Re: PostgreSQL hours

Hi all,

I have an idea of arranging a kind of PG hour meetups several times a
week where enthusiasts, like me, could gather together to answer
questions of visitors, help them with their tasks in real environment,
networking, and just to chat. Regarding this I have several questions
to discuss with the community:

1. What do you think about it, is worth doing at all? My thought is
that it would be nice to make a step from mailing to some verbal
things. For some people it would be very useful to have some kind of
micro-masterclasses around their problems.

2. Are there any similar experiences and how things are with them? I
know about MongoDB office hours where they do kind of the same.

3. When it would be better to arrange these meetups? I think about
Tuesdays and Thursdays, 6-7PM.

4. What kind of place it would be better to arrange them? May be
coffee shops or similar places that are not very crowded at this time
of day.

5. Any other thoughts?

--
Kind regards,
Sergey Konoplev
PostgreSQL Consultant and DBA

http://www.linkedin.com/in/grayhemp
+1 (415) 867-9984, +7 (901) 903-0499, +7 (988) 888-1979
gray(dot)ru(at)gmail(dot)com

On Wed, Sep 04, 2013 at 07:38:03PM -0700, Sergey Konoplev wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I have an idea of arranging a kind of PG hour meetups several times a
> week where enthusiasts, like me, could gather together to answer
> questions of visitors, help them with their tasks in real environment,
> networking, and just to chat.

Some thoughts:

How does this differ from what can do on the IRC channel on Freenode?

Several consultancies have kicked off successfully due at least in
part to that sort of community participation, so it's known territory.

Doing this in person has all the usual up-sides of human interaction,
and the usual downsides of convening at a particular time and place.

Would you consider trying a few virtual ones on Freenode first? I
suspect they'd get you some idea of what kind of participation you'd
get in real life, and they're relatively cheap as far as committed
resources go in terms of drumming up interest.

Your suggestion does go to something at least Josh and I have been
mulling over for some time, which is that there's too much stuff
happening to get covered in a single monthly meeting. This is an
excellent problem for a local community such as ours to have.

Cheers,
David.

> Regarding this I have several questions
> to discuss with the community:
>
> 1. What do you think about it, is worth doing at all? My thought is
> that it would be nice to make a step from mailing to some verbal
> things. For some people it would be very useful to have some kind of
> micro-masterclasses around their problems.
>
> 2. Are there any similar experiences and how things are with them? I
> know about MongoDB office hours where they do kind of the same.
>
> 3. When it would be better to arrange these meetups? I think about
> Tuesdays and Thursdays, 6-7PM.
>
> 4. What kind of place it would be better to arrange them? May be
> coffee shops or similar places that are not very crowded at this time
> of day.
>
> 5. Any other thoughts?
>
> --
> Kind regards,
> Sergey Konoplev
> PostgreSQL Consultant and DBA
>
> http://www.linkedin.com/in/grayhemp
> +1 (415) 867-9984, +7 (901) 903-0499, +7 (988) 888-1979
> gray(dot)ru(at)gmail(dot)com

--
David Fetter <david(at)fetter(dot)org> http://fetter.org/
Phone: +1 415 235 3778 AIM: dfetter666 Yahoo!: dfetter
Skype: davidfetter XMPP: david(dot)fetter(at)gmail(dot)com
iCal: webcal://www.tripit.com/feed/ical/people/david74/tripit.ics

Remember to vote!
Consider donating to Postgres: http://www.postgresql.org/about/donate

Sergey,

A huge +1 on this, and would be happy to help spread the word. We've run similar a few times with the Heroku Postgres team with some good results. Additionally, I've been getting more and more random inquiries from people that want to pick my brain for an hour or so over a beer. I'm sure theres many others that would be far more valuable than myself and in general it will just help grow the ecosystem.
> How does this differ from what can do on the IRC channel on Freenode?
In our experience virtual office hours can be very hard to coordinate and you lose a lot of people. You attracting a particular audience which versus a different one which would show up to more in person office hours. We've seen some success with both, though on the virtual front its more of a google hangout format to still add more of a personal touch.

