Day of Data Richmond, VA, 2026

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I had the great privilege of presenting at the Day of Data in Richmond, VA.  It was a great event that the organizers put together. I had not been to Richmond, Virginia, before, so I was eager to see the area and explore. I was able to reconnect with some great photographers I met years ago at the PASS Summit. We went out for a wonderful photo walk on Sunday, and you’ll see some of the photos at the bottom of this post. My sincere thanks to Jamie Wick, Doug Purnell, and Erik Myers for taking me around the area! 

This is truly what networking is. I hadn’t seen these gentlemen in about 10 years, and it was great to reconnect and get right back into photography with them. The walks also gave us time to discuss Database projects, team management, and the various aspects of our work.  

Let’s Talk Sessions 

You have to go to this site and click on the link from the schedule to find these sessions. I will include links to profiles where I can. 

https://dayofdata.org/2026-04-11-dayofdata1135/#schedule

Master Upgrading PostgreSQL, Using Real World stories and examples

Pat Wright – Github link to presentation. 

I had the first session in the morning, and of course, that meant Setup/room problems. Unfortunately, this was a college, and they had specific rules for using the podium computers. I ended up unable to connect via the HDMI cable (an issue fixed later in the day). That meant that I couldn’t easily do my demo in this session. People learned from the session, and it received good feedback. It was the first time presenting this session; I will present it again soon and intend to improve it further.  

I did some networking after my session and prepped for my next session, which was just one hour later. 

Critical DBA Tasks for PostgreSQL

Pat Wright – Github link to presentation 

In this session, I had the projector working and was able to do demos. It’s a session I’ve done several times and feel good about.  It received good feedback, and I think everyone got something out of it. All the scripts are available on the GitHub link above. Feel free to check them out. 

Using SQL Server’s 2025 Vector Embeddings with Ollama

Doug Purnell – LinkedIn

Doug did a great job of outlining the Vector options for SQL Server. He talked about the setup and showed how to get them working in SQL Server. While I don’t do a lot of SQL Server work right now, I wanted to understand the differences between SQL Server and PG options. It’s very similar in some of the things that both are doing.  

PostgreSQL Partitioning – Beyond the obvious

Ranjan Burman – LinkedIn

This session showed a good overview of Partitioning in PostgreSQL. It showed the setup, discussed different partitioning options, and outlined key metrics you can improve in the system when using Partitioning. Personally, I’ve only done partitioning on a small scale in the DB, but this was a good primer to get you started on everything related to partitioning.  

Overall, I love attending these Day of Data events. I hope we can get more of these in the US, and more PostgreSQL sessions! Hit me up if you are interested in hosting one of these events. I’m happy to work with you on it.  

Here are some fun photos from the event. 

Smugmug Gallery

Pg day Paris 2026

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Paris was a very quick trip for me. Quick plane flight in from Finland, Attended sessions the next day, and flew out relatively early Friday morning.  Since this was my last stop on a 23-day trip away from home, I was eager to get home.  

As with my last post, I have a wrap-up video to discuss this blog.  You’ll find some of my networking conversation items in the video. Check it out here. 

Paris was about like you would expect, good food and lots to see.  I enjoyed my short time in the city, and I think that’s how I like Paris.  Short visits, you can see some photos below of my travels around Paris.  I did not go far from the conference space and hotel.  

Let’s talk sessions 

Keynote: A Framework for Self-driving Databases.  Luigi Nardi and Marc Linster. 

I’m not sure whether the clicker problems Marc had were intentional or accidental, but either way, I liked the back-and-forth between these two presenters, and they should keep it up.  I enjoyed the points made here about using AI to manage the DB.  This talk focused on being specific and building guardrails into the system. Setting up a good framework that doesn’t just say “AI take the wheel”.  I enjoyed this session and would attend it again if I have a chance.  

Breaking PostgreSQL – Learning by doing it wrong (Daniel Westermann) 

This session showcased some really interesting things that can go wrong inside PostgreSQL. Daniel exhibited some unusual behaviors for PG and things you typically don’t see in the PG system. 

Postgresql.org The hidden parts – Magnus Hagander 

As a long-time volunteer for the PG US org, I found this session really cool for learning about the behind-the-scenes. It was nice to understand what the system runs on and some of the challenges the community faces on the technical side.  I’m very appreciative of Magnus since he answers my silly questions when I have them, and he has dedicated so much time to this community.  

Lunch!   

It was Paris, and Lunch was pretty cool.  Very small portions, but there were plenty of them. I quite enjoyed the layout.  

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Ok, this was a coffee break, but still pretty delicious.

The Cryptic Elephant: Column-Level Encryption for PostgreSQL – Damien Clochard

I came into this session curious since I knew we didn’t really have this for PG, so I wasn’t sure if this was a new feature being discussed or some sort of extension.  It was a new project/extension to make this more accessible and usable by all.  I really enjoyed the depth of knowledge about the topic and its history in this session.  It opened my eyes to how difficult a problem this is.  

Creating a “Dungeon Master” with Postgres and MCP – Matt Cornillon 

Can we have more sessions like this? Very fun and creative presentation that still taught us about AI, MCP servers, and all the things we should worry about as DBAs. I would love to see more creative and fun presentations in the community like this. 

