Since January, I have had the pleasure of speaking about Postgres in 15 cities: Singapore, Seoul, Tokyo, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix, St. Louis, Bloomington (Illinois), Chicago, Charlotte, New York City, Brussels, Helsinki, Moscow, and Krasnoyarsk (Siberia).
I am particularly excited about the new cities I visited in Asia, and growth there will continue in the coming months. You can see from
my travel map that the two areas still lacking Postgres activity are the Middle East and Africa.
Fortunately, Umair Shahid has already
started on the Middle East.
In more Postgres-saturated continents, like North America and Europe, there are now several conferences per year during different months, in different cities, and with different focuses. While proprietary database companies usually have just one huge conference a year per continent, our distributed conference teams allow for smaller, more frequent, more geographically distributed conferences, which better meet the needs of our users. Smaller conferences allow for more interaction with speakers and leaders. More frequent conferences allow people to attend a conference quickly, rather than waiting eleven months for the next yearly conference. Geographically distributed conferences allow for reduced travel costs, which is particularly important for first-time attendees. I realize seeing thousands of Postgres people together is motivating, but once that wears off, the benefits of more, smaller conferences are hard to beat.