1 00:00:00,060 --> 00:00:02,800 Michael: Hello and welcome to Postgres FM, a weekly show about 2 00:00:02,800 --> 00:00:03,940 all things PostgreSQL. 3 00:00:03,940 --> 00:00:05,640 I am Michael, founder of pgMustard. 4 00:00:05,640 --> 00:00:08,600 And this week with Nikolay taking a well-earned week off, I am 5 00:00:08,600 --> 00:00:12,660 super grateful to be joined by Claire Giordano, the head of Postgres 6 00:00:12,660 --> 00:00:16,640 open source community initiatives at Microsoft and host of a 7 00:00:16,640 --> 00:00:18,020 fellow Postgres podcast. 8 00:00:18,480 --> 00:00:19,940 Welcome to the show, Claire. 9 00:00:20,080 --> 00:00:21,020 Claire: Thank you so much. 10 00:00:21,020 --> 00:00:22,660 It's exciting to be here, Michael. 11 00:00:22,660 --> 00:00:26,740 I'm a big fan of your show and danced a jig when you invited 12 00:00:26,740 --> 00:00:27,420 me on. 13 00:00:28,080 --> 00:00:29,200 Michael: Oh, well, likewise. 14 00:00:29,540 --> 00:00:33,420 You know, I've listened to every episode of Claire's podcast 15 00:00:33,640 --> 00:00:36,360 and was also delighted to be on it recently. 16 00:00:37,060 --> 00:00:38,460 So thank you for joining me. 17 00:00:38,460 --> 00:00:43,840 And you recently published a fantastic recap of a lot of Postgres 18 00:00:43,940 --> 00:00:47,940 initiatives going on at Microsoft, obviously, but also have spoken 19 00:00:48,040 --> 00:00:51,580 at lots of people will know you from the podcast, but also from 20 00:00:51,580 --> 00:00:56,320 the conferences that you speak at, that you organize, and all 21 00:00:56,320 --> 00:00:59,560 sorts of ways that you contribute to the Postgres community yourself. 22 00:01:00,060 --> 00:01:03,320 Do you want to give us a little bit of background on how you 23 00:01:03,320 --> 00:01:06,600 got involved in this and also why you do it? 24 00:01:06,600 --> 00:01:08,100 Why it's important to you? 25 00:01:08,320 --> 00:01:09,300 Claire: Well, let's see. 26 00:01:09,600 --> 00:01:12,380 I first got involved in Postgres back in 2017. 27 00:01:13,380 --> 00:01:16,400 And that's when I joined a small San Francisco startup called 28 00:01:16,400 --> 00:01:17,320 Citus Data. 29 00:01:17,420 --> 00:01:20,140 I've worked in engineering, I've worked in product management, 30 00:01:20,140 --> 00:01:23,220 I've worked in product marketing, and it was wearing the product 31 00:01:23,220 --> 00:01:28,020 marketing hat that I joined Citus and obviously, Citus is an open 32 00:01:28,020 --> 00:01:29,640 source extension to Postgres. 33 00:01:29,760 --> 00:01:33,140 And so that's what brought me into the Postgres community. 34 00:01:33,420 --> 00:01:37,380 And people who were there will tell you that I kind of said no 35 00:01:37,380 --> 00:01:38,660 a couple of times first. 36 00:01:39,000 --> 00:01:41,820 I didn't think of myself as a database person. 37 00:01:42,040 --> 00:01:44,760 And so I just wasn't sure if it was the right fit. 38 00:01:44,760 --> 00:01:48,080 I'd worked in operating systems, I'd worked in scale-out storage, 39 00:01:48,080 --> 00:01:51,360 I'd worked in developer tools, but was Postgres, were databases 40 00:01:51,560 --> 00:01:53,000 the next place for me? 41 00:01:53,160 --> 00:01:57,840 And so I had some hesitations at the beginning, and I'm so glad 42 00:01:57,840 --> 00:02:01,400 that other folks persisted in nudging me to talk to the team 43 00:02:01,400 --> 00:02:06,100 at Citus because I love my job and I love working with the Postgres 44 00:02:06,100 --> 00:02:06,600 community. 45 00:02:07,280 --> 00:02:11,540 So yeah, from my work at Citus, that's obviously the connection. 46 00:02:11,780 --> 00:02:15,960 And then I first started meeting people in the community about 47 00:02:15,960 --> 00:02:20,040 a year and a half later, I gave a talk at my first Postgres conference, 48 00:02:20,080 --> 00:02:22,520 which was PGConf EU in Lisbon. 49 00:02:22,860 --> 00:02:25,020 And that talk was like, why Postgres? 50 00:02:25,080 --> 00:02:26,080 Why this database? 51 00:02:26,160 --> 00:02:26,920 Why now? 52 00:02:27,040 --> 00:02:31,160 Where I was sharing all of my observations about, you know, the 53 00:02:31,160 --> 00:02:34,340 popularity and where it was coming from and everything I'd learned 54 00:02:34,340 --> 00:02:35,940 in my first year and a half. 55 00:02:36,460 --> 00:02:36,960 Michael: Nice. 56 00:02:37,360 --> 00:02:41,140 So you've done talks in the past about all the ways you can contribute 57 00:02:41,200 --> 00:02:43,140 to the community, you call it. 58 00:02:43,140 --> 00:02:45,860 I think we probably roughly agree on what the community even 59 00:02:45,860 --> 00:02:49,300 is, but for anybody out there trying to think, what does this 60 00:02:49,300 --> 00:02:49,800 include? 61 00:02:50,020 --> 00:02:51,400 What would you say to them? 62 00:02:51,660 --> 00:02:55,580 Claire: Well, so I think one of the talks you're talking about 63 00:02:56,200 --> 00:03:00,140 was called Fibonacci Spirals and 21 Ways to Contribute to Postgres 64 00:03:00,140 --> 00:03:01,100 beyond code. 65 00:03:01,300 --> 00:03:04,920 And that is a talk that I probably first gave at PGConfU, but 66 00:03:04,920 --> 00:03:08,660 also gave at Fosdem, and at CitusCon, and different variations. 67 00:03:09,140 --> 00:03:13,700 And it was interesting to create because obviously Postgres is 68 00:03:13,700 --> 00:03:14,700 an open source project. 69 00:03:14,700 --> 00:03:15,920 It's a global project. 70 00:03:15,920 --> 00:03:18,740 People from all around the world contribute to it. 71 00:03:18,740 --> 00:03:22,440 But a friend of mine, who doesn't work on Postgres at all, was 72 00:03:22,440 --> 00:03:25,540 recently started working on an open source project. 73 00:03:25,960 --> 00:03:29,540 And he told me just the other day, he's like, you know, I thought 74 00:03:29,540 --> 00:03:33,060 when we first started talking about open sourcing my project, 75 00:03:33,060 --> 00:03:36,420 that it was literally just about releasing the code on GitHub. 76 00:03:36,720 --> 00:03:41,040 I didn't realize how much more there is to an open source project. 77 00:03:41,040 --> 00:03:44,160 I can't mention the name because this project is not yet open 78 00:03:44,160 --> 00:03:44,660 sourced. 79 00:03:45,160 --> 00:03:49,020 But the talk that I gave covered all sorts of ground, like not 80 00:03:49,020 --> 00:03:53,600 just documentation or translations of error messages, which, 81 00:03:53,800 --> 00:03:57,980 you know, are obviously closer to the code, but also things that 82 00:03:57,980 --> 00:04:01,820 you can do just with blogging and sharing your expertise or giving 83 00:04:01,820 --> 00:04:06,900 talks at meetups and again, sharing your learnings with the local 84 00:04:06,900 --> 00:04:07,400 community. 