavesdropping.

460
00:39:40,000 --> 00:39:46,000
It was very comfortable. And the guests all had such, you know, such interesting things to say.

461
00:39:46,000 --> 00:39:49,000
You could listen to them for hours.

462
00:39:49,000 --> 00:39:55,000
But let's let's move on to episode five on this. Oh, sorry. I didn't give you a chance to reflect on episode four if you want to.

463
00:39:55,000 --> 00:40:03,000
[CLAIRE] I was just going to say that that was the first episode where the title was how I got started as a developer and in Postgres.

464
00:40:03,000 --> 00:40:10,000
And we have repeated that topic thematically across a few episodes with a few different guests.

465
00:40:10,000 --> 00:40:18,000
And and I think it's a nice repeated theme and it reinforces that. Oh, wow. Everybody has had a different path.

466
00:40:18,000 --> 00:40:23,000
And so if we if we look at.

467
00:40:23,000 --> 00:40:31,000
I have this mission, maybe it's part of why I do the podcast, which is to help grow the Postgres community.

468
00:40:31,000 --> 00:40:53,000
And if you want to grow the Postgres community, then that means opening the doors to new people joining in all sorts of capacities, you know, not just as developers, but there's other types of contributions as well, which is part of why I give this talk a couple of times called like Fibonacci spirals and, you know, other ways to contribute to Postgres beyond code.

469
00:40:53,000 --> 00:41:05,000
Anyway, so like shining a light, though, on people's journeys in, I think is helpful to new prospective future Postgres developers, right?

470
00:41:05,000 --> 00:41:16,000
Because it gives them that insight into all these different paths and to the fact that their path can be unique again, because there is no one right way to do it, so.

471
00:41:16,000 --> 00:41:27,000
[PINO] I don't want to I don't want to derail us, but so I'll only ask for a link. I'd love to see a link to that Fibonacci spirals talk, because now you've got you've piqued my interest.

472
00:41:27,000 --> 00:41:32,000
[CLAIRE] Oh, OK. OK, cool. Yeah. Slides are online, video's online, all that stuff. OK, cool.

473
00:41:32,000 --> 00:41:52,000
So my talk number five was with Grant Fritchey and Ryan Booz. They both work at Redgate. And Grant is has worked in the SQL database world for literally decades before branching out and also starting to work on Postgres in the last several years.

474
00:41:52,000 --> 00:42:03,000
And Ryan Booz, I had met him in Citus Con year 1, actually. He was a speaker and I've met him at other Postgres conferences because he's a frequent Postgres speaker.

475
00:42:03,000 --> 00:42:12,000
Ryan used to work at Timescale before Redgate. And so what I liked about that episode is the topic was like my favorite ways to learn more about Postgres.

476
00:42:12,000 --> 00:42:29,000
And it ended up producing this really rich set of links to books and blogs and conferences and newsletters and user groups and like all the places that they have gone or have recommended to other people in order to learn more about Postgres.

477
00:42:29,000 --> 00:42:42,000
And so I just thought it was it was as if you were sitting down for coffee with a friend who knows a lot more about Postgres than you do, and they were walking you through, like, all the places you might go to learn.

478
00:42:42,000 --> 00:42:51,000
And, you know, we all know people of different learning styles. So it was nice that they gave like a mixture, some links to videos and some links to books.

479
00:42:51,000 --> 00:43:01,000
And, you know, people consume information differently. And, yeah, that was probably my favorite part of that episode.

480
00:43:01,000 --> 00:43:16,000
[PINO] Great. Okay, then, then let's talk about episode six. You're probably already using Postgres. This episode was with Chelsea Dole of Brex and Floor Drees.

481
00:43:16,000 --> 00:43:29,000
And what's really fun is that they come at it from this perspective of app developers who are using an ORM.

482
00:43:29,000 --> 00:43:40,000
That's an object relational model that maps objects in a programming language to the database, to relational objects.

483
00:43:40,000 --> 00:43:52,000
And therefore, to some extent, hides the database. And very often, and both Chelsea and Floor talked about this, it very often means that developers don't have to think much about the database.

484
00:43:52,000 --> 00:44:04,000
It just works. Often it just works. And they talked about how, what happens when it stops working or why it's beneficial to go look under the covers.

485
00:44:04,000 --> 00:44:12,000
And their journeys in learning Postgres. And actually it was interesting to see that it took them a bit in each of their cases.

486
00:44:12,000 --> 00:44:20,000
They had, there had been some time in that mode where they just didn't think much about the database, the database works, it was behind the scenes.

487
00:44:20,000 --> 00:44:27,000
And then what caused them to take a closer look. And how that became important.

488
00:44:27,000 --> 00:44:42,000
And so tips for other app devs, application developers, how to get started at PostgreSQL, what are good resources, what are things to focus on first as an application developer.

489
00:44:42,000 --> 00:44:53,000
Especially maybe understanding your queries versus more database administrator style topics.

490
00:44:53,000 --> 00:45:06,000
Gosh, I want to say that, you know, we can't call out all of them, right. But every episode that we had, some of these folks, they've given talks, so many talks, right.

491
00:45:06,000 --> 00:45:16,000
They've given talks in the community. They gave talks at POSETTE as well. So I'll just try and call out that Chelsea gave a talk I loved, how to work with other people.

492
00:45:16,000 --> 00:45:18,000
[CLAIRE] Oh no, that was Floor.

493
00:45:18,000 --> 00:45:20,000
[PINO] Sorry, Floor.

494
00:45:20,000 --> 00:45:23,000
[CLAIRE] she co-presented with Jimmy.

495
00:45:23,000 --> 00:45:24,000
Exactly.

496
00:45:24,000 --> 00:45:26,000
[PINO] Yes, yes. Yeah.

497
00:45:26,000 --> 00:45:39,000
[CLAIRE] Yeah, that video's online. That was at POSETTE. And it was, I think it took a lot of courage for them both to be open on that topic and to talk about it. And it was very moving.

498
00:45:39,000 --> 00:45:47,000
There was a lot of positive support and feedback and response from people who were there.

499
00:45:47,000 --> 00:45:56,000
All right, so episode seven was with Regina Obe and Paul Ramsey. And the topic was why people care about PostGIS.

