Italian PGDay 2008

["Gabriele Bartolini" <gabriele(dot)bartolini(at)gmail(dot)com>]

Hi guys,

   I have been following the thread regarding the European PG conference for next year. It is great to see that Turkey and Vienna are really concrete options. Thanks guys for working on this.

   You probably know that the Italian PostgreSQL Users Group is now a non-profit organisation, which makes it possible to have relationships with institutions and third parties such as companies, government, organisations, etc. . This means that the PostgreSQL community no longer will depend on the Prato Linux User Group (which did a terrific job last July), but will act independetly according to the statute's objectives.

   Last night, the board of directors has decided that another Italian edition of the PostgreSQL Day is necessary in order to consolidate PostgreSQL presence in Italy. The venue and the date are yet to be set, altough:

1) Prato at the moment is the most viable option (a 'life-saver' in case no other cities come up)
2) The dates will probably span from the second half of September to the end of October

   We have just informed the members of the IT-PUG and asked them whether they have concrete alternatives or proposal. Our objective is to get more people involved in the community. We will be more precise in the forthcoming weeks.

   In any case this e-mail's purpose is not to "force" or "convince" the European Group to choose Italy again. It is more to inform you that the Italian PGDay will be certainly organised and there are two options now:

1) Organise an European Conference elsewhere and leave the Italian PGDay a national event
2) Converge the efforts into a single European PGDay

   We are open to any decision, which of course must not be taken in a hurry. :)

   In the first scenario, the event will be more oriented to the Italian case, with minimal participation of international members. Possibly 1-2 days. It goes without saying that we will provide support to the organisation of the European event, whether it is in Turkey, Austria, France, etc.

   In the second case scenario, the event will be similar to last year but better organised with more space for developers, longer talks, more rooms, etc. Needless to say that help from everyone will be needed, especially for the non-logistic sections. :)

   The good thing is that the European Group can now decide with more "relax", knowing that we can always fall back to the Italian PostgreSQL Day (which will be in the third quarter of next year).

   I guess that's all for now. We will keep you posted and please speak up if you have comments, opinions, etc. They are always most welcome.

   Thanks for listening and thanks to the members of the Italian group that have decided to take this responsibility - which we know it is a huge effort (we still have to clse PGDay 2007!). :)

Ciao,
Gabriele