85 00:04:07,820 --> 00:04:10,940 Posting your slides online after you've given a talk so that 86 00:04:10,940 --> 00:04:15,700 other people who were not there have at least access to the slides. 87 00:04:16,120 --> 00:04:16,840 What else? 88 00:04:16,840 --> 00:04:18,580 Reporting bugs, that's important. 89 00:04:18,640 --> 00:04:21,960 And the different way you need to report security bugs, you know, 90 00:04:21,960 --> 00:04:22,860 that's important. 91 00:04:23,240 --> 00:04:26,780 Some people have written books and that's not for all of us. 92 00:04:26,780 --> 00:04:28,460 Obviously, that's a lot of work. 93 00:04:28,520 --> 00:04:33,120 But like Dimitri Fontaine's book, The Art of Postgres is so 94 00:04:33,120 --> 00:04:33,620 popular. 95 00:04:33,700 --> 00:04:35,700 Markus Winand's books are so popular. 96 00:04:35,840 --> 00:04:39,900 So in my talk, I have screenshots of some of their books as well. 97 00:04:40,040 --> 00:04:41,760 Is that what you were thinking of? 98 00:04:41,920 --> 00:04:44,940 Michael: Yeah, I actually watched it earlier today, re-watched 99 00:04:45,100 --> 00:04:49,900 it, the CitusCon version, and a couple of the ones that I noted 100 00:04:49,900 --> 00:04:54,760 down as I don't always think of those are, for example, shining 101 00:04:54,760 --> 00:04:56,780 a light on others work in the community. 102 00:04:56,920 --> 00:05:00,360 I thought that was such a good reminder that part of, like It 103 00:05:00,360 --> 00:05:03,620 is difficult when you're in open source to keep telling people 104 00:05:03,620 --> 00:05:04,900 what you're working on. 105 00:05:04,900 --> 00:05:08,040 And people can get tired of always hearing about your work from 106 00:05:08,040 --> 00:05:08,440 yourself. 107 00:05:08,440 --> 00:05:12,260 But if you spot someone else doing great work, sharing that and 108 00:05:12,260 --> 00:05:15,340 champing that, you can say nicer things about it than they can 109 00:05:15,340 --> 00:05:16,460 say about themselves. 110 00:05:16,560 --> 00:05:19,540 So that was a thought of really good point like that, that I 111 00:05:19,540 --> 00:05:21,800 don't think of doing as much as I should. 112 00:05:21,960 --> 00:05:26,320 And the other 1 was like organizing meetups or offering a space 113 00:05:26,320 --> 00:05:29,340 for a meetup to be in, like there's so many small things that 114 00:05:29,340 --> 00:05:32,860 are difficult, But it's not that difficult to organize a small 115 00:05:32,860 --> 00:05:34,400 meetup. You don't have to do a talk. 116 00:05:34,400 --> 00:05:37,360 You could, like meetups I've been to, some of them are just gathered 117 00:05:37,360 --> 00:05:40,640 around a table or just a drink or something like that. 118 00:05:40,640 --> 00:05:42,320 It doesn't have to be serious. 119 00:05:42,380 --> 00:05:45,320 So there are lots of these small ways that are really important, 120 00:05:45,320 --> 00:05:48,940 but they're also quite difficult for a lot of the people that 121 00:05:48,940 --> 00:05:51,760 are deep on the technical side of things to always contribute 122 00:05:51,760 --> 00:05:52,120 to. 123 00:05:52,120 --> 00:05:55,820 But having said all that, you're not just doing that, like that, 124 00:05:56,120 --> 00:05:59,540 those contributions are all very important, but there are lots 125 00:05:59,540 --> 00:06:03,240 of code contributions as well, Lots of extremely valuable things 126 00:06:03,240 --> 00:06:04,080 on that side. 127 00:06:04,080 --> 00:06:07,020 So yeah, I think you only covered the non-code ones in that talk. 128 00:06:07,020 --> 00:06:08,480 So I'll link up that talk. 129 00:06:08,480 --> 00:06:11,020 Claire: I also want to give a shout out to Josh Berkus. 130 00:06:11,200 --> 00:06:15,020 When I first started working on the ways to contribute to Postgres 131 00:06:15,020 --> 00:06:17,800 beyond code talk, I was partway through. 132 00:06:17,800 --> 00:06:21,720 I think my talk had been accepted by this point, or maybe I was 133 00:06:21,720 --> 00:06:23,000 still working on the proposal. 134 00:06:23,320 --> 00:06:26,680 And I thought, you know, what if somebody's already given this 135 00:06:26,680 --> 00:06:27,160 talk? 136 00:06:27,160 --> 00:06:30,600 What if I think it's my idea, but it's not really my idea? 137 00:06:30,600 --> 00:06:33,900 So, you know, after just a few Google searches, I discovered 138 00:06:33,900 --> 00:06:38,620 that he had written a talk almost 10 years before the alternative 139 00:06:38,760 --> 00:06:42,220 title for it, which is the 1 that I always remember with 50 ways 140 00:06:42,220 --> 00:06:43,340 to love your project. 141 00:06:43,440 --> 00:06:46,360 And he had this beautiful pie chart in it where he showed that, 142 00:06:46,360 --> 00:06:48,520 you know, the code contribution is hugely important. 143 00:06:48,520 --> 00:06:51,600 It's what everybody thinks of, but it's like the slice of pie. 144 00:06:51,740 --> 00:06:56,180 And all the rest of it is the non-code contributions that are 145 00:06:56,180 --> 00:06:59,880 really important part of a healthy open source project. 146 00:07:00,160 --> 00:07:02,300 Because it takes all aspects. 147 00:07:02,300 --> 00:07:05,780 People need to be able to learn the technology, people need tutorials, 148 00:07:06,460 --> 00:07:07,980 and of course, people learn differently. 149 00:07:08,420 --> 00:07:11,840 Some people learn by podcasts, for example, which is why you 150 00:07:11,840 --> 00:07:12,860 do what you do. 151 00:07:12,860 --> 00:07:13,600 Michael: Yeah, absolutely. 152 00:07:14,240 --> 00:07:16,420 I personally love listening to podcasts. 153 00:07:16,980 --> 00:07:20,680 I find that I learn a lot through them but it also helps me connect 154 00:07:20,680 --> 00:07:22,420 dots that I hadn't connected previously. 155 00:07:23,100 --> 00:07:27,320 Sometimes you read something and it hasn't completely sunk in 156 00:07:27,320 --> 00:07:29,940 until you hear someone describe it or you see it in action. 157 00:07:30,060 --> 00:07:33,740 And having those multiple touch points really helped me personally 158 00:07:33,760 --> 00:07:34,260 learn. 159 00:07:34,540 --> 00:07:38,440 So I'm curious on the motivations behind that talk as well, though. 160 00:07:38,440 --> 00:07:41,580 Do you see a lot of people that want to contribute more to Postgres 161 00:07:41,580 --> 00:07:44,280 but are struggling for ideas on how to do so? 162 00:07:44,280 --> 00:07:47,560 Or do you see it more as trying to sell the benefits of doing 163 00:07:47,560 --> 00:07:48,060 so. 164 00:07:48,160 --> 00:07:49,900 Claire: I think it was probably twofold. 