500
00:45:56,000 --> 00:46:01,000
And of course, we talked about in the beginning, we had to have the conversation about pronunciation.

501
00:46:01,000 --> 00:46:07,000
And is it PostGIS or PostG-I-S or all the different ways of pronouncing that puppy.

502
00:46:07,000 --> 00:46:18,000
Both Paul and Regina serve on the PostGIS steering committee. Paul's one of the co-founders of the PostGIS project. And Regina has been involved in a leadership role for decades as well.

503
00:46:18,000 --> 00:46:27,000
And I knew Paul Ramsey before the podcast. I first met him in Lisbon back in like 2018 at PGConf EU.

504
00:46:27,000 --> 00:46:41,000
But this, that podcast episode was my first real conversation with Regina. And I was so impressed. It's probably a big part of why I invited Regina to be one of the keynote speakers at POSETTE 2024.

505
00:46:41,000 --> 00:46:54,000
But they covered a lot of ground. And for people who really know Postgres very well, but haven't paid a lot of attention to the open source geospatial world,

506
00:46:54,000 --> 00:47:03,000
I think it's a very interesting conversation with just looking at this world from a completely different angle. So it's fun.

507
00:47:03,000 --> 00:47:08,000
[PINO] It's a really big community, the PostGIS community.

508
00:47:08,000 --> 00:47:12,000
[CLAIRE] Maybe even bigger than Postgres, frankly.

509
00:47:12,000 --> 00:47:13,000
[PINO] Right.

510
00:47:13,000 --> 00:47:24,000
[CLAIRE] Okay, so episode eight was with Andres Freund and Heikki Linnakangas. The topic was that repeated thematic topic of how I got started as a developer and in Postgres.

511
00:47:24,000 --> 00:47:35,000
Andres Freund is of course a Postgres core team member and committer, works at Microsoft. Heikki is also a Postgres committer and he's co-founder of Neon.

512
00:47:35,000 --> 00:47:49,000
But the interesting thing about this is on YouTube, there was a big spike in downloads immediately after Andres discovered the xz utils backdoor and, you know, saved the world.

513
00:47:49,000 --> 00:47:55,000
So people all wanted to know more about his backstory, right?

514
00:47:55,000 --> 00:48:10,000
[PINO] Yeah, exactly. And he found himself, you know, a celebrity overnight, of which it was fun to hear him talk about it too, how he adjusted to that, had lots of interview requests.

515
00:48:10,000 --> 00:48:16,000
And I told my kids about this. It was really fun. The kids were really engaged in this story.

516
00:48:16,000 --> 00:48:32,000
[CLAIRE] Yeah, I remember I was on my way to a dinner party, but I was talking to Andres on the phone, just kind of walking him through like some of the inquiries he was getting and the invitations to be on podcasts or get interviewed or whatever.

517
00:48:32,000 --> 00:48:39,000
Definitely, you know, I think for someone who is not used to being in the limelight, at least if it were me, it would have made me uncomfortable.

518
00:48:39,000 --> 00:48:51,000
I'm not speaking to how he feels. That's like his story to tell or not tell. But I was talking to him, and then I hung up the phone, and then I walked into my dinner party, and I was a couple minutes late, so I had to explain why.

519
00:48:51,000 --> 00:48:59,000
And it was really interesting, because none of the other people at this dinner party work in tech, but they had all heard about this XZ Utils backdoor.

520
00:48:59,000 --> 00:49:05,000
They had read about it in, you know, the New York Times or wherever they saw their news earlier that day.

521
00:49:05,000 --> 00:49:19,000
And so that was kind of a weird moment. Usually the work that, you know, our Postgres teams do doesn't get any visibility by people at dinner parties that I go to.

522
00:49:19,000 --> 00:49:25,000
So, all right, episode nine, solving every data problem in SQL.

523
00:49:27,000 --> 00:49:35,000
[PINO] This episode was with Dimitri Fontaine and Vik Fearing, both longtime Postgres community members.

524
00:49:35,000 --> 00:49:49,000
And they're really interesting. So, Dimitri has worked on a bunch of projects, pgloader, pgcopydb, pg_auto_failover.

525
00:49:49,000 --> 00:49:56,000
And he's the author of a book, The Art of PostgreSQL, which is very well known in the Postgres community.

526
00:49:56,000 --> 00:50:04,000
And every time we have a new person on the team, they go read that, and they have wonderful things to say about it.

527
00:50:04,000 --> 00:50:06,000
So, they recommend it a lot.

528
00:50:06,000 --> 00:50:14,000
And Vik Fearing is at EDB. He's also SQL -- sorry, he works on the SQL standard.

529
00:50:14,000 --> 00:50:25,000
So, that was interesting. He talked about -- I think he'd been at the time of the podcast, he said he'd been on the SQL standard committee for about a year

530
00:50:25,000 --> 00:50:30,000
and had gotten a few of his proposals accepted into the standard.

531
00:50:30,000 --> 00:50:38,000
He talks about CAS in Postgres, those stuff, I guess some -- anyway, I won't go into the technical details.

532
00:50:38,000 --> 00:50:41,000
Please do check out the episode on that.

533
00:50:41,000 --> 00:50:52,000
And maybe I'll just say they both were very enthusiastic about this idea that you really want to push the limit on how you use SQL.

534
00:50:52,000 --> 00:50:58,000
I'm going to keep saying sequel, but they pointed -- Vic pointed out that it's S-Q-L.

535
00:50:58,000 --> 00:51:05,000
And so, for example, Vic had done the Advent of Code challenge, and we'll drop a link to that.

536
00:51:05,000 --> 00:51:10,000
But it's a challenge where I think they dropped two problems a day throughout the month of December.

537
00:51:10,000 --> 00:51:18,000
And the problems are not really ideally solved with SQL, but can be.

538
00:51:18,000 --> 00:51:21,000
And so, some other folks had gotten interested in that.

539
00:51:21,000 --> 00:51:28,000
By the way, the Advent of Code is huge. I think they -- in the last few years have passed a million participants.

540
00:51:28,000 --> 00:51:39,000
And the conversation went to a lot of different places, you know, why -- for example, we talked about timestamps and the flexibility of Postgres in solving problems.

541
00:51:39,000 --> 00:51:42,000
So, please check out that episode.

