talks on Fosdem

Hello,

of course I saw all the cfp announcement.

Honestly, I would like to see a panel discussion between Dave / Magnus
(a person
from PG Core) and either Monty or a NoSQL representative.

Fosdem 2007 - the first European event on which France and Germany
worked together.
Here the idea of PG-EU was born.

Mainly for sharing donations that we could need inner Europe.
Transferring money from / to US was a pain at that time.

Fosdem 2008 - we made it legal. The contract was signed and we elected a
board.

PG-EU organised 4 conferences (Prato, Paris, Stuttgart, Amsterdam).

Additionally, we have an own dev room on Fosdem since 2009.

Originally, we wanted to use Fosdem also to do a members meeting.

I would like to see the financial statement on upcoming Fosdem.

How much money did we collect? How much did we spend?
For what did we spend money? Who is our biggest sponsor?
How much money / donations do we really need in Europe?

Also I would like that we think about PG EU.
A kind of 5-years revenue. With un-nice questions like:
Was it a success? Was it a good idea? Did we reach what we wanted?
Are the original thoughts still covered? Do we still need PG EU?
What are the future plans?

Looking back to Fosdem 2011:
We got a dev room on Saturday.

In all past years - Fosdem always started on Saturday around noon.
I once got told that the reason for it is - that the Belgian Saturday
mornings
are usual work and school days. Means - universities have usual services
during
the morning.

Also 2011 - Fosdem started around noon.
That means we only could place very few talks.

Spending an hour for the financial statement was skipped.

How is it 2012?
Is a members meeting planned?

When we just have a few hours again - shouldn't we think about sticking
together and talk about special topics together? Ad hoc speaking instead
of huge prepared slides. Having a group of speakers concentrating on the
real questions the people have instead of just single speakers who talk
about
a special topic and not enough time for questions.

Just my thoughts,

Susanne

--
Susanne Ebrecht - 2ndQuadrant
PostgreSQL Development, 24x7 Support, Training and Services
www.2ndQuadrant.com

Hey Susanne,

On 24 November 2011 08:22, Susanne Ebrecht <susanne(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> of course I saw all the cfp announcement.
>
> Honestly, I would like to see a panel discussion between Dave / Magnus (a
> person
> from PG Core) and either Monty or a NoSQL representative.

maybe you wanna ask Jan Lehnardt form CouchDB for a nice discussion

> Fosdem 2007 - the first European event on which France and Germany worked
> together.
> Here the idea of PG-EU was born.
>
> Mainly for sharing donations that we could need inner Europe.
> Transferring money from / to US was a pain at that time.
>
> Fosdem 2008 - we made it legal. The contract was signed and we elected a
> board.
>
> PG-EU organised 4 conferences (Prato, Paris, Stuttgart, Amsterdam).
>
> Additionally, we have an own dev room on Fosdem since 2009.
>
> Originally, we wanted to use Fosdem also to do a members meeting.
>
> I would like to see the financial statement on upcoming Fosdem.
>
> How much money did we collect? How much did we spend?
> For what did we spend money? Who is our biggest sponsor?
> How much money / donations do we really need in Europe?
>
> Also I would like that we think about PG EU.
> A kind of 5-years revenue. With un-nice questions like:
> Was it a success? Was it a good idea? Did we reach what we wanted?
> Are the original thoughts still covered? Do we still need PG EU?
> What are the future plans?
>
> Looking back to Fosdem 2011:
> We got a dev room on Saturday.
>
> In all past years - Fosdem always started on Saturday around noon.
> I once got told that the reason for it is - that the Belgian Saturday
> mornings
> are usual work and school days. Means - universities have usual services
> during
> the morning.
>
> Also 2011 - Fosdem started around noon.
> That means we only could place very few talks.
>
> Spending an hour for the financial statement was skipped.
>
> How is it 2012?
> Is a members meeting planned?
>
> When we just have a few hours again - shouldn't we think about sticking
> together and talk about special topics together? Ad hoc speaking instead
> of huge prepared slides. Having a group of speakers concentrating on the
> real questions the people have instead of just single speakers who talk
> about
> a special topic and not enough time for questions.
>
> Just my thoughts,
>
> Susanne
>
> --
> Susanne Ebrecht - 2ndQuadrant
> PostgreSQL Development, 24x7 Support, Training and Services
> www.2ndQuadrant.com
>
>
> --
> Sent via pgeu-general mailing list (pgeu-general(at)postgresql(dot)org)
> To make changes to your subscription:
> http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgeu-general
>

