November 7th 2014 was the eighth Italian PostgreSQL Day, the national event dedicated to the promotion of the world’s most advanced open source database. The Italian edition is one of the most enduring in the whole Postgres community (the first one took place in July 2007) and the results of the activity of a very established non profit organisation such as ITPUG (Italian PostgreSQL Users Group).
The Italian PGDay took place in Prato, historical location for this event, in the premises of the Prato campus (PIN) of the University of Florence. And for the first time, the attendance of the event went over 100 people, with a final counting of 124 registered people (including speakers and staff). I was also extremely happy to notice a relevant presence of women at PGDay – I believe around 10%.
It was a pleasure to have international speakers like Magnus and Simon, in Prato for the nth time, as well as a new entry like Mladen Marinovic from Croatia. There were 14 talks in total, spread in two parallel sessions, and an interactive training session (ITPUG labs) in the second room.
I was delighted to deliver the opening keynote, a summary of my experience and relationship with PostgreSQL from both a community and professional level. It was focused on us, knowledge workers, that can decide to invest in open source for our continuous improvement. And what better than studying (as well as teaching in schools) software like Linux and PostgreSQL? I then quickly outlined the most common objections towards the adoption of PostgreSQL (including the funniest or more depressing ones) that I have encountered so far in my career (e.g.: “I just want to know: Can Postgres manage millions of records?”). Then unrolled the reasons why I believe choosing to adopt PostgreSQL now is the most wise and strategic choice/decision that can be made for a data management solution.
I want also to thank some important Italian companies that decided to come out and publicly said why Postgres is the right choice for their daily management of data, their main asset: I am talking about Navionics, JobRapido and Subito.it (thank you Laura, Paolo and Pietro).
On a final note, I want to thank all the volunteers and fellow ITPUG members that made this event possible. Being one of the founders of ITPUG and a former president, I am really proud to see the progress that the association has been making through the dedication and hard work of all the volunteers that donate their spare time to the promotion of Postgres in Italy. Thank you guys.
Here is the coverage on Twitter (#PGDayIT2014).