165 00:07:50,080 --> 00:07:56,000 I think 1 of the things that I'm always thinking about is how 166 00:07:56,000 --> 00:07:58,100 do I help grow the Postgres community? 167 00:07:58,840 --> 00:08:03,900 And the talk I gave last year at PG Coffee U and subsequently 168 00:08:04,160 --> 00:08:08,800 I also presented at Nordic was a beginner's guide to partitioning 169 00:08:08,920 --> 00:08:10,320 and sharding in Postgres. 170 00:08:10,840 --> 00:08:14,800 And it specifically was a beginner's guide because that's what 171 00:08:14,800 --> 00:08:18,080 I thought I could help the most with is helping somebody who's 172 00:08:18,080 --> 00:08:21,660 brand new, who's never used partitioning or never used sharding 173 00:08:21,660 --> 00:08:24,520 or wasn't even sure what the difference was between the 2 of 174 00:08:24,520 --> 00:08:27,340 them, that I could help them understand those concepts. 175 00:08:27,660 --> 00:08:31,320 Just because I think if we're going to grow, that means we need 176 00:08:31,320 --> 00:08:35,740 to help people who are new to the technology and new to the space 177 00:08:35,820 --> 00:08:36,320 learn. 178 00:08:36,680 --> 00:08:40,700 And so in some sense, this different ways to contribute to Postgres 179 00:08:40,940 --> 00:08:44,860 talk was also motivated by this desire to just help people who 180 00:08:44,860 --> 00:08:48,840 were new realize that, okay, maybe they're not a C programmer. 181 00:08:48,900 --> 00:08:51,760 And so they're not going to be contributing to Postgres core, 182 00:08:51,760 --> 00:08:54,840 but there are ways they can actually contribute to the project 183 00:08:54,840 --> 00:08:56,440 that are just as valuable. 184 00:08:57,040 --> 00:09:01,820 Actually coming soon is the pgconf.dev event happening in Vancouver, 185 00:09:02,460 --> 00:09:02,960 Canada. 186 00:09:02,960 --> 00:09:07,180 It's kind of like a rebrand or a next generation of what traditionally 187 00:09:07,360 --> 00:09:08,320 was called PGCon. 188 00:09:08,760 --> 00:09:11,780 It used to happen every year in Ottawa, Canada. 189 00:09:12,440 --> 00:09:17,640 And on the last day of PGCon, now pgconf.dev, is an unconference. 190 00:09:18,180 --> 00:09:22,620 And so I'm toying around with the idea of proposing an unconference 191 00:09:23,000 --> 00:09:27,440 session where we talk about like, how can we recognize or better 192 00:09:27,440 --> 00:09:31,920 recognize the different types of contributions beyond code? 193 00:09:31,940 --> 00:09:34,600 Like, right now, it's impossible to track them. 194 00:09:34,600 --> 00:09:37,560 So it's really about who you know or who your friends are and 195 00:09:37,560 --> 00:09:38,440 things like that. 196 00:09:38,440 --> 00:09:44,540 But when you merge transactions and code into GitHub or into the Postgres 197 00:09:44,540 --> 00:09:47,440 source base you get this beautiful coin when the release comes 198 00:09:47,440 --> 00:09:47,940 out. 199 00:09:48,080 --> 00:09:50,680 And engineers absolutely love it. 200 00:09:51,100 --> 00:09:55,320 And I feel like, well, people contributing in other ways would 201 00:09:55,320 --> 00:09:58,320 probably also absolutely love it, but we don't have a really 202 00:09:58,320 --> 00:10:00,520 good way to track those contributions right now. 203 00:10:00,520 --> 00:10:03,600 So I don't know if it's a problem that'll get solved any time 204 00:10:03,600 --> 00:10:07,100 in the next year or 2, but I'm hoping to facilitate a conversation 205 00:10:07,180 --> 00:10:11,320 about it at pgconf.dev, which I'm so excited to go there. 206 00:10:11,320 --> 00:10:15,520 It'll be my first time at the old event and the new event. 207 00:10:15,560 --> 00:10:18,060 And so yeah, coming soon. 208 00:10:18,340 --> 00:10:18,740 Michael: Wonderful. 209 00:10:18,740 --> 00:10:22,120 Well, speaking of events, by the time, so this will come out 210 00:10:22,120 --> 00:10:25,880 probably around the time of that Unconference, but shortly afterwards, 211 00:10:26,160 --> 00:10:30,140 Pozet will be happening, which is your, or Microsoft's online 212 00:10:30,660 --> 00:10:32,300 conference, would you call it, event? 213 00:10:32,440 --> 00:10:33,900 How do you describe it? 214 00:10:34,200 --> 00:10:37,960 Claire: I describe it as a free and virtual developer event. 215 00:10:37,960 --> 00:10:39,520 And it's in its third year. 216 00:10:39,600 --> 00:10:43,140 It's called Pozat, an event for Postgres, but it used to be called 217 00:10:43,140 --> 00:10:43,640 CitusCon. 218 00:10:44,060 --> 00:10:46,540 So if you're wondering, what's the difference between CitusCon 219 00:10:46,540 --> 00:10:47,200 and Pozat? 220 00:10:47,240 --> 00:10:49,180 Well, the difference is the name. 221 00:10:49,200 --> 00:10:50,200 We renamed it. 222 00:10:50,200 --> 00:10:52,720 I'm not on the organizing team this year, though. 223 00:10:52,720 --> 00:10:56,900 Teresa Giacomini on my team is chairing the organizing committee 224 00:10:57,340 --> 00:11:00,060 on her own, and she's put together a fabulous team. 225 00:11:00,060 --> 00:11:03,120 And it's really exciting every year, you know, the event gets 226 00:11:03,120 --> 00:11:03,620 better. 227 00:11:04,020 --> 00:11:07,280 And sure enough, this year, the event is, is getting better. 228 00:11:07,680 --> 00:11:10,220 My role was chairing the talk selection team. 229 00:11:10,520 --> 00:11:12,240 So that was pretty exciting. 230 00:11:12,780 --> 00:11:16,560 There were a lot more submissions than I expected, even when 231 00:11:16,560 --> 00:11:18,140 we forecasted for growth. 232 00:11:18,420 --> 00:11:21,760 And in fact, I published a blog post that was all about the talk 233 00:11:21,760 --> 00:11:25,440 selection team process and shared some of the metrics and how 234 00:11:25,440 --> 00:11:27,460 we went about making the decisions. 235 00:11:27,720 --> 00:11:31,000 And I had, you know, there were 3 other amazing Postgres open 236 00:11:31,000 --> 00:11:33,700 source people on the talk selection team with me. 237 00:11:33,700 --> 00:11:35,860 So I obviously did it as part of a team. 238 00:11:35,860 --> 00:11:39,120 But yeah, the speakers, the talks, it should be pretty fun. 239 00:11:39,120 --> 00:11:42,280 And it's 4 separate live streams, June 11 through 13. 240 00:11:42,940 --> 00:11:46,000 Michael: Yeah, I've watched a lot of the talks in the past. 241 00:11:46,000 --> 00:11:48,060 I love that they're all online. 242 00:11:48,060 --> 00:11:49,300 You can watch it from anywhere. 