542
00:51:42,000 --> 00:51:45,000
Oh, still now, episode 10.

543
00:51:45,000 --> 00:52:01,000
My journey into Postgres monitoring. That was with Lukas Fittl of pganalyze and also -- sorry, the company, pganalyze, and the video blog, 5 Minutes of Postgres.

544
00:52:01,000 --> 00:52:07,000
And Rob Treat, who talked a lot about Circonus, but I don't recall right now.

545
00:52:07,000 --> 00:52:15,000
Maybe you can chime in. And Rob Treat is a well-known speaker at community events and organizer of Postgres community events.

546
00:52:15,000 --> 00:52:29,000
So, they talked a lot about monitoring, how they'd come to use monitoring because they needed it for themselves, for their own purposes, and then how they made tools and either consulted and brought those tools to the community.

547
00:52:29,000 --> 00:52:43,000
That was another of these episodes where, thanks to their -- and the contributions of folks in the chat, got a ton of links to useful tools for monitoring.

548
00:52:43,000 --> 00:52:54,000
And then there was a little bit of a meta conversation about observability versus monitoring and the perspective of -- interesting, if you like these meta conversations.

549
00:52:54,000 --> 00:53:08,000
I found it very interesting and how the monitoring is maybe viewed differently in a community like the Postgres layer versus what you're looking for in observability in the application.

550
00:53:08,000 --> 00:53:12,000
[CLAIRE] Awesome. Yeah.

551
00:53:12,000 --> 00:53:19,000
Rob Treat has been a really amazing advisor to me in particular.

552
00:53:19,000 --> 00:53:26,000
Sometimes when I run into tricky questions, I turn to Rob. He's the admin for the Postgres Slack, in fact.

553
00:53:26,000 --> 00:53:32,000
So, that's how I DM him. That's how I reach him so that we can talk about things.

554
00:53:32,000 --> 00:53:42,000
And he was actually one of the co-hosts for Citus Con year 2 in one of the live streams, which was kind of a volunteer role for him.

555
00:53:42,000 --> 00:53:45,000
And I really appreciate it. He did a great job.

556
00:53:45,000 --> 00:53:50,000
All right. So, Episode 11 was with Jelte Fennema-Nio and Marco Slot.

557
00:53:50,000 --> 00:53:54,000
And the topic was "My Journey into Benchmarking Performance."

558
00:53:54,000 --> 00:54:01,000
And Jelte and Marco are engineers that I had worked with for years at Microsoft.

559
00:54:01,000 --> 00:54:07,000
And they both know a lot about benchmarking Postgres and benchmarking Citus in particular.

560
00:54:07,000 --> 00:54:14,000
And they both have blogged about it as well. So, there's probably a couple blog links I should drop in there at some point into the Discord chat, I mean.

561
00:54:14,000 --> 00:54:24,000
But they generously shared kind of their perspective and their learnings and their thoughts about HammerDB and some of the other benchmarking tools that are out there.

562
00:54:24,000 --> 00:54:35,000
And it was just for anybody who needs to spin up on benchmarking, I think it's a really useful episode to listen to.

563
00:54:35,000 --> 00:54:43,000
And then Episode 12 was with Derk van Veen, who the topic was "From Developer to Postgres Specialist."

564
00:54:43,000 --> 00:54:50,000
And Derk is one of the many Postgres people who you might see playing chess in the hallways at a Postgres conference.

565
00:54:50,000 --> 00:54:56,000
I can remember sitting near him, actually, at the pgDay Paris speaker dinner earlier this year.

566
00:54:56,000 --> 00:55:01,000
And the chess... He has some kind of portable mobile chess board.

567
00:55:01,000 --> 00:55:05,000
It's basically a piece of cloth that you lay out on the table and then pull the pieces out.

568
00:55:05,000 --> 00:55:10,000
And then, before you know it, people were playing chess after dinner.

569
00:55:10,000 --> 00:55:14,000
Better than dessert, I guess. Healthier than dessert. [Great way to meet people]

570
00:55:14,000 --> 00:55:26,000
But that conversation was fascinating for anybody who I think is a developer but finds themselves being drawn to questions about the database.

571
00:55:26,000 --> 00:55:33,000
And it was really interesting to hear about his journey from being a developer to becoming the specialist at his company.

572
00:55:33,000 --> 00:55:42,000
And if you're wondering whether that future is for you, I think this episode is pretty interesting.

573
00:55:42,000 --> 00:55:47,000
And the quote that I love from it is "The best days are days when things don't go as planned."

574
00:55:47,000 --> 00:55:50,000
That was the money quote.

575
00:55:50,000 --> 00:55:54,000
[PINO] I love that quote.

576
00:55:54,000 --> 00:56:03,000
So then I'll talk about episode 13, which was spinning up on Postgres and AI with Arda Aytekin.

577
00:56:03,000 --> 00:56:05,000
And Arda is a colleague of mine.

578
00:56:05,000 --> 00:56:13,000
And what's interesting is we started the podcast in the year of ChatGPT.

579
00:56:13,000 --> 00:56:16,000
We said late March. That was episode one.

580
00:56:16,000 --> 00:56:20,000
And so AI kept coming up in all the episodes.

581
00:56:20,000 --> 00:56:33,000
Maybe not in all the episodes, but in many episodes, this question came up of how will AI, how will Gen AI affect our work, change the future, or affect what we do?

582
00:56:33,000 --> 00:56:40,000
And so this was our chance to really dive deep on the topic.

583
00:56:40,000 --> 00:56:52,000
And Arda gave a crash course in AI terminology, giving some concepts so that a nice conversational introduction.

584
00:56:52,000 --> 00:56:54,000
Data engineering versus data science.

585
00:56:54,000 --> 00:56:57,000
Talked about responsible AI.

586
00:56:57,000 --> 00:57:07,000
What is Hugging Face, the repository for machine learning models or one of the large catalogs for ML models.

587
00:57:07,000 --> 00:57:10,000
Embeddings, prompt engineering.

588
00:57:10,000 --> 00:57:15,000
Anyway, if you want to learn about AI, that was a great episode.

589
00:57:15,000 --> 00:57:23,000
And I should say, of course, and how it applies in Postgres, so the extensions that are relevant for AI in Postgres.