~ Craig

On Wednesday, September 4, 2013 at 11:23 PM, David Fetter wrote:

> On Wed, Sep 04, 2013 at 07:38:03PM -0700, Sergey Konoplev wrote:
> > Hi all,
> >
> > I have an idea of arranging a kind of PG hour meetups several times a
> > week where enthusiasts, like me, could gather together to answer
> > questions of visitors, help them with their tasks in real environment,
> > networking, and just to chat.
> >
>
>
> Some thoughts:
>
> How does this differ from what can do on the IRC channel on Freenode?
>
> Several consultancies have kicked off successfully due at least in
> part to that sort of community participation, so it's known territory.
>
> Doing this in person has all the usual up-sides of human interaction,
> and the usual downsides of convening at a particular time and place.
>
> Would you consider trying a few virtual ones on Freenode first? I
> suspect they'd get you some idea of what kind of participation you'd
> get in real life, and they're relatively cheap as far as committed
> resources go in terms of drumming up interest.
>
> Your suggestion does go to something at least Josh and I have been
> mulling over for some time, which is that there's too much stuff
> happening to get covered in a single monthly meeting. This is an
> excellent problem for a local community such as ours to have.
>
> Cheers,
> David.
>
> > Regarding this I have several questions
> > to discuss with the community:
> >
> > 1. What do you think about it, is worth doing at all? My thought is
> > that it would be nice to make a step from mailing to some verbal
> > things. For some people it would be very useful to have some kind of
> > micro-masterclasses around their problems.
> >
> > 2. Are there any similar experiences and how things are with them? I
> > know about MongoDB office hours where they do kind of the same.
> >
> > 3. When it would be better to arrange these meetups? I think about
> > Tuesdays and Thursdays, 6-7PM.
> >
> > 4. What kind of place it would be better to arrange them? May be
> > coffee shops or similar places that are not very crowded at this time
> > of day.
> >
> > 5. Any other thoughts?
> >
> > --
> > Kind regards,
> > Sergey Konoplev
> > PostgreSQL Consultant and DBA
> >
> > http://www.linkedin.com/in/grayhemp
> > +1 (415) 867-9984, +7 (901) 903-0499, +7 (988) 888-1979
> > gray(dot)ru(at)gmail(dot)com (mailto:gray(dot)ru(at)gmail(dot)com)
> >
>
>
> --
> David Fetter <david(at)fetter(dot)org> http://fetter.org/
> Phone: +1 415 235 3778 AIM: dfetter666 Yahoo!: dfetter
> Skype: davidfetter XMPP: david(dot)fetter(at)gmail(dot)com (mailto:david(dot)fetter(at)gmail(dot)com)
> iCal: webcal://www.tripit.com/feed/ical/people/david74/tripit.ics (http://www.tripit.com/feed/ical/people/david74/tripit.ics)
>
> Remember to vote!
> Consider donating to Postgres: http://www.postgresql.org/about/donate
>
>

Hi,

Sorry for not replying for so long - the post-vacation season, a rush-time.

On Wed, Sep 4, 2013 at 8:32 PM, Joshua Berkus <josh(at)agliodbs(dot)com> wrote:
>> 3. When it would be better to arrange these meetups? I think about
>> Tuesdays and Thursdays, 6-7PM.
>
> I'd start with once a week, at most. Maybe twice a month. Build up an
> audience for them.

I agree, twice a month would be better to start with. Later it can be
adjusted depending on the demand.

> You'd need to do them in downtown SF or SOMA, because those would be the
> only places with enough PG users. Personally, I'd think a Brown Bag (as in
> Lunch) would work better than an evening thing.

I think doing it at SOMA at lunch time will restrict the audience with
15 minutes around radius. The thought is that if it would be arranged
at 6-7PM (may be even earlier) it might serve as a good reasoning for
people to left offices earlier and spend their last work hours at the
meetup solving their work issues with additional help of community. I
think it might attract audience better.

>> 4. What kind of place it would be better to arrange them? May be
>> coffee shops or similar places that are not very crowded at this time
>> of day.
>
> If you did a Brown Bag, then you could use someone's office, which would
> make doing demos etc. much easier, and control the background volume
> issue.

I thought about it in a slightly different way. Free form - no
presentations, no demos, just problems and solutions, plus networking.
May be to collect visitors issues preliminary on a web site, rate them
by complexity level and delegate to consultants according to their
level. Because, for example, I can show how to smoothly do switch over
with pgbouncer, but can not do something like planner related source
code mining yet. May be even to collect a certain minimum amount of
issues and arrange these meetups like on demand. So it could be more
optimal and more flexible this way, and might be arranged in such
places a public libraries or Starbucks.

On Wed, Sep 4, 2013 at 11:23 PM, David Fetter <david(at)fetter(dot)org> wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 04, 2013 at 07:38:03PM -0700, Sergey Konoplev wrote:
>> I have an idea of arranging a kind of PG hour meetups several times a
>> week where enthusiasts, like me, could gather together to answer
>> questions of visitors, help them with their tasks in real environment,
>> networking, and just to chat.
>
> How does this differ from what can do on the IRC channel on Freenode?

Sure, what can be effectively solved on IRC, like atomic issues,
should be solved there.