243 00:11:49,300 --> 00:11:50,460 No travel involved. 244 00:11:50,660 --> 00:11:52,960 It's extremely accessible globally. 245 00:11:53,600 --> 00:11:55,580 Pretty much, I think, wherever you live in the world, you'll 246 00:11:55,580 --> 00:11:57,900 be able to watch some of the talks live, which is amazing. 247 00:11:58,260 --> 00:12:01,420 I don't know of an event like it from that perspective. 248 00:12:01,560 --> 00:12:04,960 So I'd be keen to hear a bit more about how you came up with 249 00:12:04,960 --> 00:12:08,040 it, what your goals are with it, why it needs to exist, that 250 00:12:08,040 --> 00:12:08,900 kind of thing. 251 00:12:09,140 --> 00:12:12,800 Claire: Let's see, it's in its third year, which means that Citus 252 00:12:12,800 --> 00:12:16,880 Con, an event for Postgres, was conceived kind of near the tail 253 00:12:16,880 --> 00:12:20,820 end of COVID, when a lot of things were happening virtually. 254 00:12:21,340 --> 00:12:21,840 Right? 255 00:12:22,400 --> 00:12:23,140 Michael: Makes sense. 256 00:12:23,360 --> 00:12:25,240 Claire: And I love in-person events. 257 00:12:25,240 --> 00:12:28,140 I mean, it's how you and I first met in person, right? 258 00:12:28,140 --> 00:12:29,320 At PG Day in Paris. 259 00:12:29,540 --> 00:12:34,100 You make friends, you build relationships, you get that face-to-face 260 00:12:34,260 --> 00:12:37,080 hallway track experience at in-person events, which is pretty 261 00:12:37,080 --> 00:12:37,580 wonderful. 262 00:12:37,760 --> 00:12:42,840 But at the same time, people have young kids, elderly parents, 263 00:12:43,080 --> 00:12:45,600 things they have to be doing in their community. 264 00:12:45,860 --> 00:12:50,180 Maybe they don't have budget to travel to another location, paper, 265 00:12:50,180 --> 00:12:51,980 hotels, food, planes, et cetera. 266 00:12:51,980 --> 00:12:55,780 So there is, I think accessibility is like key. 267 00:12:56,000 --> 00:12:59,620 These virtual talks are accessible to people, anybody with an 268 00:12:59,620 --> 00:13:00,940 internet connection, right? 269 00:13:01,340 --> 00:13:05,200 And we're hoping people come and attend the live streams because 270 00:13:05,200 --> 00:13:09,240 then you can like be on the live text chat with the speaker while 271 00:13:09,240 --> 00:13:12,240 their talk is being presented this year, which I think is kind 272 00:13:12,240 --> 00:13:14,020 of cool because all the talks are pre-recorded. 273 00:13:14,580 --> 00:13:17,800 But we also know that a lot of people are going to watch these 274 00:13:17,800 --> 00:13:20,800 talks online on YouTube on their own schedule, right, at their 275 00:13:20,800 --> 00:13:22,940 leisure, and that's fine too, right? 276 00:13:23,040 --> 00:13:29,080 So I think Microsoft as a rule is very big into accessibility. 277 00:13:29,480 --> 00:13:32,360 Like we also put a lot of thought into the captions of these 278 00:13:32,360 --> 00:13:36,360 videos and making sure that Postgres is actually spelled like 279 00:13:36,360 --> 00:13:36,860 Postgres. 280 00:13:37,660 --> 00:13:40,860 You know, we wanna make it easy for people to consume this. 281 00:13:41,380 --> 00:13:41,880 Michael: Nice. 282 00:13:41,920 --> 00:13:44,760 Obviously during COVID, we had a lot of online events and that 283 00:13:44,760 --> 00:13:45,460 was wonderful. 284 00:13:45,600 --> 00:13:48,300 And it makes sense that most of them have gone back to in-person, 285 00:13:48,900 --> 00:13:53,120 but it has left us with not as many online events as would be 286 00:13:53,120 --> 00:13:53,560 nice. 287 00:13:53,560 --> 00:13:57,260 So thanks for you and your team for continuing to run that. 288 00:13:57,280 --> 00:14:00,760 While we're on names and spelling things correctly and all sorts 289 00:14:00,760 --> 00:14:01,900 of things like that. 290 00:14:01,960 --> 00:14:04,480 Whilst we did only meet in person recently, I did come across 291 00:14:04,480 --> 00:14:09,600 you a long time ago via your funny videos on how to spell and 292 00:14:09,600 --> 00:14:13,260 pronounce Postgres, but also the name of the conference, I think, 293 00:14:13,260 --> 00:14:14,760 was what you were joking about. 294 00:14:14,760 --> 00:14:16,020 Do you Remember those videos? 295 00:14:16,440 --> 00:14:17,200 Claire: I do. 296 00:14:17,200 --> 00:14:21,640 I think if you go to my Twitter feed, I still have pinned that 297 00:14:22,160 --> 00:14:26,200 60-second video monologue that was inspired by a comedian named 298 00:14:26,200 --> 00:14:28,860 Alexis Gay, who I think does wonderful monologues. 299 00:14:29,680 --> 00:14:33,280 And yeah, I got to play around with CitusCon, an event for Postgres, 300 00:14:33,320 --> 00:14:37,660 all the ways people misspell and misstate Citus, as well as all 301 00:14:37,660 --> 00:14:41,740 the many different ways people will pronounce Postgres. 302 00:14:42,160 --> 00:14:44,160 So people got a kick out of it. 303 00:14:44,160 --> 00:14:46,100 It had a ton of views. 304 00:14:46,200 --> 00:14:49,180 It's probably the most popular thing I've ever published in my 305 00:14:49,180 --> 00:14:50,100 entire life. 306 00:14:50,380 --> 00:14:52,900 And so that's why it's still pinned, even though I'm a couple 307 00:14:52,900 --> 00:14:53,940 years old now. 308 00:14:53,960 --> 00:14:55,440 Actually, maybe you can help me. 309 00:14:55,440 --> 00:14:59,680 I have promised Teresa to create some kind of cool monologue 310 00:14:59,880 --> 00:15:04,100 or trailer, something, some little short YouTube short type thing 311 00:15:04,440 --> 00:15:06,000 before Pozet happens. 312 00:15:06,720 --> 00:15:10,440 And I'm trying to find the hook with the story and the tell. 313 00:15:10,440 --> 00:15:14,060 How can I possibly beat that, you know, different ways to pronounce 314 00:15:14,060 --> 00:15:15,020 Postgres video? 315 00:15:15,020 --> 00:15:16,920 And I don't, I haven't figured it out yet. 316 00:15:16,920 --> 00:15:19,580 So I'm looking for inspiration, if you have any ideas. 317 00:15:20,020 --> 00:15:22,320 Michael: Well, your videos are way funnier than anything I've 318 00:15:22,320 --> 00:15:25,120 ever done in my life, so I don't think I'm going to be able to 319 00:15:25,120 --> 00:15:25,680 help you. 320 00:15:25,680 --> 00:15:28,680 But 1 thing we haven't talked about yet that maybe is an idea 321 00:15:28,680 --> 00:15:32,320 is what POSET stands for, the letters, and maybe you could have 322 00:15:32,320 --> 00:15:35,700 some fun with what it doesn't stand for. 323 00:15:36,220 --> 00:15:36,920 Claire: It's interesting. 324 00:15:36,980 --> 00:15:39,640 I'm going to segue to Taylor Swift for just a second. 