590
00:57:23,000 --> 00:57:25,000
[CLAIRE] All right.

591
00:57:25,000 --> 00:57:26,000
Episode 14.

592
00:57:26,000 --> 00:57:29,000
Our guest was Chris Ellis.

593
00:57:29,000 --> 00:57:32,000
And the topic was becoming expert at using Postgres.

594
00:57:32,000 --> 00:57:43,000
And I think I mentioned earlier in today's episode that my big takeaway was that there is no such thing as a traditional way of learning how to be an engineer.

595
00:57:43,000 --> 00:57:50,000
And I need to eradicate that term, that concept, that assumption from my lexicon.

596
00:57:50,000 --> 00:57:52,000
I just have to get rid of it.

597
00:57:52,000 --> 00:57:57,000
I also thought Chris is such a good storyteller.

598
00:57:57,000 --> 00:58:03,000
And so hearing him talk about his experiences just made it fun.

599
00:58:03,000 --> 00:58:08,000
That podcast could be literally two or three times as long as it was.

600
00:58:08,000 --> 00:58:12,000
And if I were a listener, I would still be listening at the end of it.

601
00:58:12,000 --> 00:58:25,000
There was a quote that we included in the description of the episode, too, that I thought was really interesting, too, which is that for him, the most productive place is not in a quiet library, but in a coffee shop.

602
00:58:25,000 --> 00:58:29,000
That that is where he can sometimes get the most done.

603
00:58:29,000 --> 00:58:35,000
And so that just reinforced the fact, you know, I've always been a library person myself.

604
00:58:35,000 --> 00:58:37,000
So people are different.

605
00:58:37,000 --> 00:58:39,000
And that's a good thing.

606
00:58:39,000 --> 00:58:53,000
So I had also prior to inviting Chris to be a guest on this episode, I had been with him at Nordic PGDay, saw him give a talk there and saw him give a really interesting lightning talk at pgDay Paris as well.

607
00:58:53,000 --> 00:59:03,000
And so right now, as I talk about him and this episode, I'm holding one of his electric elephants that he made kind of as a hobby project.

608
00:59:03,000 --> 00:59:19,000
And he made it he gave a talk about it at PGDay Paris. And I am going to drop that link in because I just thought it was just a fun intersection between, you know, his interests in Postgres and in electronics.

609
00:59:19,000 --> 00:59:21,000
So.

610
00:59:21,000 --> 00:59:30,000
[PINO] And folks can hear more about it in the in the episode, too, that it was very popular and it was a great story to hear.

611
00:59:30,000 --> 00:59:34,000
[CLAIRE] All right. Episode 15, that's you, Michael Christofides.

612
00:59:34,000 --> 00:59:40,000
[PINO] And I'll say that. Yeah. And I'll just say so. Episode 14 was my last episode as your co-host.

613
00:59:40,000 --> 00:59:54,000
And it was wonderful. And then I sort of I've said that I said at the time that I felt more comfortable being in the audience than being in the in being a co-host.

614
00:59:54,000 --> 01:00:00,000
And of course, I'm back today and happy to be back. But that hasn't changed.

615
01:00:00,000 --> 01:00:10,000
But so that was my last episode. And therefore, in episode 15 with Michael Christofides, you were the sole host and you all had a great conversation, the two of you.

616
01:00:10,000 --> 01:00:17,000
And this was also, I think, the first time you had as a as a guest, a podcaster.

617
01:00:17,000 --> 01:00:45,000
And Michael was super supportive. I always I should say this is an intro. Michael Christofides, probably everyone knows him, but Michael Christofides is author and he's pgMustard, both a tool and a company, for visualizing, explain and doing performance analysis and also a co-host of the podcast Postgres FM.

618
01:00:45,000 --> 01:00:53,000
And first of all, I'll say Michael was so encouraging. I really enjoyed it. He was encouraging.

619
01:00:53,000 --> 01:01:06,000
He said he'd watched all he'd listened to all the episodes of the podcast, which was which was fantastic, because I think Michael and his co-hosts have done over 100 episodes now of Postgres FM.

620
01:01:06,000 --> 01:01:18,000
They're very well known. And and actually, Michael later said in the episode that that he's really encouraging of Postgres podcasts in general and tries to listen to to to all of them or a lot of them.

621
01:01:18,000 --> 01:01:27,000
So that was great. And of course, yes, you know, the episode was about EXPLAIN. So Michael gave gave tech.

622
01:01:27,000 --> 01:01:41,000
We had technical details about explain, but was interesting. You know, you commented that buffers only came up the 40th minute of the episode. There was a lot of there was a lot of other there are a lot of other topics.

623
01:01:41,000 --> 01:01:47,000
And finally, I'm going to move to episode 16, which was,

624
01:01:47,000 --> 01:02:00,000
Yeah, so before the one we're having right now, it was about the making of POSETTE and and so we heard from you interviewed Aaron Wislang and Teresa Giacomini.

625
01:02:00,000 --> 01:02:10,000
Aaron is one of our producers here as well. And Teresa Giacomini is the, sorry, the chair of POSETTE.

626
01:02:10,000 --> 01:02:17,000
And they talked about the making of the conference.

627
01:02:17,000 --> 01:02:24,000
Lots of interesting things to talk about. So, of course, we we talked about the rename, which we did today as well.

628
01:02:24,000 --> 01:02:31,000
And then we thought we talked about lots of things. The things that stood out for me was the discussion of virtual versus in-person conferences.

629
01:02:31,000 --> 01:02:43,000
We had an interesting discussion. Sorry, you all had an interesting discussion. And in the chat, we were also having a very interesting discussion and we're hearing from different people about about how they felt about it.

630
01:02:43,000 --> 01:02:50,000
And that had come up, by the way, in the conference itself. I remember having a conversation, you know, and folks chiming in about what they liked.

631
01:02:50,000 --> 01:02:57,000
And, you know, you need both kinds of conferences, right? You love in-person conferences. So there's space for all of these things.

632
01:02:57,000 --> 01:03:07,000
We talked about recordings. I want to call out that I think we had the recordings were ready ahead.

633
01:03:07,000 --> 01:03:19,000
So they were published. Sorry, let me just think for a second. So we watched the stream was us watching together pre-recorded talks with the authors in the in the live chat.

