Request for speakers at O'Reilly conference

This is a good opportunity to promote PostgreSQL and I think we
should utilize it. I'm not sure I'll have a chance to take part
in the conference, but I'd like somebody describe GiST extension and
presents tutorial how to use it. We could prepare some materials and
examples from real life. I think Gene Selkov might be a good person

Regards,

Oleg

On Sun, 4 Feb 2001, Bruce Momjian wrote:

I have been asked to help prepare a list of PostgreSQL speakers for a
future O'Reilly Open Source conference. If you are interested in being
a presenter, please see the following URL:

http://candle.pha.pa.us/oreilly/

Submissions are due Febuary 17th. Sorry for the short notice.

Regards,
Oleg
_____________________________________________________________
Oleg Bartunov, sci.researcher, hostmaster of AstroNet,
Sternberg Astronomical Institute, Moscow University (Russia)
Internet: oleg@sai.msu.su, http://www.sai.msu.su/~megera/
phone: +007(095)939-16-83, +007(095)939-23-83

On Mon, 4 Feb 2001, Oleg Bartunov wrote:

This is a good opportunity to promote PostgreSQL and I think we
should utilize it. I'm not sure I'll have a chance to take part
in the conference, but I'd like somebody describe GiST extension and
presents tutorial how to use it. We could prepare some materials and
examples from real life. I think Gene Selkov might be a good person

Under some stress and with a lot of preparation, I might be able to
present a tutorial on extensions in general, as well as on some of the
GiST, but I am not sure I meet the technical depth requirement. The
databases I built in the past were mostly read-only, and I seldom had
time to explore beyond the bare necessity. Now that I am assigned a
task of building a system with a moderate intensity of update, I feel
like a total newbie again.

Considering how quickly Oleg picked it up and how far he has gone, I
think he is now the top expert on the GiST, and I would rather have
him do that. However, if he can't and if nobody else stands up --
count me in as a fall-back. Time is almost up, though.

--Gene

Interesting. I think GIST itself may be too specific for a talk.
However, type extensibility would be very interesting.

The issue is that a tutorial on it will provide free air travel, while a
presentation does not.

On Mon, 4 Feb 2001, Oleg Bartunov wrote:

This is a good opportunity to promote PostgreSQL and I think we
should utilize it. I'm not sure I'll have a chance to take part
in the conference, but I'd like somebody describe GiST extension and
presents tutorial how to use it. We could prepare some materials and
examples from real life. I think Gene Selkov might be a good person

Under some stress and with a lot of preparation, I might be able to
present a tutorial on extensions in general, as well as on some of the
GiST, but I am not sure I meet the technical depth requirement. The
databases I built in the past were mostly read-only, and I seldom had
time to explore beyond the bare necessity. Now that I am assigned a
task of building a system with a moderate intensity of update, I feel
like a total newbie again.

Considering how quickly Oleg picked it up and how far he has gone, I
think he is now the top expert on the GiST, and I would rather have
him do that. However, if he can't and if nobody else stands up --
count me in as a fall-back. Time is almost up, though.

--Gene

On Sun, 4 Feb 2001, Bruce Momjian wrote:

I have been asked to help prepare a list of PostgreSQL speakers for a
future O'Reilly Open Source conference. If you are interested in being
a presenter, please see the following URL:

http://candle.pha.pa.us/oreilly/

Submissions are due Febuary 17th. Sorry for the short notice.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 853-3000
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  830 Blythe Avenue
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026

Bruce Momjian wrote:

Interesting. I think GIST itself may be too specific for a talk.
However, type extensibility would be very interesting.

As it turns out, there are just two am's one will most likely build
new types upon: btree and GiST. A useful tutorial should include
examples of both, explain the interface, and probably offer the
audience help in solving their own tasks. But if I were doing that
(chances are I will -- I am going to submit a proposal tomorrow), I
would start with extensibility in general -- because, as I have
recently discovered, it is either not at all obvious to people that
one can come and add their own code to the server, or the difficulty
of doing so is perceived to be too high.

Two engineers next door stopped by the other day and asked me to show
how I do it. I had one of them take a glance at the manual and build a
working library with a string concatenator from the example. That took
them 15 minutes or so, and their final reaction was, "This son of a
dog knew about it for years and didn't tell us!". Which, of course,
wasn't true: I kept telling everyone. Then the accusation was, "You
didn't tell enough -- you failed to explain how simple it was!" The
disbelief was so great that they took the code, went home, ran it
there and were even more surprised because it still worked. It must
have been yet another RTFM case, but we as a group clearly ought to be
doing more tutorials.

The issue is that a tutorial on it will provide free air travel, while a
presentation does not.

That probably indicates the futility of speech as a communication
medium.

--Gene