Actionable Observability: Finding the root cause of Slow Queries in Postgres – Ryan Booz

I just know that when I’m going to watch Ryan speak, I’m going to learn something and gain some insight. This session was a good presentation on how to identify slow queries and address them. He showed a good understanding of what to look for and identified the bad query.  

Postgres Therapy Session: What the Elephant Can Learn from its Rivals – Mayuresh Suresh Bagayatkar 

This session was a presentation related to “What’s new in Pg 18”. It focused on what’s still missing from PG and analyzed each point to determine what might be a solution or what shouldn’t be included.  

The event wrapped up, and we all got some after drinks. It was great discussing the community further with Magnus and what we can do in the future.  Even though I was close to the end of my trip, I still wanted to make time for the most important part of any event, the networking.  I’ve said this many times, and I’ll keep saying it.  Meeting people and connecting with them is the most important thing.  

Some photos from Paris

Nordic Pg Day 2026

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Helsinki city library, Truly amazing building

I’m posting a quick update about Nordic PG Day and some of the talks. I plan to continue my video posts. Below is a link to a more “talking” version of this blog post.   

In the future, I hope to do most of these summaries as video summaries, but for now, I’ll still have this one written. 

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First, let me start with how nice a place Helsinki is.   Coming from the US and having cycled to work for most of the previous year, I really enjoyed the biking and walking infrastructure the city had built. 

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I joined a Co-Workder and took a tour out to the island of Fort Suomenlinna. It was part walking, part shuttle around the city, showing us many great sites.  The Fort was very impressive and a lot larger than I expected.  I personally love walking tours since they give me a lot of background in the cities I visit. 

On Sunday, a true resident of Helsinki also gave me a walking tour of the library and several other places!  I’m very thankful to Boris for taking me around the city.  

The event kicked off with a speaker dinner that made the venue feel a little more like a Texas Roadhouse.  The food was not like that. We had Reindeer for dinner, and it was quite good!  I enjoyed the food at the speaker dinner.  I really enjoyed the conversation at the dinner and had a great time discussing with other speakers and partners.  If you are speaking at an event, do try to make dinner for the speakers!  It’s well worth it. 

After the Speaker dinner, drinks were good as well, and we discussed future events and community events.  I’m eager to put on more events in the US, so I love to hear how other people are doing events.  

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Magnus, making sure we know all the rules.

Check-in/Registration was easy, and the sponsor area was open and accessible.  The event layout was good, and the session rooms were well laid out.  Lunch was a little busy because we were not the only major group at the hotel. The hotel handled it really well, and I didn’t wait long for food.  Overall, the food, venue, and event execution were very good.  Hats off to all the organizers and team that put the event together.  

Let’s talk sessions. 

I started with Pavlo’s Session on Pg_timetable.  Pg_timeTable looks like a really cool tool to take scheduling and tasks to a whole new level. Much further than Cron or Pg_cron.  He outlined the system well and really showcased what it could do.  I’ll be mentioning it to some of my DBA friends to look into the features and what it can do. 

Ants Aasma spoke next about transactions and contention in OLTP systems. I faced a lot of these issues in my last system, and he really outlined the problems well.  He also reiterated what many of us have suggested: in many cases, you have to change the application architecture to make the necessary changes.  I had not heard this session before and enjoyed it. 

Gianni Ciolli was next on my list. The session was a great overview of transactions and how they work.  Gianni is an excellent presenter, making it easy to understand the concepts.  My coworker, who is not technical, understood this presentation and enjoyed it.  We need more excellent speakers like Gianni in the community who can break things down simply. 

Josef Machyka had a great presentation on work_mem.  The session was an eye-opener for me on how work mem is actually used in a PG system.  Lots of great, in-depth, detailed information about how it works, and I liked the stats/information he shared.  This session is one I need to go back through the slides again and really take in. 

Teresa Lopes I really enjoyed the presentation style of this one.  It was amazing to hear about the things they have to do with DB’s in the 100TB size.  It’s a whole different level dealing with something that size. I really appreciate them sharing these stories and what has been working for them. 

Nina Angelvik and James McDonald, I came a little late to this session thanks to some great hallway discussion.  They had great stories of things that have/had not worked during migrations. I’ve recently been working on a bunch of migration projects, and I took a lot of notes during this session. Really enjoyed the banter between them and how well they presented. 

My own session was next and I felt that it went well. I was hoping for a little more interaction and discussion from the audience. I did get some questions after the session and lots of head nods during the session. 

Ellyne Phneah was the last session of the day for me. She did a great job teaching us how to ensure the processes, technologies, and documentation we create are accessible to everyone.  Making sure it works for anyone using the technology.  It’s an important thing we all need to know so that we are not always tied to our computers, and others can carry on the work we do. 

After the event, I enjoyed an amazing dinner with Hettie and her partner, Boris. We were able to get out to a real Finnish buffet, and it was delicious! Highly recommend the location. 

The next day, before flying to Paris, we checked out the Regatta coffee shop. Seriously, some of the best cinnamon rolls I’ve ever had.  Go check it out next time you are in Helsinki. 

I can’t say this enough, for all of you reading this. I understand that, as a production DBA, you are not going to attend events or travel as much as I do right now. 

If you are not attending your local events, or even nearby ones, and getting out to network with the community, you are failing your career.  

You can be the smartest DBA in the world and know everything about technology, and that’s not going to get you a job.  

Your network will. 

I hope to see you at a future event! 

Up next will be Pg Day Paris! 

Some more pics from the area.