634
01:03:19,000 --> 01:03:29,000
So the authors were available for questions while their talks were playing. And of course, we had live co-host discussion as well.

635
01:03:29,000 --> 01:03:35,000
And and the recordings then were reposted with something like 20 translations.

636
01:03:35,000 --> 01:03:41,000
And during the during the event, a language was added, which I thought was really, really nice.

637
01:03:41,000 --> 01:03:47,000
It really spoke to the inclusiveness of of the event. And the event was happening in different in different time zones.

638
01:03:47,000 --> 01:03:58,000
And all of that, Aaron and Teresa were able to talk to the complexity of making that happen, as well as the how talk you talked a little bit about how talk selection happened.

639
01:03:58,000 --> 01:04:06,000
So that was a great episode for anyone interested in how do you run a conference? What kinds of things come up? What are the learnings?

640
01:04:06,000 --> 01:04:19,000
[CLAIRE] I think one of the things that was so rewarding for me with POSETTE: An Event for Postgres is that the previous two years I was a co-chair with Teresa Giacomini on the event.

641
01:04:19,000 --> 01:04:32,000
And then this year, in year three, I took a step back. I still remain chair of the talk selection team and was heavily involved in the renaming of the virtual event.

642
01:04:32,000 --> 01:04:53,000
But Teresa chaired the entire event, soup to nuts. And it was just really cool to see to see her in that role and to see all the changes she made and all the improvements that she and the team made in it and just see it keep getting better with with me just being in the background.

643
01:04:53,000 --> 01:05:04,000
So as a manager, as a leader, it's just kind of cool. It's great to see people thrive and grow and just make magic happen.

644
01:05:04,000 --> 01:05:11,000
And the feedback we've gotten from speakers and attendees about their experience was really, really good.

645
01:05:11,000 --> 01:05:19,000
So, of course, now that that means the expectations and the bar is raised for what next year is going to be like in year four.

646
01:05:19,000 --> 01:05:32,000
But it was fun. And Aaron, to have him as a guest, whereas normally he's a co-producer on this show, was really, really cool to have him on the other side of the microphone.

647
01:05:32,000 --> 01:05:33,000
Okay.

648
01:05:33,000 --> 01:05:45,000
[PINO] I should say we should shout out that Aaron, along with Ari right now, our producers, they're running the show right now and making sure our sound quality is good and participating in the...

649
01:05:45,000 --> 01:05:47,000
[CLAIRE] In the Discord chat.

650
01:05:47,000 --> 01:05:49,000
[PINO] Thank you both.

651
01:05:49,000 --> 01:05:53,000
[CLAIRE] Yes, very much couldn't do it without the two of you.

652
01:05:53,000 --> 01:06:08,000
Okay. We've walked through all 16 episodes, which is really cool, but we would be remiss if we didn't point out that we are, you know, we are one among several different Postgres podcasts.

653
01:06:08,000 --> 01:06:18,000
And I thought we could just give a quick shout out to the other community of podcasters, starting with perhaps the oldest one that's been...

654
01:06:18,000 --> 01:06:22,000
It's currently up to episode 323.

655
01:06:22,000 --> 01:06:29,000
I was just looking at the latest episode and it's called Scaling PostgreSQL with Creston Jamison.

656
01:06:29,000 --> 01:06:31,000
And I think...

657
01:06:31,000 --> 01:06:43,000
[PINO] I think it's a great one. I think it's weekly and Creston goes over, he summarizes the blogs and videos related to Postgres for the week.

658
01:06:43,000 --> 01:06:45,000
And he does a great job.

659
01:06:45,000 --> 01:06:51,000
[CLAIRE] So, and obviously I worked on Citus, the open source extension as my main area of focus for many years.

660
01:06:51,000 --> 01:06:53,000
And Citus is all about scaling Postgres.

661
01:06:53,000 --> 01:07:04,000
So he came onto my radar ages and ages ago, but it's, it's yeah, well-known, popular, important and valuable.

662
01:07:04,000 --> 01:07:16,000
The next one is Postgres FM with, let me see if I've got it up here, with Nikolay and Michael as the two co-hosts.

663
01:07:16,000 --> 01:07:18,000
And yeah, they just had their hundredth episode.

664
01:07:18,000 --> 01:07:20,000
I think they're probably even further than that.

665
01:07:20,000 --> 01:07:23,000
And then I...

666
01:07:23,000 --> 01:07:24,000
[PINO] You were recently a guest.

667
01:07:24,000 --> 01:07:26,000
[CLAIRE] I was the guest on episode 99.

668
01:07:26,000 --> 01:07:29,000
So I, it was fun. It was really fun.

669
01:07:29,000 --> 01:07:35,000
Michael Christofides, he has this belief that his goal is just to make the guests look good.

670
01:07:35,000 --> 01:07:41,000
And I'm, I just want to kind of copy that spirit and do that with my guests as well.

671
01:07:41,000 --> 01:07:44,000
Although he's very skilled at it.

672
01:07:44,000 --> 01:07:45,000
He wants to make you look good.

673
01:07:45,000 --> 01:07:54,000
He wants to make you feel comfortable and he wants to give interesting learnings and insights and conversations to his listeners.

674
01:07:54,000 --> 01:08:00,000
So anyway, our topic was sponsoring the community and we got to talk a bit about POSETTE, of course,

675
01:08:00,000 --> 01:08:07,000
but we also talked about, you know, Microsoft sponsoring conferences and a little bit about this podcast.

676
01:08:07,000 --> 01:08:11,000
And I can't even remember everything else we talked about.

677
01:08:11,000 --> 01:08:17,000
So I will drop a link to that episode if somebody else has an already into the Discord chat.

678
01:08:17,000 --> 01:08:19,000
But it was fun. Really, really fun.

679
01:08:19,000 --> 01:08:21,000
And this is super popular.

680
01:08:21,000 --> 01:08:26,000
They just started it in, was it 2022? Late 2022?

681
01:08:26,000 --> 01:08:32,000
So it's only been around a couple of years, but people like it.

682
01:08:32,000 --> 01:08:34,000
Very much so.

683
01:08:34,000 --> 01:08:37,000
[PINO] And there's a video version of that.