325 00:15:39,860 --> 00:15:44,080 There have been all these videos and reels lately exploring, 326 00:15:44,380 --> 00:15:45,400 well, what's the process? 327 00:15:45,400 --> 00:15:47,060 How do these songs get written? 328 00:15:47,220 --> 00:15:49,400 And this is true for other musicians as well. 329 00:15:49,400 --> 00:15:53,400 They're starting to like let people in to these kind of homemade 330 00:15:53,400 --> 00:15:56,340 videos that show them during the creative process. 331 00:15:56,520 --> 00:15:59,820 I don't know how many people that are listening know how naming 332 00:15:59,820 --> 00:16:01,980 is done, but it's really kind of interesting. 333 00:16:02,200 --> 00:16:04,340 And I don't know how everybody does it. 334 00:16:04,340 --> 00:16:08,260 I've only done naming projects at 3 different companies. 335 00:16:08,400 --> 00:16:12,040 1 was when I was at Amazon, 1 when I was at Sun Microsystems, 336 00:16:12,900 --> 00:16:17,440 and now at Microsoft, So I will not claim to be the world's expert, 337 00:16:17,440 --> 00:16:20,900 but part of the deal is you have to ideate a ton of options, 338 00:16:21,280 --> 00:16:21,580 right? 339 00:16:21,580 --> 00:16:25,220 A ton of options, like 150 different possible new names. 340 00:16:25,280 --> 00:16:27,600 And they kind of all fall in different categories. 341 00:16:27,740 --> 00:16:30,800 And sometimes you think of the category And then you just riff, 342 00:16:30,800 --> 00:16:32,000 riff, riff, riff, riff. 343 00:16:32,000 --> 00:16:35,340 And you let yourself write down bad ideas. 344 00:16:35,580 --> 00:16:39,440 That's really important, is that permission to come up with a 345 00:16:39,440 --> 00:16:40,240 stupid idea. 346 00:16:40,240 --> 00:16:44,620 Because it's only among a field of stupid ideas that you can 347 00:16:44,640 --> 00:16:46,400 find a brilliant 1. 348 00:16:46,680 --> 00:16:53,240 So long story short, as we were exploring the names, 1 of the 349 00:16:53,240 --> 00:16:57,380 things that struck me is that, huh, FOSDOM, a lot of people don't 350 00:16:57,380 --> 00:16:59,640 really know what FOSDOM stands for. 351 00:16:59,680 --> 00:17:03,040 Like It was an acronym, but now it's kind of a word. 352 00:17:03,040 --> 00:17:04,220 It's kind of a name. 353 00:17:04,240 --> 00:17:09,320 And you know it's free, open source, developer, blah, blah, blah. 354 00:17:09,320 --> 00:17:11,320 Like what do the rest of the letters stand for? 355 00:17:11,320 --> 00:17:14,160 So then I found out there was a whole story there. 356 00:17:14,160 --> 00:17:16,760 It was originally OSDEM without the S. 357 00:17:17,020 --> 00:17:20,960 And then I think Richard Stallman insisted that the F be added. 358 00:17:21,220 --> 00:17:24,960 Not 100% sure the details of that story wasn't there at the time 359 00:17:24,960 --> 00:17:29,540 but anyway so there was this whole category of okay what if we 360 00:17:29,540 --> 00:17:32,600 were to create a name that was inspired by an acronym. 361 00:17:32,600 --> 00:17:34,700 And that's exactly what Fossette is. 362 00:17:34,780 --> 00:17:40,380 So the inspiring acronym stands for Postgres, open source, ecosystem, 363 00:17:40,740 --> 00:17:42,480 talks, training, and education. 364 00:17:43,620 --> 00:17:47,160 And separate from Postgres, I feel like the most important word 365 00:17:47,160 --> 00:17:48,760 in there is actually ecosystem. 366 00:17:49,180 --> 00:17:54,580 So we absolutely were trying to welcome and invite talks, not 367 00:17:54,580 --> 00:17:59,440 just on the Postgres core, but also on extensions, also on tooling 368 00:17:59,760 --> 00:18:02,960 that make the Postgres technology work. 369 00:18:02,960 --> 00:18:07,480 Because there's this rich set of tooling that exists in that 370 00:18:07,480 --> 00:18:07,820 world. 371 00:18:07,820 --> 00:18:12,320 I mean, do you consider PG Mustard tooling or do you consider 372 00:18:12,320 --> 00:18:13,220 it guidance? 373 00:18:13,840 --> 00:18:14,540 Michael: Good question. 374 00:18:14,540 --> 00:18:15,780 I consider it a tool. 375 00:18:15,780 --> 00:18:16,280 Claire: Okay. 376 00:18:16,520 --> 00:18:19,300 Michael: Yeah, But it's a great point because one of the best things 377 00:18:19,300 --> 00:18:21,720 about Postgres is how extensible it is. 378 00:18:21,900 --> 00:18:26,520 So making sure people feel included there is a great, great idea. 379 00:18:26,520 --> 00:18:29,780 Claire: But we don't ever expect anybody to remember what Pozet 380 00:18:30,060 --> 00:18:33,280 originally stood for or to ever spell it out in long form. 381 00:18:33,280 --> 00:18:35,520 It's not an acronym in that sense. 382 00:18:35,580 --> 00:18:38,560 Michael: While we're on the ecosystem and extensions, is this 383 00:18:38,560 --> 00:18:43,400 a good time to segue into that side of contributing to Postgres? 384 00:18:43,780 --> 00:18:45,940 Claire: Are you hinting that I should bring up Citus? 385 00:18:45,940 --> 00:18:47,400 Is that what you're thinking? 386 00:18:47,400 --> 00:18:48,640 Michael: Well, it's not just Citus. 387 00:18:48,640 --> 00:18:52,400 I read your blog post and I knew already that there were contributions 388 00:18:52,680 --> 00:18:56,440 to even the likes of pgBouncer and all sorts of extensions. 389 00:18:56,780 --> 00:19:00,400 But yeah, Citus is, I think, the one you're probably personally 390 00:19:00,400 --> 00:19:03,980 best well known for, and it is obviously a huge extension. 391 00:19:04,500 --> 00:19:08,560 And yeah, well, maybe we could start with Citus is now fully 392 00:19:08,560 --> 00:19:09,280 open source, right? 393 00:19:09,280 --> 00:19:10,600 That wasn't always true. 394 00:19:10,600 --> 00:19:13,160 That's a, that's a heck of a contribution in itself. 395 00:19:13,180 --> 00:19:17,660 Do you see that like the open sourceness of contributing to Postgres 396 00:19:17,660 --> 00:19:18,840 as being really important. 397 00:19:19,120 --> 00:19:22,120 Claire: So the fact that Citus is open source was really big 398 00:19:22,120 --> 00:19:25,200 news when we first made it fully open source a couple of years 399 00:19:25,200 --> 00:19:25,580 ago. 400 00:19:25,580 --> 00:19:30,060 Now it was mostly open source prior to that, but taking those 401 00:19:30,060 --> 00:19:33,000 last few components and making them fully open source, I think 402 00:19:33,000 --> 00:19:37,380 was really important for our users and for the community and 403 00:19:37,380 --> 00:19:40,020 got a lot of positive feedback from people. 404 00:19:40,080 --> 00:19:44,840 I have asked the question of guests on the podcast that I host, 405 00:19:45,160 --> 00:19:48,360 as well as just friends within the Postgres world. 