As I wrote above, the idea is to sit next to the person and to show
him personally on his own laptop how to do one or another thing.
Often, even a small cluster migration involves a lot of issues, as how
to determine if the bandwidth is enough, port mappings for pgbouncer,
some kernel issues, though the original issue was "how to setup
replica". People are often not aware of all of these little moments
and it leads to lots of stress and weeks of discussions, though it
could be easily solved in a hour.

> Several consultancies have kicked off successfully due at least in
> part to that sort of community participation, so it's known territory.

Could you please tell a little bit more about this experience?

> Doing this in person has all the usual up-sides of human interaction,
> and the usual downsides of convening at a particular time and place.
>
> Would you consider trying a few virtual ones on Freenode first? I
> suspect they'd get you some idea of what kind of participation you'd
> get in real life, and they're relatively cheap as far as committed
> resources go in terms of drumming up interest.

Okay, I will try it.

> Your suggestion does go to something at least Josh and I have been
> mulling over for some time, which is that there's too much stuff
> happening to get covered in a single monthly meeting. This is an
> excellent problem for a local community such as ours to have.

On Thu, Sep 5, 2013 at 9:10 AM, Craig Kerstiens
<craig(dot)kerstiens(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
> A huge +1 on this, and would be happy to help spread the word. We've run
> similar a few times with the Heroku Postgres team with some good results.
> Additionally, I've been getting more and more random inquiries from people
> that want to pick my brain for an hour or so over a beer. I'm sure theres
> many others that would be far more valuable than myself and in general it
> will just help grow the ecosystem.

Yes, exactly what I was talking about - to collect random inquires
which cant be solved efficiently in person, and arrange events.

--
Kind regards,
Sergey Konoplev
PostgreSQL Consultant and DBA

http://www.linkedin.com/in/grayhemp
+1 (415) 867-9984, +7 (901) 903-0499, +7 (988) 888-1979
gray(dot)ru(at)gmail(dot)com

Sergey,

> I think doing it at SOMA at lunch time will restrict the audience with
> 15 minutes around radius. The thought is that if it would be arranged
> at 6-7PM (may be even earlier) it might serve as a good reasoning for
> people to left offices earlier and spend their last work hours at the
> meetup solving their work issues with additional help of community. I
> think it might attract audience better.

Hmmm. You could be right. What about scheduling one brown bag, and one
evening session, per month for a couple months? We could see which one
is more attractive to people.

> I thought about it in a slightly different way. Free form - no
> presentations, no demos, just problems and solutions, plus networking.

Ah, ok. I misunderstood you. As a warning, historically SFPUG events
where there was not a structured presentation had fairly low attendance
(like, 4 people). So you'll need to see if this kind of freeform thing
appeals to anyone.

> May be to collect visitors issues preliminary on a web site, rate them
> by complexity level and delegate to consultants according to their
> level. Because, for example, I can show how to smoothly do switch over
> with pgbouncer, but can not do something like planner related source
> code mining yet. May be even to collect a certain minimum amount of
> issues and arrange these meetups like on demand. So it could be more
> optimal and more flexible this way, and might be arranged in such
> places a public libraries or Starbucks.

Hmmm, I'm not sure I quite follow what you're planning to happen at
these meetings.

--
Josh Berkus
PostgreSQL Experts Inc.
http://pgexperts.com

Hello All,
Weekdays in San Francisco is a bit too hard for me, since I am located in San Jose. But if most people are in San Francisco, then I guess it is the natural choice then.

Ya

-----Original Message-----
From: sfpug-owner(at)postgresql(dot)org [mailto:sfpug-owner(at)postgresql(dot)org] On Behalf Of Josh Berkus
Sent: Tuesday, September 10, 2013 5:17 PM
To: sfpug(at)postgresql(dot)org
Subject: Re: [sfpug] PostgreSQL hours

Sergey,

> I think doing it at SOMA at lunch time will restrict the audience with
> 15 minutes around radius. The thought is that if it would be arranged
> at 6-7PM (may be even earlier) it might serve as a good reasoning for
> people to left offices earlier and spend their last work hours at the
> meetup solving their work issues with additional help of community. I
> think it might attract audience better.

Hmmm. You could be right. What about scheduling one brown bag, and one evening session, per month for a couple months? We could see which one is more attractive to people.

> I thought about it in a slightly different way. Free form - no
> presentations, no demos, just problems and solutions, plus networking.

Ah, ok. I misunderstood you. As a warning, historically SFPUG events where there was not a structured presentation had fairly low attendance (like, 4 people). So you'll need to see if this kind of freeform thing appeals to anyone.

> May be to collect visitors issues preliminary on a web site, rate them
> by complexity level and delegate to consultants according to their
> level. Because, for example, I can show how to smoothly do switch over
> with pgbouncer, but can not do something like planner related source
> code mining yet. May be even to collect a certain minimum amount of
> issues and arrange these meetups like on demand. So it could be more
> optimal and more flexible this way, and might be arranged in such
> places a public libraries or Starbucks.