684
01:08:37,000 --> 01:08:41,000
Some of them they do with video as well, right?

685
01:08:41,000 --> 01:08:42,000
Was your episode with video?

686
01:08:42,000 --> 01:08:45,000
[CLAIRE] Yeah, they're all recorded with video.

687
01:08:45,000 --> 01:08:48,000
But obviously on the podcast platforms, it's just the audio.

688
01:08:48,000 --> 01:08:54,000
So you have to go to YouTube to see the version with the video.

689
01:08:54,000 --> 01:09:01,000
And everywhere else, like if you go to Apple podcasts or whatever, then it's it's just audio.

690
01:09:01,000 --> 01:09:07,000
OK, so if we were listing podcasts in age order, ours is next.

691
01:09:07,000 --> 01:09:14,000
Right. Scaling Postgres is the oldest, then Postgres FM and then Path to Citus Con, which is now called Talking Postgres.

692
01:09:14,000 --> 01:09:23,000
And then after that is Hacking Postgres, which is hosted by Ry Walker of Tembo.

693
01:09:23,000 --> 01:09:28,000
And Ry is an absolutely wonderful person.

694
01:09:28,000 --> 01:09:33,000
I met him, I think, for the first time at PGConf New York City last year.

695
01:09:33,000 --> 01:09:38,000
And they've had a bunch of really interesting guests on their show.

696
01:09:38,000 --> 01:09:43,000
And I'm not sure exactly what episode they're up to because they're doing the seasons thing.

697
01:09:43,000 --> 01:09:47,000
So I'd have to do a little bit of arithmetic here to figure that out.

698
01:09:47,000 --> 01:09:52,000
Oh, wow. OK, well, they've had a bunch.

699
01:09:52,000 --> 01:09:57,000
I know Melanie Plageman was a recent guest as well, and I have not listened to her, her episode.

700
01:09:57,000 --> 01:10:06,000
But I'm sure she talked about PGConf.dev, the recent Vancouver event, since I know she was one of the organizers of that.

701
01:10:06,000 --> 01:10:10,000
And then there's The Builders. So I wanted to give a shout out to them as well.

702
01:10:10,000 --> 01:10:16,000
They've only had three episodes so far, but it was hosted by Gulcin Jelinek of EDB.

703
01:10:16,000 --> 01:10:25,000
And I'll see if there's going to be more, if it was just a three part mini series or if there are more episodes in their future. I'm waiting to find out.

704
01:10:25,000 --> 01:10:29,000
[PINO] I hope I hope they I hope they do more.

705
01:10:29,000 --> 01:10:33,000
And then you mentioned 5mins of Postgres earlier, which is not a podcast.

706
01:10:33,000 --> 01:10:39,000
[CLAIRE] But Lukas Fittl of pganalyze does this five minute video on YouTube.

707
01:10:39,000 --> 01:10:45,000
Is it weekly? Is that is that right, Pino? 

708
01:10:45,000 --> 01:10:51,000
[PINO] I'm not sure. It might be it might be weekly. 

709
01:10:51,000 --> 01:10:55,000
[CLAIRE] Three weeks, one month, one month. It looks approximately weekly. He's up to one hundred and nineteen videos so far, which is kind of cool.

710
01:10:55,000 --> 01:11:01,000
And the very, first one. Let's see if I can I can find out when it was.

711
01:11:01,000 --> 01:11:08,000
Looks like it was two years ago-ish. And I know when I was at PGConf.dev,

712
01:11:08,000 --> 01:11:13,000
I think it was Robert Haas who said somebody should give Lukas Fittl a prize for this.

713
01:11:13,000 --> 01:11:30,000
This is such a valuable contribution to for him to kind of be canvassing all the things that are being published and introduced and blogged about and then sharing his interpretation of why they matter in a nice, succinct, digestible format on a weekly basis.

714
01:11:30,000 --> 01:11:36,000
It's kind of cool. So those are our shout outs.

715
01:11:36,000 --> 01:11:43,000
[PINO] I think it's definitely, definitely wonderful to have all these different choices.

716
01:11:43,000 --> 01:11:52,000
And then they're all a bit different in length. For example, I might be off by a bit, but maybe scaling Postgres is usually about 20, 25 minutes.

717
01:11:52,000 --> 01:11:58,000
The five minute format, you know, longer format. We tend to go over an hour in this one.

718
01:11:58,000 --> 01:12:14,000
I think Nikolay and Michael do about that for Postgres FM. Just the I think that that that speaks to the inclusivity of the community, that we have all these options for learning and for getting to know, getting to know the community members.

719
01:12:14,000 --> 01:12:28,000
[CLAIRE] Yeah, I think Postgres FM might actually be shorter. I feel like they try to keep theirs to about 20 to 30 minutes each, which it definitely reduces production time and it makes it digestible.

720
01:12:28,000 --> 01:12:33,000
And I feel like in our case, we go longer, but we're monthly. Right.

721
01:12:33,000 --> 01:12:40,000
So from a listener perspective, they're going to get a more detailed, more in-depth conversation with someone.

722
01:12:40,000 --> 01:12:51,000
And ours is a completely different vibe in that you're eavesdropping on a conversation, right, versus talking about a specific topic more with more focus.

723
01:12:51,000 --> 01:12:57,000
I don't know if I'm comparing or contrasting [maybe a little less structure, maybe a little less structure in our.]

724
01:12:57,000 --> 01:13:05,000
That's fair. But in a good way, less structure in a good way. I'm going to go for that.

725
01:13:05,000 --> 01:13:09,000
OK, so before we wrap today and while you're still here as a guest.

726
01:13:09,000 --> 01:13:20,000
And by the way, a couple of people were a little worried that something went wrong between you and me, that there was a drama, that there was a reason you left, that we weren't public about.

727
01:13:20,000 --> 01:13:23,000
But that's not true, right?

728
01:13:23,000 --> 01:13:31,000
[PINO] That's not true. That's not true. And I think I explained it at the end of the episode that maybe, you know, sometimes, you know, it bears repeating.

729
01:13:31,000 --> 01:13:41,000
I don't feel really comfortable in this in this. In fact, I had missed, you know, misgivings about coming back as a as a as a co-host because I get really nervous.

730
01:13:41,000 --> 01:13:46,000
I mean, it really the day before the 24 hours before a recording.