406 00:19:48,580 --> 00:19:52,960 And to a person, everybody says that part of why they're so committed 407 00:19:52,960 --> 00:19:57,240 to Postgres, part of why they chose to run their business on 408 00:19:57,240 --> 00:20:00,600 Postgres, part of why they were first attracted to working on 409 00:20:00,600 --> 00:20:02,700 this technology is because it's open source. 410 00:20:02,900 --> 00:20:07,000 When I did the Postgres Person of the Week interview that Andrea 411 00:20:07,000 --> 00:20:09,520 Sherban has been running for a couple of years now, which is 412 00:20:09,520 --> 00:20:13,020 pretty awesome, I think I gave him a graphic that I called like 413 00:20:13,260 --> 00:20:16,220 a virtuous circle or a flywheel, right? 414 00:20:16,220 --> 00:20:19,460 And the fact that Postgres is open source, I think, and then 415 00:20:19,460 --> 00:20:23,000 it's easy to get started and easy to kick the tires, which means 416 00:20:23,000 --> 00:20:25,100 developers start flocking to it. 417 00:20:25,120 --> 00:20:28,840 And then developers, you know, get all this positive feedback 418 00:20:28,840 --> 00:20:29,440 from using it. 419 00:20:29,440 --> 00:20:32,120 They contribute to the tooling, which makes it even better to 420 00:20:32,120 --> 00:20:35,360 use, which makes it even easier to start with and like, it's 421 00:20:35,380 --> 00:20:38,220 yes, I think the fact that it's open source matters. 422 00:20:38,720 --> 00:20:41,220 You mentioned pgBouncer a second ago. 423 00:20:41,760 --> 00:20:46,080 And yeah, Yelta Fenomenio on our team is now one of the maintainers 424 00:20:46,200 --> 00:20:47,280 for pgBouncer. 425 00:20:47,380 --> 00:20:52,300 And it's been really exciting to see his work and see some of 426 00:20:52,300 --> 00:20:55,620 the improvements to pgBouncer that have happened in recent releases 427 00:20:55,680 --> 00:20:57,880 that I can see his fingerprint on that work. 428 00:20:57,880 --> 00:21:02,580 And so that is another aspect of our contributions to the ecosystem 429 00:21:02,800 --> 00:21:05,100 that got flagged in that big blog post. 430 00:21:05,660 --> 00:21:08,400 But the other thing in that big blog post that I think is so 431 00:21:08,400 --> 00:21:12,280 interesting that I put a lot of thought into is there's a whole 432 00:21:12,280 --> 00:21:17,200 section on the Postgres open source contributor team at Microsoft. 433 00:21:18,080 --> 00:21:21,740 And I mean, the part that a lot of the technologists will be 434 00:21:21,740 --> 00:21:25,580 most excited about are some of the Postgres 17 features. 435 00:21:26,360 --> 00:21:28,940 No, Quick Postgres 17 isn't GA yet. 436 00:21:28,940 --> 00:21:32,220 So I walked through some of the features that my teammates told 437 00:21:32,220 --> 00:21:35,860 me about that they had worked on themselves, that they had authored 438 00:21:35,860 --> 00:21:36,600 or co-authored. 439 00:21:37,080 --> 00:21:41,940 But before that, I also went and tried to articulate why does 440 00:21:41,940 --> 00:21:46,640 a company like Microsoft pay these open source committers to 441 00:21:46,640 --> 00:21:50,280 work on Postgres open source nearly full time, right? 442 00:21:50,280 --> 00:21:51,160 What's the motivation? 443 00:21:51,220 --> 00:21:52,200 What's the strategy? 444 00:21:52,360 --> 00:21:56,480 And why are we going after these big architectural changes like 445 00:21:56,480 --> 00:21:58,520 asynchronous IO and direct IO? 446 00:21:58,680 --> 00:22:02,900 And so If you're curious about why, hopefully you'll link to 447 00:22:02,900 --> 00:22:06,040 that part of the blog post in the show notes. 448 00:22:06,280 --> 00:22:10,520 Thomas Munro even gave me a really nice quote to add to that 449 00:22:10,520 --> 00:22:13,520 section that was like his personal view, because he's one of the 450 00:22:13,520 --> 00:22:17,120 authors of the streaming I-O work that has come into Postgres 451 00:22:17,120 --> 00:22:22,520 17 that is part of our async IO path that people are pursuing. 452 00:22:22,960 --> 00:22:26,660 Michael: It's so nice looking through that list of contributors. 453 00:22:27,880 --> 00:22:32,580 There's a list on the postgresql.org site of all the core team 454 00:22:32,580 --> 00:22:35,900 and the major contributors, contributors, and at least for the 455 00:22:35,900 --> 00:22:38,560 first couple of categories, they include the company that people 456 00:22:38,560 --> 00:22:39,240 work at. 457 00:22:39,240 --> 00:22:43,260 And I don't think everybody realizes, but the vast majority of 458 00:22:43,260 --> 00:22:49,040 people working on Postgres are employed by a company that's either 459 00:22:49,200 --> 00:22:52,400 involved directly with Postgres or uses Postgres, but increasingly 460 00:22:52,800 --> 00:22:56,860 by major cloud providers, but also a lot of the consulting companies. 461 00:22:56,980 --> 00:22:59,940 So there's a, 1 of the things you did mention in that post was 462 00:23:00,060 --> 00:23:04,940 By employing people full-time, you're able to work on these deep 463 00:23:04,940 --> 00:23:06,220 architectural things. 464 00:23:06,240 --> 00:23:09,520 People that contribute part-time, it's harder to take on the 465 00:23:09,520 --> 00:23:11,900 bigger task because they're just going to take forever. 466 00:23:12,660 --> 00:23:15,780 Claire: Well, even full-time, it's multi-year, multi-release. 467 00:23:16,560 --> 00:23:20,240 And obviously, anything that you, like the streaming I-O 468 00:23:20,240 --> 00:23:23,240 Work, for example, had to have users, right? 469 00:23:23,240 --> 00:23:26,120 Had to have user code that was implemented to take advantage 470 00:23:26,120 --> 00:23:29,360 of it you're not just gonna put some new capability on the shelf 471 00:23:29,360 --> 00:23:33,660 that isn't getting used and tested and so yeah it's pretty it's 472 00:23:33,660 --> 00:23:36,880 pretty exciting and then of course Melanie Plagman who is now 473 00:23:36,940 --> 00:23:40,920 a committer to new Postgres committers added, which is pretty 474 00:23:40,920 --> 00:23:41,420 exciting. 475 00:23:41,600 --> 00:23:45,200 All this work is, any work that gets done in Postgres is almost 476 00:23:45,200 --> 00:23:48,460 by definition, multi-company and global in nature. 477 00:23:48,680 --> 00:23:49,180 Right? 478 00:23:49,200 --> 00:23:54,000 So the reviewers, the authors, the committers might all be from 479 00:23:54,000 --> 00:23:56,680 different companies and collaborating together. 