Cheers

--
Andy Wenk
Hamburg - Germany
RockIt!

"CouchDB - Das Praxisbuch für Entwickler und Administratoren"
http://www.galileocomputing.de/2462
http://www.couchdb-buch.de

On Thu, Nov 24, 2011 at 7:22 AM, Susanne Ebrecht
<susanne(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> of course I saw all the cfp announcement.
>
> Honestly, I would like to see a panel discussion between Dave / Magnus (a
> person
> from PG Core) and either Monty or a NoSQL representative.

I would have no objection to that - though if it were Monty we'd have
to be *very* careful that it didn't just become a pissing match
between PG and MySQL. That's easier with NoSQL, because we could
discuss the merits of products with very different focusses, rather
than the merits of two products that are essentially competing.

> Originally, we wanted to use Fosdem also to do a members meeting.

Unfortunately the availability of rooms at FOSDEM is so tight that we
can't easily do this. It's something that we should consider for the
next PGEU conference though - we can easily put aside a room for an
hour or two there.

> I would like to see the financial statement on upcoming Fosdem.
>
> How much money did we collect? How much did we spend?
> For what did we spend money? Who is our biggest sponsor?
> How much money / donations do we really need in Europe?

We present the financial report every year at FOSDEM. Magnus and JPA
do it in the opening session in our devroom. That said, I don't
remember seeing it this year - did it get dropped for some reason?

> Also I would like that we think about PG EU.
> A kind of 5-years revenue. With un-nice questions like:
> Was it a success? Was it a good idea? Did we reach what we wanted?
> Are the original thoughts still covered? Do we still need PG EU?
> What are the future plans?

Well those are things to discuss on this list, or at a conference with
a larger PG audience (like PGConf). At FOSDEM, there's really just a
small group of the PGEU "regulars".

> Looking back to Fosdem 2011:
> We got a dev room on Saturday.
>
> In all past years - Fosdem always started on Saturday around noon.
> I once got told that the reason for it is - that the Belgian Saturday
> mornings
> are usual work and school days. Means - universities have usual services
> during
> the morning.

Yes.

> Also 2011 - Fosdem started around noon.
> That means we only could place very few talks.
>
> Spending an hour for the financial statement was skipped.
>
> How is it 2012?
> Is a members meeting planned?
>
> When we just have a few hours again - shouldn't we think about sticking
> together and talk about special topics together? Ad hoc speaking instead
> of huge prepared slides. Having a group of speakers concentrating on the
> real questions the people have instead of just single speakers who talk
> about
> a special topic and not enough time for questions.

FOSDEM is our primary chance each year to reach out to non-PG people -
there are so many of them at the event that I think we have no choice
but to focus on new users there, and save the "internal" stuff for
other events where there are a) more PG people in attendance and b)
fewer constraints on the spaces available to us.

--
Dave Page
Blog: http://pgsnake.blogspot.com
Twitter: @pgsnake

EnterpriseDB UK: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company

On Thursday, November 24, 2011, Dave Page wrote:

> On Thu, Nov 24, 2011 at 7:22 AM, Susanne Ebrecht
> <susanne(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com> wrote:
> > Hello,
> >
> > of course I saw all the cfp announcement.
> >
> > Honestly, I would like to see a panel discussion between Dave / Magnus (a
> > person
> > from PG Core) and either Monty or a NoSQL representative.
>
> I would have no objection to that - though if it were Monty we'd have
> to be *very* careful that it didn't just become a pissing match
> between PG and MySQL. That's easier with NoSQL, because we could
> discuss the merits of products with very different focusses, rather
> than the merits of two products that are essentially competing.
>

The actually hard thing is to find a good *moderator* for this. Without a
good moderator, it is guaranteed to be a failure. With a good moderator,
it's at least less likely to fail, but by no means certain.