731
01:13:46,000 --> 01:13:52,000
I'm really so nervous and I try to mask it. And that's primarily what you know.

732
01:13:52,000 --> 01:13:58,000
And I and I and it was a challenge to myself. And I really appreciated that you invited me as co-host.

733
01:13:58,000 --> 01:14:04,000
You've been a mentor to me as, you know, in terms of hosting a podcast.

734
01:14:04,000 --> 01:14:08,000
And I feel like I learned a lot. But every time I was it was a bit of an experiment.

735
01:14:08,000 --> 01:14:16,000
It was a bit of an experiment for me to see if over time I'd get more relaxed about it and feel differently.

736
01:14:16,000 --> 01:14:20,000
But so when we got to about a year, I sort of thought to myself, well, this isn't really changing.

737
01:14:20,000 --> 01:14:25,000
And it was a it was fun, but I'd rather listen. And that's and that's that was the motivation.

738
01:14:25,000 --> 01:14:32,000
So I approached you. I said, Claire, let's what do you think about, you know, my retiring?

739
01:14:32,000 --> 01:14:37,000
So you were very supportive. You tried to convince me and offer me other kinds of support.

740
01:14:37,000 --> 01:14:44,000
But I really appreciate that you you didn't push too hard because it didn't make it uncomfortable.

741
01:14:44,000 --> 01:14:56,000
Well, we do miss you. But I I'm so happy that you stayed on as long as you did, because that your initial deal was not to do this for a full year.

742
01:14:56,000 --> 01:15:02,000
That was not our original agreement. So you stayed on a lot longer than I could have ever hoped and expected.

743
01:15:02,000 --> 01:15:07,000
And I'm glad you came back today as a guest. I did have fun along with.

744
01:15:07,000 --> 01:15:12,000
Yeah, yeah. And, you know, I talked about sort of, you know, there's these two things that can happen.

745
01:15:12,000 --> 01:15:17,000
Interestingly, it can happen at the same time. I mean, it can be really nervous and worried.

746
01:15:17,000 --> 01:15:21,000
Then I appreciate the memory and they're having fun as well.

747
01:15:21,000 --> 01:15:26,000
[CLAIRE] Yeah. But maybe we should have made up a really fun story. I mean, I am half Greek, half Italian.

748
01:15:26,000 --> 01:15:30,000
You're are you all Italian? Like we could have had this some dramatic argument. I don't know. Anyway. 

749
01:15:30,000 --> 01:15:37,000
[PINO] Oh, some disagreement about who has better olives.

750
01:15:37,000 --> 01:15:47,000
[CLAIRE] All right. So are there any surprises from podcasting about Postgres that we want to shine a light on before we give it a wrap today?

751
01:15:47,000 --> 01:15:52,000
I already mentioned that we had that learning that don't have four guests on one episode.

752
01:15:52,000 --> 01:15:59,000
It's more like a panel discussion and less like a, you know, a conversation, I guess.

753
01:15:59,000 --> 01:16:07,000
[PINO] Right. Yes. Yes. And then maybe another learning was that the origin stories were something we felt really resonated.

754
01:16:07,000 --> 01:16:13,000
It was interesting to hear the audience liked it and the and the guests as well.

755
01:16:13,000 --> 01:16:18,000
So we made a point of asking everyone how they got started.

756
01:16:18,000 --> 01:16:28,000
Maybe I want to I wanted to ask you a little bit about, you know, just spend a few minutes explaining to us, how do you line up guests for the for the podcast?

757
01:16:28,000 --> 01:16:32,000
What's your thinking about that? And then how do you work with the guests to come up with?

758
01:16:32,000 --> 01:16:37,000
[CLAIRE] That is a really good question. How do I line up guests? I have a brainstorming document.

759
01:16:37,000 --> 01:16:47,000
And every single time I think of or somebody suggests to me a possible guest or a possible topic, I just put it in this file.

760
01:16:47,000 --> 01:16:54,000
So it's just a doc with a bunch of bullets in it. And that.

761
01:16:54,000 --> 01:17:03,000
You know, there's gosh, Taylor Swift. I saw Taylor Swift interviewed once and she talked about how it's important when you get an idea to write it down,

762
01:17:03,000 --> 01:17:07,000
because if you think you're going to remember it later, like that's such a good idea.

763
01:17:07,000 --> 01:17:12,000
That's so obvious. I'll remember it later. I don't need to write it down. Poof, it's gone.

764
01:17:12,000 --> 01:17:17,000
And so the second I do get suggestions or ideas, I put them in that doc.

765
01:17:17,000 --> 01:17:24,000
And if I can't get to that doc, then I'll put it in, like, the notes app in my my phone and then transfer it over later.

766
01:17:24,000 --> 01:17:30,000
But that's a little risky because what if I forget that it's there and I forget to transfer it?

767
01:17:30,000 --> 01:17:37,000
And then, you know, when the cool thing is right now, I think we're booked through November.

768
01:17:37,000 --> 01:17:44,000
So, so that's really nice for me. It's not quite as stressful of, oh, my gosh, I need to line up next month's guest.

769
01:17:44,000 --> 01:17:50,000
You know, we're booked in advance and there's more of a runway. But a lot of like. 

770
01:17:50,000 --> 01:18:00,000
[PINO] But what made the difference? Is it is it that, you know, we got you got better at lining up guests or because we were, you know, the podcast has been running for longer.

771
01:18:00,000 --> 01:18:05,000
[CLAIRE] So there's more awareness. That's a really good question.

772
01:18:05,000 --> 01:18:26,000
I think part of it is maybe I'm more organized. Maybe part of it is that as the podcast gets more listeners and more brand awareness, if you will, or just more people aware of what it is, then, you know, maybe I'm getting more suggestions from people.

773
01:18:26,000 --> 01:18:30,000
We have had people come and invite themselves like I want to be on your podcast.

774
01:18:30,000 --> 01:18:36,000
And that's cool. Like the first time, the second time that happens, that's a really nice feeling.

775
01:18:36,000 --> 01:18:44,000
So it's there's no there's no simple black and white answer to that question about.

776
01:18:44,000 --> 01:18:53,000
[PINO] Well, I do appreciate hearing about your brainstorming, doc, because I because I was wondering about, you know, that that that process and the idea that, you know, things have to bake for a while.