480 00:23:56,680 --> 00:24:00,780 So any of the work that I've flagged where my teammates at Microsoft 481 00:24:00,880 --> 00:24:04,160 were authors, they're probably with somebody else involved from 482 00:24:04,160 --> 00:24:05,340 some other company. 483 00:24:05,500 --> 00:24:07,660 It is a global project. 484 00:24:08,040 --> 00:24:10,760 And so shout out to all those folks too. 485 00:24:10,760 --> 00:24:14,680 It was really funny, cause I got a note on Mastodon from Alvaro 486 00:24:14,920 --> 00:24:17,440 Herrera, who was, did you see it? 487 00:24:17,440 --> 00:24:22,540 He said, I can't help but feel slighted on Yeltsin's behalf that 488 00:24:22,540 --> 00:24:26,060 you didn't include the include the lib PQ query cancellation, 489 00:24:26,320 --> 00:24:29,580 but I have since rectified my mistake and has been added to the 490 00:24:29,580 --> 00:24:30,340 blog post. 491 00:24:30,660 --> 00:24:31,100 Michael: Nice. 492 00:24:31,100 --> 00:24:33,740 And if anybody doesn't know Alvaro works for EDB. 493 00:24:33,780 --> 00:24:37,360 So this is not a Microsoft person chiming in. 494 00:24:37,360 --> 00:24:38,680 Anyway, it is so great. 495 00:24:38,680 --> 00:24:40,680 And I did actually look through some of the commits. 496 00:24:40,680 --> 00:24:43,740 I went down a bit of a rabbit hole in research for this 1. 497 00:24:43,740 --> 00:24:47,420 But yeah, reviewers from AWS, reviewers from Neon, reviewers 498 00:24:47,420 --> 00:24:48,080 from EDB. 499 00:24:48,120 --> 00:24:49,540 Anyway, it's a great post. 500 00:24:49,540 --> 00:24:52,480 I do recommend people checking it out partly just to see how 501 00:24:52,480 --> 00:24:54,780 things work, but also to learn. 502 00:24:54,880 --> 00:24:58,820 I want to make sure we do talk a bit more about your own podcast. 503 00:24:59,220 --> 00:25:00,740 Claire: So it's a monthly podcast. 504 00:25:00,780 --> 00:25:05,080 We record it live on Discord, which is kind of a whole social 505 00:25:05,080 --> 00:25:09,280 audio thing because then there's a parallel live text chat that's 506 00:25:09,280 --> 00:25:12,120 happening on Discord at the same time that we're doing the actual 507 00:25:12,120 --> 00:25:12,620 recording. 508 00:25:12,720 --> 00:25:15,400 And it can be a lot of fun to participate in. 509 00:25:15,560 --> 00:25:19,940 And we typically explore what I call the human side of Postgres. 510 00:25:20,200 --> 00:25:23,460 So it's all about, you know, how did you get your start? 511 00:25:24,840 --> 00:25:26,620 What was your first job in Postgres? 512 00:25:27,040 --> 00:25:29,620 What were the challenges you ran across in doing that? 513 00:25:29,620 --> 00:25:32,440 Or even sometimes, even earlier, how did you get your start as 514 00:25:32,440 --> 00:25:33,060 a developer? 515 00:25:33,680 --> 00:25:37,360 And then in Postgres, which is not to say we'll only ever talk 516 00:25:37,360 --> 00:25:40,800 about that, but the backstories that contributors have, they're 517 00:25:40,800 --> 00:25:44,080 just fascinating to me and to a lot of our listeners. 518 00:25:44,240 --> 00:25:48,620 So The podcast is called Path to Siduscon, but we're about to 519 00:25:48,620 --> 00:25:49,300 rename it. 520 00:25:49,300 --> 00:25:51,680 Its new name is going to be Talking Postgres. 521 00:25:52,640 --> 00:25:55,300 So we will be making that available. 522 00:25:55,640 --> 00:25:58,880 We'll be redirecting all the old episodes to the new name. 523 00:25:58,980 --> 00:26:00,580 So it should be super easy. 524 00:26:00,580 --> 00:26:03,900 If you've been subscribed to the RSS feed, everything should 525 00:26:03,900 --> 00:26:04,540 still work. 526 00:26:04,540 --> 00:26:08,040 If it doesn't just reach out to me on Twitter or Mastodon or 527 00:26:08,040 --> 00:26:09,960 something, I'll work to get it fixed. 528 00:26:09,960 --> 00:26:11,420 But yeah, talking Postgres. 529 00:26:12,180 --> 00:26:14,060 Michael: Yeah, and I can vouch for this. 530 00:26:14,060 --> 00:26:17,320 There's been about 15 episodes, I believe, and I've listened 531 00:26:17,320 --> 00:26:17,980 to every one. 532 00:26:18,160 --> 00:26:23,040 They're about an hour long conversations with 1 or 2 people about 533 00:26:23,100 --> 00:26:25,420 all things Postgres, and it's really great. 534 00:26:25,520 --> 00:26:26,980 I've learned a lot from it as well. 535 00:26:26,980 --> 00:26:28,840 I wish there were more Postgres podcasts. 536 00:26:29,380 --> 00:26:31,600 And actually, we chatted for ages. 537 00:26:32,040 --> 00:26:35,280 A lot was comparing notes on how to run a podcast. 538 00:26:36,100 --> 00:26:39,220 I like meeting other makers and other people in the weeds of 539 00:26:39,220 --> 00:26:43,540 things because you just get to chat really nerdy but basic things. 540 00:26:43,820 --> 00:26:47,960 So yeah, if anybody else out there is considering doing this 541 00:26:47,960 --> 00:26:51,460 kind of thing, feel free to hit me up for comparing notes on 542 00:26:51,460 --> 00:26:52,380 that kind of thing. 543 00:26:52,440 --> 00:26:55,460 Claire: You've been very generous with your tips and your suggestions. 544 00:26:55,600 --> 00:26:56,880 I really appreciate it. 545 00:26:57,040 --> 00:26:57,760 Michael: Well, likewise. 546 00:26:58,380 --> 00:27:02,360 On that note, what contributions do you think are most needed 547 00:27:02,360 --> 00:27:03,820 at the moment in the community? 548 00:27:04,000 --> 00:27:08,720 Or perhaps for folks out there who want to contribute more to 549 00:27:08,720 --> 00:27:11,640 Postgres or want their organization to contribute more in some 550 00:27:11,640 --> 00:27:15,220 way, any advice for them on how to get started with this? 551 00:27:15,300 --> 00:27:18,300 Claire: 2 ideas come to mind on your first question. 552 00:27:18,820 --> 00:27:21,640 And I think my brain started to go down those paths. 553 00:27:21,640 --> 00:27:25,920 But 1 idea is something that the PGConf Dev team is already working 554 00:27:25,920 --> 00:27:30,040 toward, which is they have a bunch of workshops planned that 555 00:27:30,060 --> 00:27:35,440 are intended to help new contributors get feedback on their patches, 556 00:27:35,440 --> 00:27:36,000 for example. 557 00:27:36,000 --> 00:27:39,360 So there's an advanced patch feedback session that's invite only. 558 00:27:39,360 --> 00:27:42,740 So, and it's probably full by now, but there's an intro to hacking 559 00:27:42,740 --> 00:27:46,960 on Postgres, big, long session, you know, more than just the 560 00:27:46,960 --> 00:27:48,160 length of a talk, right? 561 00:27:48,160 --> 00:27:51,540 There's another 1 that's called a patch review workshop, again, 562 00:27:51,560 --> 00:27:53,440 with special registration required. 