In my experience, in all the postgres conferences I've been to that there
have been panel discussions in, not a single one of them can be said to be
anythig but a failure. (FWIW, i didn't go to any of the panels (if there
was more htan one) at pgopen). With a good moderator it's been less bad,
but that's far from good.

And to make it work cross-project, said moderator should not be affiliated
with any of the same projects as the people on the panel. So a good start
is to find such a moderator.

Once found, it would really make a lot more sense on the general track
somewhere, than in the PostgreSQL devroom. One thing is we have very little
time, but more importantly it's something that would/should be of interest
to a much bigger part of the conference attendees than those likely to go
to the pgsql devroom.

> > Originally, we wanted to use Fosdem also to do a members meeting.
>
> Unfortunately the availability of rooms at FOSDEM is so tight that we
> can't easily do this. It's something that we should consider for the
> next PGEU conference though - we can easily put aside a room for an
> hour or two there.
>

Yeah, +1 on doing that for next pgconf.eu. If we want to do it during
FOSDEM, we're better off getting ourselves a room at our hotel (or another
hotel or conference place nearby) on the sunday rather than using up our
precious devroom time for it.

> I would like to see the financial statement on upcoming Fosdem.
> >
> > How much money did we collect? How much did we spend?
> > For what did we spend money? Who is our biggest sponsor?
> > How much money / donations do we really need in Europe?
>
> We present the financial report every year at FOSDEM. Magnus and JPA
> do it in the opening session in our devroom. That said, I don't
> remember seeing it this year - did it get dropped for some reason?
>

Well, it's JPA, not Magnus and JPA that usually presents it. And I also
remember it not being done last year (it was sent on email only) - I don't
recall the reason though.

> Also I would like that we think about PG EU.
> > A kind of 5-years revenue. With un-nice questions like:
> > Was it a success? Was it a good idea? Did we reach what we wanted?
> > Are the original thoughts still covered? Do we still need PG EU?
> > What are the future plans?
>
> Well those are things to discuss on this list, or at a conference with
> a larger PG audience (like PGConf). At FOSDEM, there's really just a
> small group of the PGEU "regulars".
>

Yeah, +1 again. But let's not forget this, but make sure it's includedin
next pgconf.eu

> Looking back to Fosdem 2011:
> > We got a dev room on Saturday.
> >
> > In all past years - Fosdem always started on Saturday around noon.
> > I once got told that the reason for it is - that the Belgian Saturday
> > mornings
> > are usual work and school days. Means - universities have usual services
> > during
> > the morning.
>
> Yes.
>
> > Also 2011 - Fosdem started around noon.
> > That means we only could place very few talks.
> >
> > Spending an hour for the financial statement was skipped.
> >
> > How is it 2012?
>

The hours we have access to are controlled by the FOSDEM people. I don't
think we know the hours we have, but we've been told it's a total of 8
hours.

> > Is a members meeting planned?
> >
> > When we just have a few hours again - shouldn't we think about sticking
> > together and talk about special topics together? Ad hoc speaking instead
> > of huge prepared slides. Having a group of speakers concentrating on the
> > real questions the people have instead of just single speakers who talk
> > about
> > a special topic and not enough time for questions.
>
> FOSDEM is our primary chance each year to reach out to non-PG people -
> there are so many of them at the event that I think we have no choice
> but to focus on new users there, and save the "internal" stuff for
> other events where there are a) more PG people in attendance and b)
> fewer constraints on the spaces available to us.
>
> Yeah, I agree with that. We can, and will, of course spend the
outside-conference-hours doing just that as well - talk about postgresql
and pgeu :-)

//Magnus

--
Magnus Hagander
Me: http://www.hagander.net/
Work: http://www.redpill-linpro.com/

Hello,

On 24.11.2011 15:37, Magnus Hagander wrote:
> In my experience, in all the postgres conferences I've been to that there
> have been panel discussions in, not a single one of them can be said to be
> anythig but a failure. (FWIW, i didn't go to any of the panels (if there
> was more htan one) at pgopen). With a good moderator it's been less bad,
> but that's far from good.