777
01:18:53,000 --> 01:18:58,000
Right. Like you get an idea. You might want to touch base with the person.

778
01:18:58,000 --> 01:19:04,000
They sit in the brainstorming doc for a while before they become a planned episode.

779
01:19:04,000 --> 01:19:10,000
[CLAIRE] You asked also about how I work with guests on what the topic will be and what the focus will be.

780
01:19:10,000 --> 01:19:15,000
And going back to something Michael Christofides said, like where he wants to make his guests look good.

781
01:19:15,000 --> 01:19:19,000
One of my goals also is to try to make it easy for our guests.

782
01:19:19,000 --> 01:19:28,000
And obviously, Ari and Aaron, Ari Padilla Acosta and Aaron Wislang are co-producers. They're part of that as well.

783
01:19:28,000 --> 01:19:36,000
But when I do the outreach, I try to give people up front like these are my four ideas for what our topics could be.

784
01:19:36,000 --> 01:19:47,000
And this is what it would be like. And I try to set their expectations to take away some of the uncertainty about it and try to imagine what their questions are going to be.

785
01:19:47,000 --> 01:19:51,000
And to answer their questions up front. And there's two reasons I do that.

786
01:19:51,000 --> 01:20:00,000
One is I want them to be as comfortable as possible. And then two, like if they have a lot of uncertainty, they're just going to say no.

787
01:20:00,000 --> 01:20:09,000
So if I do think they'd make a great guest and I want them to say yes, then I need to invite them in a way that answers all the questions.

788
01:20:09,000 --> 01:20:13,000
I mean, it's no different than when you get an invitation to go to a party.

789
01:20:13,000 --> 01:20:22,000
It has to include the basics like where and when and why and, you know, RSVP by deadline and gifts or no gifts.

790
01:20:22,000 --> 01:20:27,000
And, you know, you just need to set people's expectations.

791
01:20:27,000 --> 01:20:38,000
[PINO] Love it, Claire, that you give analogies. And that's been one of the themes of the, you know, in several podcasts, or at least for me, I've noticed that you look for those analogies, you give those analogies.

792
01:20:38,000 --> 01:20:43,000
And it's a way you structure your thought process. And it's fun.

793
01:20:43,000 --> 01:20:44,000
[CLAIRE] Well, Pino.

794
01:20:44,000 --> 01:20:49,000
Is that something you learned or I don't know, you've been doing it for a long time?

795
01:20:49,000 --> 01:20:58,000
It's so funny because there's a lot of attorneys in my family and my husband is fond of saying that analogy is the weakest form of argument.

796
01:20:58,000 --> 01:21:07,000
But I think analogies are really nice because they help people fit a concept or an idea into a mental model that they already have.

797
01:21:07,000 --> 01:21:15,000
Right. And I just think that's a nice shortcut. And our brains are always looking for shortcuts because there's so much coming at us all the time.

798
01:21:15,000 --> 01:21:18,000
Right. So much to digest and process and do.

799
01:21:18,000 --> 01:21:28,000
And, you know, at the end of every day, I have to decide, am I going to be happy with what I accomplished or unhappy about the much longer list of things I didn't do?

800
01:21:28,000 --> 01:21:40,000
And so I like the shortcuts that analogies give. And I didn't realize I did it a lot. That's interesting. That's a new a new perspective.

801
01:21:40,000 --> 01:21:42,000
[PINO] And is it something you learned to do or?

802
01:21:42,000 --> 01:21:48,000
[CLAIRE] I don't know, because I didn't realize I did it a lot. I mean, this is I'm hearing this for the first time.

803
01:21:48,000 --> 01:21:50,000
[PINO] It comes to you naturally.

804
01:21:50,000 --> 01:21:56,000
[CLAIRE] Yeah. But I do I do I do think they're effective. So, OK, I think it's time to wrap.

805
01:21:56,000 --> 01:22:07,000
And I want to say thank you, Pino, for joining as a guest, for coming back, for doing this kind of looking back at the greatest hits of past 16 episodes.

806
01:22:07,000 --> 01:22:18,000
I'm chatting about the rename a little bit. I'm super happy about the Talking Postgres name and also giving a shout out to the other podcasters in the Postgres world.

807
01:22:18,000 --> 01:22:27,000
[PINO] I want to say thank you. You're welcome, and thank you for involving me in this wonderful experience.

808
01:22:27,000 --> 01:22:33,000
[CLAIRE] All right. So our next episode is going to be recorded live on an unusual day of the week.

809
01:22:33,000 --> 01:22:42,000
It's not going to be on a Wednesday morning. Our next episode will be recorded live on Tuesday, August 6th at 4 p.m. PDT.

810
01:22:42,000 --> 01:22:50,000
Our guest is David Rowley, who is based in New Zealand, which is why we're recording on a Tuesday afternoon, California time.

811
01:22:50,000 --> 01:22:56,000
And the topic with David Rowley will be how I got started as a developer and in Postgres.

812
01:22:56,000 --> 01:23:07,000
If you want to join the live recording, you can mark your calendar at aka.ms/talkingpostgres-ep18-cal.

813
01:23:07,000 --> 01:23:17,000
And you can always get to past episodes and get links to this podcast on all the podcasting platforms at talkingpostgres.com.

814
01:23:17,000 --> 01:23:22,000
Transcripts are included on the episode pages on that website as well.

815
01:23:22,000 --> 01:23:31,000
And be sure to tell all your friends about the podcast rename so that they don't think that Path To Citus Con has disappeared and they know it's now called Talking Postgres.

816
01:23:31,000 --> 01:23:41,000
Before we leave, if you have enjoyed this podcast, please rate and review us on your favorite podcast platform because it will help other folks find this new show.

817
01:23:41,000 --> 01:23:56,000
And if you don't want to do a rating online but are comfortable just posting a note on whatever social platform you like to use, Twitter, Mastodon, LinkedIn, Threads, whatever it is, that works too.

818
01:23:56,000 --> 01:24:06,000
And a big thank you to everybody who joined the recording live and participated in the live text chat on Discord and gave us inspiration and energy during today's conversation.

819
01:24:06,000 --> 01:24:07,500
Thank you.