563 00:27:53,440 --> 00:27:57,260 And so I think as I talked to Melanie Plankman about it, the, 564 00:27:57,260 --> 00:28:02,220 the goal, the intention is to help new contributors understand 565 00:28:02,660 --> 00:28:05,640 how to get it done, how to make it happen, what skills do they 566 00:28:05,640 --> 00:28:06,020 need? 567 00:28:06,020 --> 00:28:09,160 Because it's not just about the quality of their work, but it's 568 00:28:09,160 --> 00:28:13,940 about integrating into the processes that exist and how to be 569 00:28:13,940 --> 00:28:17,920 most effective within the Postgres development processes. 570 00:28:18,080 --> 00:28:23,440 So I think making it possible and easier for more developers 571 00:28:24,240 --> 00:28:28,880 to begin contributing to this very complex database is an important 572 00:28:29,240 --> 00:28:30,060 thing to do. 573 00:28:30,060 --> 00:28:33,960 And I love the fact that there are people and committers focused 574 00:28:33,960 --> 00:28:35,180 on this problem, right? 575 00:28:35,180 --> 00:28:39,240 Focused on, because right now it can take a couple of years to 576 00:28:39,240 --> 00:28:43,020 get your patch accepted, depending on other priorities and competing 577 00:28:43,020 --> 00:28:44,620 priorities and things like that. 578 00:28:45,060 --> 00:28:49,300 So people need tips and guidance as to how to navigate that process. 579 00:28:50,280 --> 00:28:50,680 Michael: Nice. 580 00:28:50,680 --> 00:28:51,180 Yeah. 581 00:28:51,280 --> 00:28:54,720 As soon as you mentioned Melanie, went off in my head that she's 582 00:28:54,720 --> 00:28:58,780 been doing a great job banging the drum of reviewing other people's 583 00:28:58,780 --> 00:29:00,860 patches, being a big bottleneck as well. 584 00:29:00,860 --> 00:29:04,280 I guess it's along the same, it's also helping new people, right? 585 00:29:04,280 --> 00:29:07,940 But yeah, reviewing others patches is what it feels like a bottleneck 586 00:29:07,940 --> 00:29:08,860 as well at the moment. 587 00:29:08,860 --> 00:29:12,400 Lots like we've got probably in the last few commit fest, probably 588 00:29:12,400 --> 00:29:15,900 more waiting on the viewer than in other other states. 589 00:29:15,900 --> 00:29:16,640 So that's yeah. 590 00:29:16,640 --> 00:29:17,080 Great. 591 00:29:17,080 --> 00:29:17,820 Thank you. 592 00:29:17,900 --> 00:29:18,080 Claire: Yeah. 593 00:29:18,080 --> 00:29:21,900 And the second thing that came to mind is the unconfs I'm 594 00:29:21,900 --> 00:29:25,240 hoping to facilitate at pgconf.dev, where it's focused on, well, 595 00:29:25,240 --> 00:29:29,280 how do we recognize these non-code contributions? 596 00:29:29,540 --> 00:29:30,840 And we do it already. 597 00:29:30,840 --> 00:29:31,720 We do it already. 598 00:29:31,720 --> 00:29:32,740 It happens already. 599 00:29:33,080 --> 00:29:36,060 But how can we recognize more of them, right? 600 00:29:36,180 --> 00:29:39,480 That are harder to see and harder to measure, you know, with 601 00:29:39,480 --> 00:29:40,420 today's systems. 602 00:29:40,680 --> 00:29:46,300 So I think recognition is really important, both to incent behavior, 603 00:29:46,720 --> 00:29:49,540 because people like getting recognized, right? 604 00:29:49,540 --> 00:29:50,340 Don't you? 605 00:29:50,460 --> 00:29:51,480 Michael: I love it. 606 00:29:51,740 --> 00:29:55,280 Claire: And so I think it's something that we can always do better 607 00:29:55,280 --> 00:29:55,600 on. 608 00:29:55,600 --> 00:29:59,020 Oh, and now the third thing I will just flag is I always, when 609 00:29:59,020 --> 00:30:01,940 I look at, because I've worked in different technology spaces, 610 00:30:02,220 --> 00:30:05,620 I'm always wondering what more can we learn from the Python community, 611 00:30:05,640 --> 00:30:08,200 from the Django community, from the Kubernetes community. 612 00:30:08,400 --> 00:30:12,180 And so in fact, one of the keynotes for PostgresFM, an event for Postgres, 613 00:30:12,260 --> 00:30:16,200 is going to be delivered by Sarah Novotny, who spent a lot of 614 00:30:16,200 --> 00:30:20,040 her years in open source working on the Kubernetes project. 615 00:30:20,080 --> 00:30:21,680 And so I'm really curious. 616 00:30:21,760 --> 00:30:23,240 I have not seen her slides. 617 00:30:23,240 --> 00:30:24,960 I don't know what she's going to say. 618 00:30:24,960 --> 00:30:28,980 But I'm really curious to see, are there things that happen in 619 00:30:28,980 --> 00:30:33,000 the Kubernetes community that we in Postgres could steal from, 620 00:30:33,260 --> 00:30:33,760 right? 621 00:30:33,840 --> 00:30:36,240 That could benefit our community. 622 00:30:37,060 --> 00:30:37,560 Michael: So. 623 00:30:37,820 --> 00:30:39,280 Wonderful, thanks so much, Claire. 624 00:30:39,280 --> 00:30:42,240 And just as a reminder for people, when is PostgresFM and how do 625 00:30:42,240 --> 00:30:43,160 they tune in? 626 00:30:43,200 --> 00:30:46,120 Claire: PostgresFM is happening June 11 through 13. 627 00:30:46,500 --> 00:30:48,460 There are four live streams. 628 00:30:48,740 --> 00:30:52,320 Two of them are in America's friendly time zones. 629 00:30:52,540 --> 00:30:54,180 So like 8 a.m. 630 00:30:54,380 --> 00:30:58,400 Pacific PDT to like 1.30 p.m. 631 00:30:58,780 --> 00:31:01,220 On the Tuesday, the 11th and the Wednesday, the 12th. 632 00:31:01,220 --> 00:31:03,360 And the other two are in your time zone. 633 00:31:03,420 --> 00:31:07,760 So and we have Europe friendly time zones happening on the Wednesday 634 00:31:07,800 --> 00:31:10,640 in Europe and the Thursday in Europe in the morning. 635 00:31:10,680 --> 00:31:14,380 So we're trying to hit as many time zones as we could and the 636 00:31:14,380 --> 00:31:18,500 way to tune in is to go to aka.ms slash post. 637 00:31:53,240 --> 00:31:55,380 event the same way as I treat an in-person 1. 638 00:31:55,380 --> 00:31:57,460 In an in-person 1, I block my calendar. 639 00:31:57,600 --> 00:31:59,540 But why don't I do the same for an online 1? 640 00:31:59,540 --> 00:32:00,460 I should do. 641 00:32:00,580 --> 00:32:01,760 Anyway, good reminder. 642 00:32:01,960 --> 00:32:04,280 I'll link up all of these things in the show notes so people 643 00:32:04,280 --> 00:32:05,340 have got easy access. 644 00:32:05,980 --> 00:32:09,280 Thank you so much for joining me and us today, Claire. 645 00:32:09,280 --> 00:32:11,920 Thanks so much for everything you do in the community and see 646 00:32:11,920 --> 00:32:12,540 you soon. 647 00:32:13,080 --> 00:32:13,780 Claire: Thank you. 648 00:32:13,780 --> 00:32:14,780 Appreciate it, Michael. 649 00:32:14,860 --> 00:32:15,760 Ciao, ciao.