Hmmm, I'm not sure I quite follow what you're planning to happen at these meetings.

--
Josh Berkus
PostgreSQL Experts Inc.
http://pgexperts.com

On Tue, Sep 10, 2013 at 5:16 PM, Josh Berkus <josh(at)agliodbs(dot)com> wrote:
>> I think doing it at SOMA at lunch time will restrict the audience with
>> 15 minutes around radius. The thought is that if it would be arranged
>> at 6-7PM (may be even earlier) it might serve as a good reasoning for
>> people to left offices earlier and spend their last work hours at the
>> meetup solving their work issues with additional help of community. I
>> think it might attract audience better.
>
> Hmmm. You could be right. What about scheduling one brown bag, and one
> evening session, per month for a couple months? We could see which one
> is more attractive to people.

That make sense. I also have another idea of how to optimize it, that
is described below.

>> I thought about it in a slightly different way. Free form - no
>> presentations, no demos, just problems and solutions, plus networking.
>
> Ah, ok. I misunderstood you. As a warning, historically SFPUG events
> where there was not a structured presentation had fairly low attendance
> (like, 4 people). So you'll need to see if this kind of freeform thing
> appeals to anyone.

Again, below is described the idea of how we could probably avoid low
attendance.

>> May be to collect visitors issues preliminary on a web site, rate them
>> by complexity level and delegate to consultants according to their
>> level. Because, for example, I can show how to smoothly do switch over
>> with pgbouncer, but can not do something like planner related source
>> code mining yet. May be even to collect a certain minimum amount of
>> issues and arrange these meetups like on demand. So it could be more
>> optimal and more flexible this way, and might be arranged in such
>> places a public libraries or Starbucks.
>
> Hmmm, I'm not sure I quite follow what you're planning to happen at
> these meetings.

Sorry, I messed things up. Here is another attempt to describe it:

1. We are creating a "SFPUG hours planning" event without day and place
- The event asks potential visitors to
- describe an issue they would like to solve
- specify their convenient location or locations
- put a convenient time for each location
- It also invites potential consultants to
- review the issues and choose one or several
- specify their convenient location or locations
- put a convenient time for each location
2. As we are getting requests we clusterize them by ~location and ~time
3. As we get enough issues in some cluster we arrange "SFPUG hours at
Blabla 7pm"

Place-clusters I think should be San Jose area, San Francisco area,
East Bay area. Time-clusters - weekdays lunch, weekdays evening,
weekends morning.

In addition to problem solving it would probably be also good to make
a kind of a short intro to recent changes and events, as you, Josh,
usually do every time at normal SFPUG meetups.

Thoughts, objections?

--
Kind regards,
Sergey Konoplev
PostgreSQL Consultant and DBA

http://www.linkedin.com/in/grayhemp
+1 (415) 867-9984, +7 (901) 903-0499, +7 (988) 888-1979
gray(dot)ru(at)gmail(dot)com

On Wed, Sep 11, 2013 at 1:05 PM, Sergey Konoplev <gray(dot)ru(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
>> Hmmm, I'm not sure I quite follow what you're planning to happen at
>> these meetings.
>
> Sorry, I messed things up. Here is another attempt to describe it:
>
> 1. We are creating a "SFPUG hours planning" event without day and place
> - The event asks potential visitors to
> - describe an issue they would like to solve
> - specify their convenient location or locations
> - put a convenient time for each location
> - It also invites potential consultants to
> - review the issues and choose one or several
> - specify their convenient location or locations
> - put a convenient time for each location
> 2. As we are getting requests we clusterize them by ~location and ~time
> 3. As we get enough issues in some cluster we arrange "SFPUG hours at
> Blabla 7pm"
>
> Place-clusters I think should be San Jose area, San Francisco area,
> East Bay area. Time-clusters - weekdays lunch, weekdays evening,
> weekends morning.
>
> In addition to problem solving it would probably be also good to make
> a kind of a short intro to recent changes and events, as you, Josh,
> usually do every time at normal SFPUG meetups.
>
> Thoughts, objections?

Just waned to remind.

And another question - do we have an SFPUG IRC channel?

--
Kind regards,
Sergey Konoplev
PostgreSQL Consultant and DBA

http://www.linkedin.com/in/grayhemp
+1 (415) 867-9984, +7 (901) 903-0499, +7 (988) 888-1979
gray(dot)ru(at)gmail(dot)com

> And another question - do we have an SFPUG IRC channel?
>

We did, but nobody used it.

--
Josh Berkus
PostgreSQL Experts Inc.
http://pgexperts.com