I fear there is a huge culture difference. I heard that especially in the US
this often ends up in senseless muckraking.

I saw two very good SQL vs. NoSQL panel discussion this year.
Ok - I have to say the second was SQL vs. CouchDB.
The second was better then the first.

During the first we figured out that there are tons of users who didn't
understand the sense of NoSQL. Where even the NoSQL representatives
said "hell that is stuff you really better solve with SQL".

So the second concentrated on use cases. When it makes sense to use
CouchDB when it makes sense to use SQL. And also the second
showed that NoSQL and SQL aren't enemies.
>
>>> Originally, we wanted to use Fosdem also to do a members meeting.
>> Unfortunately the availability of rooms at FOSDEM is so tight that we
>> can't easily do this. It's something that we should consider for the
>> next PGEU conference though - we can easily put aside a room for an
>> hour or two there.
>>
> Yeah, +1 on doing that for next pgconf.eu. If we want to do it during
> FOSDEM, we're better off getting ourselves a room at our hotel (or another
> hotel or conference place nearby) on the sunday rather than using up our
> precious devroom time for it.

I like the idea too.
Doing our internal stuff on pg eu conf makes much more sense then doing it
on Fosdem.

But I see some organisational problems:

1. Usually we should do a meeting before the next election or?
2. When we do a members meeting on PG EU conf then we should make sure
that members are able to enter the meeting cost free.

> Well, it's JPA, not Magnus and JPA that usually presents it. And I also
> remember it not being done last year (it was sent on email only) - I don't
> recall the reason though.

JPA planned to do it on Fosdem. I also remember that he wanted to represent
the financial statement for two year.

As far as I remember it was skipped for two reasons.
1. JPA couldn't make it to Fosdem
2. Because we just got so less slots

I never got an email with the statement. Means - either he just send it
to the
board not to all members - or it end up in my spam filter.

Doesn't matter anyway any more.
It would be nice when you could look that we get this done in 2012 some how.

>
>>> When we just have a few hours again - shouldn't we think about sticking
>>> together and talk about special topics together? Ad hoc speaking instead
>>> of huge prepared slides. Having a group of speakers concentrating on the
>>> real questions the people have instead of just single speakers who talk
>>> about
>>> a special topic and not enough time for questions.
>> FOSDEM is our primary chance each year to reach out to non-PG people -
>> there are so many of them at the event that I think we have no choice
>> but to focus on new users there, and save the "internal" stuff for
>> other events where there are a) more PG people in attendance and b)
>> fewer constraints on the spaces available to us.
>>
>> Yeah, I agree with that. We can, and will, of course spend the
> outside-conference-hours doing just that as well - talk about postgresql
> and pgeu :-)

Here you totally misunderstood me.

Fosdem is for Developers. Like Dave pointed out - for making PG interesting
to new users - but also for raising knowledge of existing users.

What I wanted to say is:
It might make sense that you think about the topics that should be placed.
And then look for speakers.

If there are more speakers for a single topic then just ask them if they
want to do
it together.

Or - when you get suggestions from more speakers to the same topic then just
ask them if they could do it together.

So you don't have to reject so much speakers.

Also, my experience is that talks made by more then a single person usually
have more dynamic. You won't fall asleep so easily. And you might get more
point of views in a single slot.

Susanne

--
Susanne Ebrecht - 2ndQuadrant
PostgreSQL Development, 24x7 Support, Training and Services
www.2ndQuadrant.com